Deborah Krant
(415) 412-8657 cell

In this lecture, Ansary uses the problem of translating poetry as a frame for examining the difficulty of communication across any border, cultural, historical, or personal: using anecdotes from his own experiences as a bilingual person, he elaborates the idea that no message can be mapped directly from one language to another, because the act of translation severs countless capillaries of assumptions and understandings wedding any message to its cultural context. Switching languages entails switching personas. Yet understanding how an entire cultural frame is involved in every word and phrase of a language also points toward ways that we in the West can comprehend the world as experienced by the East, how we in the twenty-first century can comprehend the world as experienced by people of the past, how we as individuals can comprehend the world as seen by any other person.

A workshop-like discussion for writing students of the differences, similarities, and interrelationships between writing fiction and writing memoir, with a focus on strategies for discovering the story arc in real experiences and for tapping techniques of narrative fiction to bring memoir to life; but also on the issues and strategies involved in tapping real life experience to feed fiction.

In Western schools, the standard world history traces a development from Mesopotamia and Egypt, through Greece and Rome, and then to the Dark Ages, which is followed by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of modern democratic nations. Ansary contrasts this to the alternate narrative he learned growing up: world history as seen from the perspective of the Islamic world, a perspective that places Islam at the center of history, regards the Dark Ages as one of the brighter ages, and sees the Crusades as one of history’s pivotal turning points. This lecture explores the relativity of historical narratives and proposes a world historical story from a global perspective.

Beginning with a look at the historical unfolding of Islam in its first millenium, Ansary moves on to explore the reformist currents of the last two centuries and the challenge Islamic thinkers face in trying to formulate a theology relevant to industrial modernism. A discussion of intellectual currents in the Islamic world is analyzed in the context of the Muslim experience with imperialism and its own growing political impotence.

Ansary discusses what it was like to grow up in Afghanistan, but with one foot already in America, contrasting life in a highly conservative Islamic society to that in post-modern United States and exploring, along the way, such thorny topics as the burqa and the position of women in Islamic society. Stories from a bi-cultural childhood illuminate how and why the worldview of Afghans typically differ from those of Americans.

Ansary moves from a long view of Afghanistan in the context of world history to his own experiences in Afghanistan after the events of September 11. He zooms in from the demise of the Silk Road through the Cold War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the rise of the Taliban. After exploring the origins of this group and its ties to Al Qaeda, he zeros in on Afghanistan today, discussing the direction of the social turmoil there, the factions and interests competing for power, and the implications of events in this country for Pakistan, Iran, the former Soviet Republics, the broader region, and, most importantly, people in the United States.

2001-2007

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, Jackson, Mississippi
Albertus Magnus College, New Haven, Connecticut
Albion College, Albion, Michigan
Berkeley Public Library, Berkeley, California
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesotta
Central Washington University, Washington
College of Alameda, Oakland, California
Cy-Fair College, Cypress, Texas
Dartmouth University, New Hampshire
Ferrum College, Virginia
Flathead Valley Community College, Montana
Houston Community College, Houston, Texas
LaGuardia Community College, New York
Lee College, Baytown, Texas
Mills College, Oakland, California
Reed College, Oregon
San Francisco City College, San Francisco
Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Tulane University, New Orleans
Union College, Kentucky
University of California at Santa Cruz, California
One Book, One Waco: Waco, Texas
World Affairs Council of San Francisco, California
New Hampshire Humanities Council, New Hampshire
Colorado Teachers of Foreign Languages Conference
Berkeley High School, Berkeley California
Colorado Rocky Mountain School, Colorado
Lick Wilmerding High School, San Francisco, California
The Lovett School, Atlanta
The Urban School, San Francisco, California
Washington High School, San Francisco, California
Mechanics Institute Library, San Francisco, California
Osher Institute, San Francisco
Afghan Public Library Foundation, San Jose, California
Pleasanton Public Library, Pleasanton, California
Bernal Heights Public Library, San Francisco
Harvard University Club, San Francisco, California
Stanford Women’s Club, San Francisco. California
Books by the Bay, San Francisco, California
Kiwanis Club, Oakland, California
Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, Los Angeles, California
Sequoia Senior Center, San Francisco, California
Rotary Club, Oakland, California
Rotary Club, Cupertino, California
SF State Poetry Center, San Francisco, California