The Arab Studies Institute is pleased to showcase the below selection of panels, roundtables, and presentations from the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), being held virtually October 5-17. The list contains panels organized by, or those featuring as presenters, discussants, and chairs, members of the Arab Studies Institute and its various projects.
Please note that as per MESA rules, audience members must be registered for the conference. This year, MESA has a sliding scale for conference registration for existing MESA members (which they can self-select options of).
Panels Featuring ASI Team Members
Producing Politics: Spaces of Contestation in Lebanon Today
Monday, 5 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Yara M. Damaj and Heather Jaber
Discussant: Maya Mikdashi, Rutgers University
- Yara M. Damaj, University of Pennsylvania
- Zeead Yaghi, University of California, San Diego
- Heather Jaber, University of Pennsylvania
- Reem Joudi, American University of Beirut
Citizenship and Belonging in the Arabian Peninsula
Tuesday, 6 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized and Chaired by Gwenn Okruhlik
- Noora Lori, Boston University
- Claire Beaugrand, French National Centre for Scientific Research/University of Exeter
- Danya Al-Saleh, University of Wisconsin Madison
- Neha Vora, Lafayette College
- Marc Jones, Hamad Bin Khalifa University
- Gwenn Okruhlik, Independent Scholar
- Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
- Crystal Ennis, Leiden University
- Zahra Babar, Georgetown University Qatar
Strategizing from Below: New Palestinian Social Histories of the Twentieth Century
Tuesday, 6 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Alex Winder
Sponsored by Palestinian American Research Center (PARC)
Discussant: Sherene Seikaly, University of California Santa Barbara
- Sreemati Mitter, Brown University
- Charles Anderson, Western Washington University
- Alex Winder, Brown University
- Haneen Naamneh, London School of Economics
Crisis and Change: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable on Climate
Tuesday, 6 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Owain Lawson
- Owain Lawson, Columbia University
- Elizabeth Holt, Bard College
- Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Bard College
- Arbella Bet-Shlimon, University of Washington
- Zozan Pehlivan, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Genealogies of Racial Politics in the Maghrib
Tuesday, 6 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Moygaye Bedward
Chair: Leila Tayeb, New York University Abu Dhabi
- Andrea L. Castonguay, University of Notre Dame
- Samia Errazzouki, University of California Davis
- Moygaye Bedward, Rutgers University New Brunswick
- Afifa Ltifi, Cornell University
Against Middle East Studies
Wednesday, 7 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Esmat Elhalaby and Hana Sleiman
- Hana Sleiman, University of Cambridge
- Huma Gupta, Brandeis University
- Nader Atassi, Columbia University
- Esmat Elhalaby, University of California Davis
Law and Legal Regimes in the MENA Region
Thursday, 8 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Chair: Lillian Frost, George Washington University
- Alyssa Miller, University of Pennsylvania
- Timothy Schorn, University of South Dakota
- Asli Bali, University of California Los Angeles
- Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, University of Toronto
"Every Slight Movement of the People": Women's Activism and Middle East Uprisings
Thursday, 8 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Sondra Hale
Sponsored by Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS)
Chair: Helen M. Rizzo, American University in Cairo
Discussant: Nadje Al-Ali, Brown University
- Tory Brykalski, University of California Davis
- Isabel Käser, SOAS University of London
- Maya Mikdashi, Rutgers University
- Sondra Hale, University of California, Los Angeles
Ethnographies of Migration, Displacement, and Belonging
Thursday, 8 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Osman Balkan
Chair: Osman Balkan
Discussant: Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago
- Michelle Weitzel, New School for Social Research
