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Wien Attends Conference At Leiden University

June 22, 2016 History

Wien Attends Conference At Leiden University

Peter Wien attended a conference from June 15-17 at Leiden University in the Netherlands on “Arabic and its Alternatives: Religious minorities and their languages in the emerging nation states of the Middle East (1920-1950).”

Peter Wien attended a conference from June 15-17 at Leiden University in the Netherlands on “Arabic and its Alternatives: Religious minorities and their languages in the emerging nation states of the Middle East (1920-1950).” Papers covered a wide array of topics related to language choices that members of Middle Eastern minorities made in the context of the emergence of Arab nationalism as a hegemonic ideology in the region - between languages that were specific to the communities, Arabic as the dominant vernacular, and English and French as languages of the Mandate powers and the new linguae francae of the Middle East. In discussions, the participants identified this issue and related questions as crucial in the process of identity formation in the post-Ottoman period. Prof. Wien's paper focused on poetry as a form of identity assertion via language, presenting the the neo-classical Arabic poetry of Fu'ad al-Khatib (1880-1957), and the ways how he delineated borders of ethnic inclusion and exclusion.