On Friday afternoon, The University of Oregon’s department of comparative literature kicked off the celebration of its 50th anniversary — making it the oldest program on the West Coast — with a lecture from Saba Mahmood, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley.
The talk, titled “Secular Humanism and Religious Conflict: Muslim-Christian Debates in Egypt”, focused on the controversy surrounding Youssef Ziedan’s book, Azazeel.
True to its title, Mahmood not only highlighted the content of the conflict — certain readers believing that the book blasphemed Christianity — but also explored the nature of offense and moral injury.
“I thought it was a fabulous talk. The speaker was very informed on the subject,” said Amanda Cornwall, a graduate student studying comparative literature. “I liked the way this talk made what we do in comparative literature relevant to contemporary political climates.”
The lecture was attended by a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and community members. This is exactly what the comparative literature department was hoping for.
“We wanted a really broad audience so it wasn’t just a bunch of academics talking to each other,” said Lisa Freinkel, associate professor of English, comparative literature and director of graduate and undergraduate studies of the comparative literature department.
The afternoon of intellect was the start of a weekend-long event that will include three roundtable panels featuring UO professors and guests from Cornell, Missouri University, the University of New York, and Harvard.
The content of the overall celebration will focus on three main topics — the current state of comparative literature, issues of translation and history, and the place of theory, according to Freinkel.