- Lama Mourad, Carleton University
- Paul Silverstein, Reed College
- Osman Balkan, Swarthmore College
Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia
Thursday, 8 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Ahmed Dailami
Chair: Ahmed Dailami, University of Exeter
- Toby C. Jones, Rutgers University
- Attiya Ahmad, George Washington University
- Beth Baron, CUNY
- John M. Willis, University of Colorado
- Rosie Bsheer, Harvard University
Global Academy: Approaches to Governance through an Islamist Lens
Saturday, 10 October, 12:00 PM EDT
Organizers: Asli Bali, UCLA; Beth Baron, CUNY; Mimi Kirk, MESA; Greta N. Scharnweber, Institute of International Education; Judith Tucker, Georgetown University
Chair: Brinkley Messick, Columbia University
Discussant: Issam Eido, Vanderbilt University
- Utku Balaban, Amherst College
- Nihat Celik, San Diego State University
- Seyed Masoud Noori, New York University
Global Academy: Ottoman Legacies in the Post-Ottoman Era
Saturday, 10 October, 12:00 PM EDT
Organizers: Asli Bali, UCLA; Beth Baron, CUNY; Mimi Kirk, MESA; Greta N. Scharnweber, Institute of International Education; Judith Tucker, Georgetown University
Chair: A. Holly Shissler, University of Chicago
Discussant: Sumercan Bozkurt-Gungen, Simon Fraser University
- Evren Altinkas, University of Guelph
- Melissa Bilal, University of California, Los Anggeles
- Dilsa Deniz, University of California, San Diego
Middle East Studies and the Academy in the Time of Covid-19
Sunday, 11 October, 12:00 PM EDT
Chair: Dina Rizk Khoury, George Washington University
- Anthony Alessandrini, City University of New York
- Zachary Lockman, New York University
- Seteney Shami, Arab Council for the Social Sciences
- Yulia Gilichinskaya, UC Santa Cruz
Thinking Through Catastrophe: Perspectives and Lessons from Lebanon
Monday, 12 October, 12:00 PM EDT
Organized by Lara Deeb, Scripps College; Catherine Batruni, Independent Scholar; and Sherene Seikaly, University of California, Santa Barbara
Co-sponsored by the Lebanese Studies Association
Chair: Nadya Sbaiti, American University of Beirut
- Habib Battah, Investigative Journalist & Founder, Beirut Report
- Mona Harb, American University of Beirut
- Banchi Yimer, Egna Legna Besidet
- Dima Krayem, University of Cambridge
- Lina Mounzer, Writer and Translator, Beirut
- Karim Nammour, Legal Agenda
Precarity Committee Convening
Monday, 12 October, 2:00 PM EDT
- Ilana Feldman, George Washington University
- Gordiya Khademian, MESA
- Taylor Moore, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Jeffrey Reger, MESA
- Sherene Seikaly, University of California, Santa Barbara
Contending with Lebanon's Civil War
Wednesday, 14 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Chair: Nour El Rayes, University of California Berkeley
- Kylie Broderick, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Mohammad Ataie, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Hrach Gregorian, American University
- George E. Irani, American University of Kuwait
- Julie Norman, University College London
"Oh There You Go, Bringing Class Into It Again!": Deprovincializing the Agrarian Question in the Middle East
Wednesday, 14 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by China Sajadian
Chair/Discussant: Elizabeth Williams, University of Massachusetts Lowell
- China Sajadian, CUNY Graduate Center
- Önder Eren Akgül, Georgetown University
- Paul Kohlbry, Brown University
- Graham Auman Pitts, Georgetown University
- Kristen Alff, North Carolina State University
The Poetics and Politics of Modern Iraq
Wednesday, 14 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Qussay Al-Attabi, Kenyion College
Chair: Qussay Al-Attabi, Kenyion College
Discussant: Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago
- Sinan Antoon, New York University
- Qussay Al-Attabi, Kenyion College
- Levi Thompson, University of Colorado
Black and Arab Across the Red Sea
Wednesday, 14 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Gehad Abaza, Anna Reumert, and Gokh Amin Alshaif
Chair/Discussant: Sherene Seikaly, University of California Santa Barbara
- Anna Reumert, Columbia University
- Zachary Mondesire, University of California Los Angeles
