We are pleased to announce that Prof. Charles Hirschkind (University of California, Berkley) will be presenting at the Faculty of Music, Cambridge, as part of the 'Past and Present Musical Encounters across the Strait of Gibraltar' project. Prof. Hirschkind's previous and current research resonates with many themes relevant to the project, particularly Matthew Machin-Autenrieth's own work regarding Spanish-Moroccan collaborative music making in which flamenco plays a fundamental role.
Charles Hirschkind is Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests concern religious practice, media technologies, and emergent forms of political community in the urban Middle East and Europe. He has published two books, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (Columbia 2006) and Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and his Interlocutors (co-edited with David Scott, Stanford 2005). His forthcoming book, titled A Feeling for History: Romanticism, Islam, and the Tradition of Andalucismo (Chicago), is based in southern Spain and explores some of the different ways in which Europe’s Islamic past inhabits its present, unsettling contemporary efforts to secure Europe’s Christian civilizational identity. He has published extensively on religion, politics, and history in the Middle East and Europe.
