OSL Symposium: Literature, Care, and the Ethics of Living in Southwest Asia and North Africa

Date: 10 April 2026
Venue: Utrecht University
Organizers: Dr Müge Özoğlu and Dr Merve Tabur
Credits: 1 EC (assignment instructions will follow closer to the date of the event).  NB: Credits can only be awarded to humanities ReMA and PhD students from Dutch universities.
Open to: PhDs and ReMA students; OSL members have first access.

Registration will open Fall 2025.

The twenty-first century continues to unfold as an era marked by intersecting crises—climate catastrophes, political and economic instability, public health emergencies, wars, and mass displacement. In the context of Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), these challenges are deeply felt, not only in material terms but also in the political, emotional, ethical, and relational fabrics of everyday life. We invite contributions to a symposium that approaches the SWANA region not through familiar tropes of crisis but through the quieter, more enduring work of care, vulnerability, and solidarity. Our goal is to ask how different cultural productions, as both reflective and generative forces, might help us reimagine our responsibilities to one another and to the planet we share. The symposium aims to explore deeper understandings of how care—as a critical, creative, and ethical framework—can mediate our engagements with modern-day challenges, particularly through the complex and embodied histories of the SWANA region. Our focus extends beyond human experiences to encompass more-than-human communities and their environments. The symposium will investigate literature’s response to, and influence on, ethical and political practices while recognising care as a contingent and relational operation.

More details will be announced soon.