Schedule from Conference on "Teaching the Middle East After the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions."

On May 13 and May 14, more than forty scholars gathered as part of Jadaliyya's first co-sponsored conference on "Teaching the Middle East After the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions." The conference announcement and description can be found here. Presenters' abstracts, panel summaries, and more are forthcoming on the Pedagogy Page.

FRIDAY, MAY 13

9:30am - 10:00am Introduction by Bassam Haddad and Cemil Aydin, and Welcome by Provost Peter Stearns

10:00am - 11:30pm Panel 1: Focus on Egypt

• Paul Amar How the Egyptian Revolution Teaches Political Sociology, Global Political Economy, Gender Studies, and Geopolitics
• Joel Beinin Workers and Egypt’s January 25th Revolution: Shifting the Discussion from Autocracy/Democracy to Political Economy and Equity
• Jason Brownlee How the January 25th Uprising Is Reshaping the Norms of Egyptian Domestic and Foreign Policy
• Peter Gran Thoughts Out of Season
• Paul Sedra Egyptian History Without “Egypt”? Privileging Pluralism in a Post-Revolution Pedagogy

Coffee break

11:45am – 1:15pm Panel 2: Knowledge Production and the Role of the Academic

• Rabab Abdulhadi Producing Knowledge for Justice? Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Consumption of Arabs and Muslims
• Tony Alessandrini Pedagogical Uprisings: Teaching to the Unconverted, or Against Multiculturalism’s Middle East
• Nadine Naber De-Orientalizing Pedagogy
• Stephen Sheehi The Social Relations of Islamophobia and the Role of the Academic 

1:15pm - 2:30pm Lunch with discussion by Nir Rosen on Reporting in the Region: Producing “Knowledge” in Turbulent Times


2:30pm – 4:00pm Panel 3: Reframing Research Agendas and Analytical Narratives

• Cemil Aydin Rescuing History of Universalism and Modernity from Eurocentric Decline Paradigm
• James Gelvin Rethinking the Big Picture: Narrating Middle Eastern History in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings, 1944-Present
• Zachary Lockman Making Connections
• Pete Moore Back to Basics in Political Economy: Power and Inequality
• Hesham Sallam Challenges and Tradeoffs in Moving Beyond Dominant Approaches to the Study of the Comparative Politics of the Middle East
• Nadya Sbaiti Disoriented: Rethinking Middle East, Far West, and the Points in Between

Coffee break 

4:15pm - 5:45pm  Panel 4: Bringing the Middle East into the Fields of Law and Theory  

• Shiva Balaghi Who’s Afraid of Iran? Neocons’ Enduring Influence on US Policy Analysis
• Asli Bali Comparative and International Law of the Middle East After the Uprisings: Re-assessing the State of the Arab State
• Noura Erakat Problematics of Teaching International Law in the Contemporary Middle East
• Lisa Hajjar Following the Torture Trail from Middle East Studies to American Studies
Agnieszka Paczynska Teaching Middle East in Theory Courses

 
SATURDAY, MAY 14

10:00am - 11:30pm Panel 5: Peripheries and Exceptions

• Ziad Abu-Rish Regional Uprisings and Middle East Scholarship: Some Thoughts on What We Can Do Better
• Linda Herrera Youth and Citizenship in a Digital Age
• Toby Jones Democracy and its Limits in the Persian Gulf
• Khalid Medani The Emergence of North and South Sudan: Reinterpreting the Politics of the Nile Valley in the Context of the Arab Revolutionary Movements
• Maya Mikdashi Teaching the Middle East After the Revolutions: Critical Perspectives 

11:45am - 1:15pm Panel 6: Teaching about Identity and Religion  

• As’ad Abukhalil Teaching Arab Identity and Islam in Light of the Arab Uprisings
• Michaelle Browers Teaching Political Islam after “Post-Islamism” and the Arab Revolutions
• Sumaiya Hamdani Teaching Islam After the Revolution
• Laurie King Reconsidering Muddles in Middle East Models: the Utility of Ethnography in Pedagogy, Theory-Building, and Public Debate

• Hayrettin Yücesoy Revolutions and Teaching the Middle East and Islam 

1:15pm - 2:30pm Lunch with discussion by Adel Iskandar on The Arab Media: Unlearning while Teaching on the Arab Media


2:30pm - 3:45pm Panel 7: Concluding Discussion I (Research Agendas)

4:00pm - 5:30pm Panel 8: Concluding Discussion II (Pedagogy and the Classroom)

SUNDAY, MAY 15

2:00pm Next Steps Organizational Meeting

Photo of a slide during Khalid Medani's presentation: