Symposium--Beyond the Margins: Researching and Teaching the Middle East in Ohio (Dayton, 9 April 2016)

Symposium--Beyond the Margins: Researching and Teaching the Middle East in Ohio (Dayton, 9 April 2016)

Symposium--Beyond the Margins: Researching and Teaching the Middle East in Ohio (Dayton, 9 April 2016)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Beyond the Margins: Researching and Teaching the Middle East in Ohio

An Ohio Symposium on Middle East Studies

(9 April 2016)
University of Dayton

Over the past several years, numerous universities, colleges, and community colleges across the state of Ohio have hired new faculty whose research focuses on the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) region. Some have created minors, majors, and/or public events programs that center on the topic.

This symposium brings together faculty from a variety of Ohio colleges and universities to meet one another, introduce their research agendas, and provide an opportunity for public education about the Middle East.

Symposium Date:

Saturday 9 April 2016

Symposium Location:

Kennedy Union Building, Room 222
University of Dayton
Dayton, Ohio

Free parking is available in B Lot.

For driving directions, once on Stewart Street heading east, cross Brown Street and Alberta Street (at a traffic light) continuing past the entrance to University of Dayton, past Alberta Street (at a traffic light). Turn right on Zehler Street (at a traffic light), then left at the roundabout and then into B Lot. To get to Kennedy Union, walk through the arch at the southeast corner of the parking lot and Kennedy Union is the building in front and slightly to the left.

Click here for general driving directions to University of Dayton.

Click here for a map of the University of Dayton campus.

Attendance Details:

This event is free and open to the public.

A complimentary lunch meal will be provided to those attendees that RSVP by no later than 15 March 2016. To RSVP, please send an email containing your full name, institutional affiliation (if any), and email address to abuz@ohio.edu.

The University of Dayton strives to provide equal and easy access to programs and services for individuals with disabilities. Individuals requiring accommodations to attend this symposium are encouraged to contact the LTC’s Office of Learning Resources (OLR) with their request by (April 1) in order to ensure adequate processing time. Contact OLR by telephone at 937-229-2066 (TTY 937-229-2059 for deaf/hard of hearing) or by email at disabilityservices@udayton.edu.

Symposium Agenda

8:30am            Registration

9:00-9:30         Introductions

  • Ellen Fleischmann, University of Dayton
  • Ziad Abu-Rish, Ohio University and Arab Studies Institute
  • Dean Jason Pierce, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Dayton

 

9:30-11:00          Panel 1: Critical Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Practices

Chair: Christopher Hemmig, Ohio State University

  • “The Decline of the Private Estate and the Rise of the Public Ribat in Early Islamic Transoxania”
    Robert Haug, Cincinnati University
  • “Epistemology and Authority in Shiite Philosophy”
    Sayeh Meisami, University of Dayton
  • “Intersections and Transformations of Traditions: Islamic Tradition and the Laws of the Economy”
    Nada Moumtaz, Ohio State University
  • “Exegetical Trends in Contemporary Turkey”
    Susan Gunasti, Ohio Wesleyan University
  • “Islamic Interreligious Covenants: Pathways to Peace and Prosperity”
    Anas Malik, Xavier University

 
11:00-11:15         Coffee Break 

11:15-12:45         Panel 2: Thinking Pedagogy

Chair: Indira Falk Gesink, Baldwin Wallace University

  • “Critical Information Literacy in Middle East Studies: Opportunities for Collaboration”
    Johanna Selman, Ohio State University
  • “Comparative Approaches to Teaching the Arabic Novel”
    Michal Raizen, Ohio Wesleyan
  • “Active Learning and Empathy: Teaching the Middle East to the Midwest”
    Vaughn Shannon, Wright State University
  • “Decolonial Challenges in Teaching about Women and Gender in the Middle East and North Africa”
    Isis Nusair, Denison University

     

12:45-2:00          Lunch Break 

2:00-3:30            Panel 3: Palestine in the World

Chair: Abed el-Rahman Tayyar, Cleveland State University

  • “From Palestine to Ohio: The Collection of Arab Flags at the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio”
    Awad Halabi, Wright State University
  • “Economies of War: Aid and the Liberal Encounter in Palestine”
    Lisa Bhungalia, Ohio State University
  • “The Fifth Branch: Palestinian Literature in Chile”
    Heba El Attar, Cleveland State University
  • “Secularism in Exile: The Dialectics of Disenchantment and Religious Return among Palestinians in Chicago”
    Loren Lybarger, Ohio University

 

3:30-3:45           Coffee Break 

3:45-5:15           Panel 4: Contemporary Politics in the Region

Chair: Jane Hathaway, Ohio State University

  • “Jordan’s Longest War”
    Pete Moore, Case Western University
  • “(Re)Definition of Ethno-Religious Kinship and Solidarities: The Case of Turkey’s Alevis and Syrian Alawites”
    Nukhet Sandal, Ohio University
  • “Military Inc. & Dividing the Spoils: A Political Economy of Egypt’s Uprising”
    Joshua Stacher, Kent State University
     

5:15-5:45          Closing Remarks

  • Ellen Fleischmann, University of Dayton
  • Ziad Abu-Rish, Ohio University and Arab Studies Institute

 

Co-Sponsors:

  • Alumni Chair in Humanities at the University of Dayton
  • College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Dayton
  • Department of History at Ohio University
  • Center for International Studies at Ohio University
  • Arab Studies Institute (ASI) 

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412