The Post-Conflict Cities Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation is hosting a two-day graduate student conference titled “Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict: Current Research, Ongoing Debates, and Next Directions,” to be held on February 16-17, 2023 in the East Gallery of Buell Hall at Columbia University. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together doctoral students and scholars working on issues related to urbanism and the production of space in Middle Eastern and North African cities (MENA). The MENA region has been mostly discussed and narrated from the perspective of conflict and delineated as a space from which theory cannot emerge. However, the critical research coming out from the Middle East and North African cities is providing cutting edge scholarly contributions on how urban space is shaped by a range of actors (including political parties, international aid organizations, religious groups, and NGOs) and a variety of geo-political flows (such as capital, migration, labor, revolutionary solidarities, and militarization) that produce space and the built environment from housing and infrastructure to borders and refugee camps. This emerging body of urban scholarship is contributing to theorizing about the urban condition from the Global South at large.
This conference includes panels of graduate students led by faculty discussants along with a faculty roundtable on the current status and future of Middle Eastern urban studies. In coming together for this conference, we look forward to providing the space to push the conversation on urbanism and spatial production in Middle Eastern and North African cities, and the theoretical implications of theorizing about the urban from the MENA region.
The conference is graciously cosponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Middle East Institute, The Post-Conflict Cities Lab, Graduate School for Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Maison Française, and Barnard Urban Studies.
For updates and news regarding virtual attendance, visit the event website.
Event Schedule:
Thursday, February 16th
9:30-10am | Opening Remarks
Hiba Bou Akar, Mekarem Eljamal, Calvin Harrison
10-11:45am | Ruinations and Rebuilding
Dina Yunis - "Against Ruination: Space, Creativity, and Political Identities in Beirut and Aleppo"
Hayfaa Abou Ibrahim and Rand Makarem - "A Polycrisis and an Absent State: Implications of Post-Disaster Urban Recovery in Beirut, Lebanon"
Thayer Hastings - "Slow Violence in Sheikh Jarrah"
Nikolas Michael - "Utopia in the Ghost City: Competing Visions for Varosha"
Idil Onen - "The Production of Kurdish Urban Identity Beyond Conflict"
Discussant: Claire Panetta
1-2:45pm | Resistances and (Imagined) Urban Futures
Andres F. Ramirez - "Qiddiya’s Journey: A Case Study in Urban Imagineering and Image Laundering"
Lama Suleiman - "Parallax Haifa"
Mekarem Eljamal - "Reading Urban Futures: Urban Imaginations in Palestine +100"
Mahdi Sabbagh - "Means of Environmental Manipulation in Silwan"
Motasem Abuzaid - "Urban Collective Action in Damascus, Aleppo, and Hama"
Discussant: Rosie Bsheer
3-4:45pm | Encampments and Informalities
Eric Raimondi - "Border Securitization and Human Mobility on Samos"
Matthew DeMaio - "Urban Encampment in Yarmouk"
Marylin Chahine - "Self-help and Mutual Aid in Hay al-Tanak"
Amir Khaghani - "Place making in Tehran: Enghelab Street and Spatialities of Changing Perceptions"
Francesco Pasta - "Soon-to-be but Not Quite Yet: Migration, Urban Transformation, and Extended Transiency in Fikirtepe, Istanbul
Discussant: Berna Turam
5:30-7:15pm | Faculty Roundtable
Ziad Abu-Rish
Hiba Bou Akar
Rosie Bsheer
Arang Keshavarzian
Claire Panetta
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
Berna Turam
Moderator: Calvin Harrison
Friday, February 17
10-11:45am | Environments and Infrastructures
Megan Awwad - "The Jordan River: Memory, Displacement, and Return"
Rawan Alsaffar - "Constructing Water: The Infrastructure and Politics of Desalination in Kuwait"
Anas Al-Khatib and Raneem Ayyad - "Dashed Line: A Deconstruction of Wadi Gaza’s Reality Alice Kezhaya - Building Lebanon’s National Electricity Headquarters as Infrastructure"
Ingy Higazy - "The Contentious Ring Road: The Politics of Urban Mobility (In)Justice in Cairo"
Discussant: Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
1-2:45pm | Political Economies of Land
Azadeh Mashayekhi - "State and Religious Institutions Relations in Governing Urban Change and Tackling Urban Inequalities: Insights from Iran, Tehran"
John Jamil Kallas - "Uneven Housing Development under Syria’s Ba’ath Party"
Ibrahim Abdou - "Negotiating the Legal Landscape on Cairo’s Periphery"
Omnia Khalil - "Baltaga, Maslaha, and the Political Economy of Violence in Boulaq Abule’lla"
Diala Lteif - "The Slaughterhouse of the Year 2000: Labor Struggles and the Production of Space"
Discussant: Arang Keshavarzian
3-4:45pm | Urban Histories
Nadia Tadros - "Bottom-up History in Ramallah: the Story of Abu Jamal al-Zain"
Asmaa Elgamal - "Planning as Risk Management: Soldiers, Land Agents and Spies in Colonial Morocco"
Jan Altaner - "Solidere’s Predecessors: Class and Urban Planning in Downtown Beirut, 1958-1975"
Rawan Hayat - "Beyond Oil and the State: New Histories for Kuwait City"
Janina Shirin Santer - "Nighttime in the City: Infrastructures of Popular Culture in Beirut (1940s-1950s)"
Discussant: Ziad Abu-Rish
4:45-5pm | Closing Remarks
Hiba Bou Akar