- Gokh Amin Alshaif, University of California Santa Barbara
- Gehad Abaza, University of California Santa Barbara
Writing the History of Lebanon in Revolutionary Times
Wednesday, 14 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Nadya Sbaiti, Andrew Arsan, and Ziad M. Abu-Rish
- Andrew Arsan, University of Cambridge
- Zeina Maasri, University of Brighton
- Hana Sleiman, University of Cambridge
- Ziad M. Abu-Rish, Bard College
- Nadya Sbaiti, American University of Beirut
Science, Medicine, and Technology in the Middle East: Infrastructure of Global Knowledge, 17th-20th Centuries
Thursday, 15 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Duygu Yildirim and Cihan Tekay
Chair: Cihan Tekay
Discussant: Zozan Pehlivan, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
- Duygu Yildirim, Stanford University
- Christin Zurbach, University of California, Berkeley
- Cihan Tekay, CUNY Graduate Center
- Mejgan Massoumi, Stanford University
Can Revolutions be Written? Theoretical and Empirical Implications
Thursday, 15 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Naghmeh Sohrabi and Youssef El Chazli
Chair/Discussant: Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
- Youssef El Chazli, Crown Center for Middle East Studies
- Naghmeh Sohrabi, Brandeis University
- Arash Davari, Whitman College
- Leyla Dakhli, French National Centre for Scientific Research
- Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University
Ethnic Minorities and Sectarian Tensions
Thursday, 15 October, 1:30 PM EDT
- Miaad Hassan, University of Florida
- Basileus Zeno, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Saatchi Soraya, Wayne State University
- Bahadin H. Kerborani, University of Chicago
- Ozgur Ozkan, University of Washington
- Ahmad Kindawi, Rowan University
Rural Imaginaries and the Making of Modern Lebanon
Friday, 16 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Nova Robinson and Jeremy Randall
Discussant: Michelle Hartman, McGill University
- Jeremy Randall, CUNY Graduate Center
- Owain Lawson, Columbia University
- Nova Robinson, Seattle University
Imperial Decline? The Shifting Contours of US Power in the Middle East
Saturday, 17 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Danya Al-Saleh and Lisa Bhungalia
Chair: Danya Al-Saleh, University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Omar Dahi, Hampshire College
- Abdullah Al-Arian, Georgetown University Qatar
- Madiha Tahir, Columbia University
- Katty Alhayek, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Lisa Bhungalia, Kent State University
- Basileus Zeno, University of Massachusetts Amherst
(Re)Conceptualizing the Sahara/Desert between the Local and the Global
Saturday, 17 October, 11:00 AM EDT
Organized by Brahim El Guabli
Chair: Brahim El Guabli
- July Blalack, SOAS University of London
- Jill Jarvis, Yale University
- Brahim El Guabli, Williams College
Politics of Land and Property: Updating Historical Perspectives
Saturday, 17 October, 1:30 PM EDT
- Mekarem Eljamal, University of Michigan
- Stephen P. Gasteyer, Michigan State University
- Malissa Taylor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Amos Nadan, Tel Aviv University
- Amanda Propst, Florida State University
Rereading Cultural Journals between Critique and Consecration: Lamalif in Morocco
Saturday, 17 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Organized by Matthew Brauer
Chair: Brahim El Guabli
- Brahim El Guabli, Williams College
- Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik, University of Pennsylvania
- Matthew Brauer, University of Tennessee
- Ali Alalou, University of Delaware
- Khalid Lyamlahy, University of Chicago
Communicating to Peace
Saturday, 17 October, 1:30 PM EDT
- Fabiola Hanna, The New School
- Emily Arauz, Independent Scholar
- Renee Spellman, University of Arizona
- Katty Alhayek, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Policing and Surveillance in Israel
Saturday, 17 October, 1:30 PM EDT
Chair: Hassaan Shahawy, Harvard Law School
- Sophia Goodfriend, Duke University
- Noura Erakat, Rutgers University
- Smadar Ben-Natan, University of California Berkeley
- Michael T. Samuel, Emory University
