Instruments of Obligations Conference

Obligations generate worlds made through the bonds and fractures of relations.
How does an obligation’s meaning shift when it is unmoored from its original context?
What kind of morphologies can obligations undergo?
What frictions emerge?

By focusing on the instruments that give obligations specific relational forms and tempos, this event, involving six panels over two days, explores the new configurations and broken attachments produced in the wake of obligation’s redeployment.

Friday 4 April from 13:00
Opening Keynote at 4:30pm: ‘Non-Sovereign Obligations’ by Yarimar Bonilla, Princeton University
With response by Professor Julia Elyachar, Princeton University

Saturday 5 April from 10:00
Closing Keynote at 4:30pm: ‘Interpellating Imperial Publics: Cultivating Defenders of the Israeli State’ by Alejandro Paz, University of Toronto
With response by Professor Laurence Ralph, Princeton University

Panelists: 
Barbara Abrahão, University of Oxford
Leen Alfatafta & Marisa Breathwaite, George Washington University & CUNY Graduate Center
Alia Al Sabi, New York University
Harshavardhan Bhat, University of Cincinnati
Holly Bushman, Princeton University
Jowel Choufani, George Washington University
Shalini Iyengar, Yale University
Rima Kalush, University of Oxford
Nicole Mabry, University of California Berkeley
Karim Malak, Wagner College
Anya Martin, Georgia Institute of Technology
Júlia Nueno Guitart, Goldsmiths University
Simon Rakei, University of Michigan
Siyu Tang,  University of Oxford
Nathan Shearn, CUNY Graduate Center
Jess Slattery, University of California Irvine
Paulo Suarez, CUNY Graduate Center
Shoko Yamada, Yale University

Organized by Anthropology graduate students Moad Musbahi, Runnie Exuma, Bailey Miller, Caryn Tin Powe Hoo and Jamie Methven.

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology

Co-sponsors:
Humanities Council
Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities
University Center for Human Values
Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies
Program in Latin American Studies
Center for Collaborative History
Near East Studies Department