The workshop Russia in the Arab World: History, Literature, Arts was held at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, on February 17 and 18, 2018. The workshop website has the full program including speaker bios and abstracts. We anticipate future iterations of this workshop will be held outside the United States in future years.

Here is the original CFP:

We invite abstracts for contributions to an interdisciplinary workshop on Arab-Russian and Arab-Soviet ties to be held at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, Feb. 17-18, 2017. The Arab-Russian conjunction is timely, dramatized by events in Syria, but few analysts have thought through the historical and cultural backgrounds. Our proposed framework makes room for a genuinely interdisciplinary group of participants across humanities and social sciences, bringing together scholars who may not ordinarily engage with each other’s work. We invite reflections on such moments as Russian Orthodox missionary experiences and travel narratives about the Holy Land and Greater Syria, Arab writings about encounters with Russia and the USSR, the history of literary translation in both directions between Russian and Arabic, Afro-Asian writers’ networks, Soviet-era education policy and cultural diplomacy, the relations between the Arab left and the USSR, and so on. This workshop asks an important, genuinely open question: Are there meaningful continuities across the three periods (Czarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet) of Arab-Russian ties? We anticipate that outstanding workshop contributions, revised in light of the discussion in February, will be gathered for publication by the end of 2017. Please send a brief abstract or statement of interest to mlitvin@bu.edu by Dec 10, 2016.