As part of the Arab Studies Institute, Jadaliyya is fortunate to be co-sponsoring this 40-participant (closed) conference on "Teaching the Middle East After the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions: Beyond Orientalism, Islamophobia, and Neoliberalism" (see list of co-sponsors and participants/presentations below). In due time, the conference proceedings will be made public, including a video, potentially. The material will be part of Jadaliyya`s new Pedagogy Section which will be announced shortly (sneak peak here). The conference, co-sponsored by George Mason University`s Middle East Studies Program and Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, is cyber-hosted on Jadaliyya in order to continue the discussion there, in the Pedagogy Section. It will be the first of such experiments, likely to be followed by others. Researchers and educators with a demonstrable record are welcome to sign up to join the conversations and make contributions on the Pedagogy Section.
[This conference, unfortunately, is not open to the public, but the proceedings will be made available. To receive Conference Proceedings and Information first, sign up here]
Back to the idea behind the current conference.
During the past decade, we witnessed an important theoretical questioning of the dominant conceptual tools used to analyze the social, political, and cultural life of Middle Eastern societies. The recent revolts and revolutions in the region have sped up such interrogation and opened the door for a fundamental rethinking of methodologies and paradigms used to understand the Middle East.
This will is a pedagogy-centered but not pedagogy-exclusive conference. The general aim is to switch pedagogic modes and strategies from "defensive" to "non-defensive" ones across the board. Many educators (especially in some disciplines) have had to teach the Middle East in defensive ways that were consumed by reacting to dominant but reductionist world-views and paradigms, especially at the undergrad level. To switch modes, the effort requires institutional backing, networking, collaboration, and innovation. We hope this conference series will contribute to this goal.
As for research, it is evident that recent events and the lead up to this spring have raised new research questions and made others less, if not, relevant. We will be addressing the feasibility of, and prospects for, various research agendas, including inter-disciplinary ones.
Empirically, we are witnessing a rare teachable moment, when so much of what many educators tried to debunk in the classroom is being debunked before our eyes in the region--though much remains . . . to be discussed.
Moreover, we would like to seize this opportunity to challenge ourselves by formulating pedagogic agendas that both address as well as go well beyond the critique of Orientalism, Islamophobia, and Neoliberalism.
Thanks to all those who contributed to making this conference a reality. This conference is co-sponsored by Middle East Studies Program, Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, and the Arab Studies Institute (the umbrella organization for Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya).
Please find below a list of participants and presentations titles. This material will be made available on Jadaliyya’s new Pedagogy Section shortly. Stay tuned!
For further information, please email us at info@jadaliyya.com AFTER Monday, May 16th.
PARTICIPANTS AND ABSTRACT TITLES
Producing Knowledge for Justice? Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Consumption of Arabs and Muslims
Rabab Abdulhadi
College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University
Regional Uprisings and Middle East Scholarship: Some Thoughts on What We Can Do Better
Ziad Abu-Rish
Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
Teaching Arab Identity and Islam in Light of the Arab Uprisings
As’ad Abukhalil
Department of Politics & Public Administration, California State University Stanislaus
Pedagogical Uprisings: Teaching to the Unconverted, or Against Multiculturalism’s Middle East
Tony Alessandrini
Department of English, Kingsborough Community College- City University of New York
How the Egyptian Revolution Teaches Political Sociology, Global Political Economy, Gender Studies, and Geopolitics
Paul Amar
Global & International Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara
Rescuing History of Universalism and Modernity from Eurocentric Decline Paradigm
Cemil Aydin
Department of History and Art History, George Mason University
Who’s Afraid of Iran? Neocons’ Enduring Influence on US Policy Analysis
Shiva Balaghi
Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University
Comparative and International Law of the Middle East After the Uprisings: Re-assessing the State of the Arab State
Asli Bali
School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles
Workers and Egypt’s January 25th Revolution: Shifting the Discussion from Autocracy/Democracy to Political Economy and Equity
Joel Beinin
Department of History, Stanford University
Teaching Political Islam after “Post-Islamism” and the Arab Revolutions
Michaelle Browers
Department of Political Science, Wake Forest University
How the January 25th Uprising Is Reshaping the Norms of Egyptian Domestic and Foreign Policy
Jason Brownlee
Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin
Problematics of Teaching International Law in the Contemporary Middle East
Noura Erakat
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University
Rethinking the Big Picture: Narrating Middle Eastern History in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings, 1944-Present
James Gelvin
Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
Thoughts Out of Season
Peter Gran
Department of History, Temple University
Prospects for Shifting Strategies: The Production of Knowledge on the Middle East and in the Classroom
Bassam Haddad
Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University
Following the Torture Trail From Middle East Studies to American Studies
Lisa Hajjar
Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Teaching Islam After the Revolution
Sumaiya Hamdani
Department of History and Art History, George Mason University
Youth and Citizenship in a Digital Age
Linda Herrera
Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois
Unlearning while Teaching on the Arab Media
Adel Iskandar
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University
Democracy and Its Limits in the Persian Gulf
Toby Jones
Department of History, Rutgers University
Muddles in the Models: Ethnography and the Mapping of the New Middle East
Laurie King
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University
Making Connections
Zachary Lockman
Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University
The Emergence of North and South Sudan: Reinterpreting the Politics of the Nile Valley in the Context of the Arab Revolutionary Movements
Khalid Medani
Department of Political Science, McGill University
Teaching the Middle East After the Revolutions: Critical Perspectives
Maya Mikdashi
Department of Anthropology, Colombia University
Back to Basics in Political Economy: Power and Inequality
Pete Moore
Department of Political Science, Case Western Reserve University
De-Orientalizing Pedagogy
Nadine Naber
Women’s Studies, University of Michigan
Teaching Middle East in Theory Courses
Agnieszka Paczynska
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University
Challenges and Tradeoffs in Moving Beyond Dominant Approaches to the Study of the Comparative Politics of the Middle East
Hesham Sallam
Department of Government, Georgetown University
Disoriented: Rethinking Middle East, Far West, and the Points in Between
Nadya Sbaiti
Department of History, Smith College
Egyptian History Without “Egypt”? Privileging Pluralism in a Post-Revolution Pedagogy
Paul Sedra
Department of History, Simon Fraser University
The Social Relations of Islamophobia and the Role of the Academic
Stephen Sheehi
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of South Carolina
Revolutions and Teaching the Middle East and Islam
Hayrettin Yücesoy
Department of History, Saint Louis University
NON-PRESENTING PARTICIPANTS
Osama Abi-Mershed
Department of History, Georgetown University
Amaney Jamal
Department of Politics, Princeton University
Darryl Li
Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
Burhanettin Duran
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Istanbul Sehir University
Kadir Ustun
Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, Washington DC
Nuh Yilmaz
Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, Washington DC