{"id":18167,"date":"2012-09-07T10:05:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T15:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=18167"},"modified":"2012-09-07T14:16:01","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T19:16:01","slug":"international-scholars-to-visit-brock-for-unique-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2012\/09\/international-scholars-to-visit-brock-for-unique-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"International scholars to visit Brock for unique conference"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brock

Brock University is hosting a two-day conference this weekend on Baluchi culture and identity.<\/p><\/div>\n

Brock University will play host this weekend to a unique conference about a little-known cultural group from the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Called Baluchi Identity and Culture<\/a>, the two-day workshop features more than a dozen speakers from the United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO)<\/a> and Canadian and international scholars sharing their insights into the Baluchi people and their way of life.<\/p>\n

“Not many workshops have been held because there are not many experts,” said Behnaz Mirzai, associate professor of history and conference organizer.<\/a> “(The participants) are very excited because it’s very unique. It was a struggle to find scholars.”<\/p>\n

There are about 15 million Baluchi, most of whom live in a region called Sistan and Baluchistan, which straddles Pakistan and Iran.<\/p>\n

Though there are Baluchis scattered throughout Afganistan, Oman, Africa and United Arab Emirates, Mirzai said there are few scholars studying them because of various issues, including travel in Baluchistan. <\/a><\/p>\n

Mirzai has published several papers on the Baluchis since she began studying slavery in the African diaspora in 1998.<\/p>\n

She released a documentary about Baluchistan in 2008 called Afro-Iranian Lives and recently finished a second film, for which she received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to produce. It’s called The African-Baluchi Trance Dance and will debut at the conference this weekend.<\/p>\n

\"Associate

Associate professor of history Behnaz Mirzai (right) with three Baluchi girls in Baluchistan.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mirzai is also collaborating with UNESCO on the creation of a virtual network of scholars studying slavery in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

She described the Baluchis as underpresented. For that reason, Mirzai said she felt compelled to organize an academic event in their honour.<\/p>\n

“That connection, that emotional support I had with the people I worked with, I thought it was important to visualize (in a documentary) but also to have a conference on these people” Mirzai said. “For me, it was a responsibility to represent these people.”<\/p>\n

Baluchi Culture and Identity runs Saturday and Sunday in Pond Inlet. For more information, visit the workshop website. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brock University will play host this weekend to a unique conference about a little-known cultural group from the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":18170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[527,467,506,511],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18184,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18167\/revisions\/18184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}