Springing into an Event-Filled Semester
In the spring 2019 semester, the department hosted a variety of events that delivered exciting experiences for everyone including faculty, staff, students and the Boston-area community.
Events are listed in order according to date.
Middle East and Asia Film Festival
February 4-February 15 – This two-week Middle East and Asia Film Festival highlighted films by and/or about India, China, Japan, Korea, Iran, Turkey, Iraqi Kurds, and French Moroccans. All films were open to members of the BU Community.
Arab Arts & Humanities Series
March 22-April 25 – A variety of events that explore Arab cultures and literatures in partnership with the BU Center for Humanities.
Boston Area Pedagogy Symposium
March 22 – Inspired by the inter-departmental success of its last two annual pedagogy symposia, WLL hoped to extend the dialogue on pedagogy to institutions in the Boston Area, and offer opportunities to reflect on and showcase different teaching practices as well as discover untapped reserves of cross-departmental and inter-institutional potential for future collaboration.
Jewish Boy Dancers of Iran
April 2 – This lecture traced the history of boy dancers in Iran, their role in Iranian entertainment, and the forces that led to their disappearance. It also touched on the history of male homosexuality in Iran, art history, and photography.
Women and Poetry in Premodern India
April 4 – This symposium explored the roles of women in the three main South Asian literary cultures: the classical tradition in Sanskrit, vernacular traditions in languages such as Gujarati and Kashmiri, and the Indo-Muslim tradition in Persian and Urdu. The presentations focused on women as both creators of poems and their representation in poetry by male poets.
On Selling One’s Soul: A WLL Symposium on the Faust Tradition
April 13 – The third in the Department of World Languages & Literatures’ BIG FAT BOOKS series on major works of world literature, ON SELLING ONE’S SOUL was a day of conversation on the vicissitudes of the Faust legend which brought Professors of Comparative Literature from WLL, Classics, Core, Philosophy, History, and the Editorial Institute, as well as a keynote speaker from Washington University, the renowned comparatist and Goethe scholar Jane K. Brown, together to discuss the influence of Doctor Faust in cross-disciplinary literatures.