Message from our Acting Director, Jared McCormick (Sept 1, 2020)
To the larger Kevo Community:
We are physically back in the Kevorkian office - as of today - and I write to welcome everyone for the Fall 2020 semester. In the last six months we have become accustomed to many phrases: unprecedented, uncertain, unforeseen … (etc). The un- prefix negates: highlighting what is “not.” I would like to start the semester with a different sentiment: one of opportunity.
As we start Fall 2020 at the Kevorkian Center:
· We look forward to welcoming students in unprecedented ways - helping them develop their research and future goals.
· We embrace uncertain circumstances to develop new programing to reach our NYU/NYC community - and to widen the scope & mode of our events to those across the globe.
· We face unforeseen developments from COVID, unrest in the face of ongoing police killings across the country, and continuing dissent in the Middle East.
Given all of this we continually reconsider how we serve our students, larger NYU community, and the broader public.
Despite the difficulties we have faced over the last six months, and those which will emerge, the start of this semester forces us to be provisional, quick-footed, and reimagine many of the how’s and why’s which we have taken as assumed. It is in this spirit, that I enthusiastically welcome back our continuing students & our 20 incoming MA candidates! This was an admissions season unlike any other and it has been a pleasure to get to know the incoming class well in advance of the start of the semester. They hail from across the globe, and right in our backyard -- we look forward to seeing them in person as soon as it is safe.
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This coming year we are holding two year-long series:
· Digital Forays in Middle Eastern Studies will build conversations on how we do research in a quickly changing “digital age.”
· Global Uprisings takes the 10th anniversary of the “Arab Spring” to explore ongoing waves of dissent and protest in the region - and connect it to our larger global present.
Each series will present roughly 10 events across the year and they are designed specially for the context of zoom - creating conversation, engagement, and unique content between 3 presenters and 1 discussant. We are excited to integrate these events directly into some of our courses, as asynchronous content. In addition, we hope to develop two public facing interfaces that extend these individual events to explore knowledge production in/of the Middle East.
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| Finally, during the summer we carried out our K-12 Summer Institute: TEACHING THE MIDDLE EAST & LATIN AMERICA IN THE TIME OF COVID-19. We had 40 teachers from across the country take part in a 5-week institute. This event was planned in collaboration with our National Resource Center partners, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Thanks to this virtual experience, we’ve learned a lot about running events on Zoom that we hope will translate into engaging programming that our whole community can enjoy and learn from. We also are looking forward to sharing with you the fruits of the institute in the form of new teacher resources and access to the lectures delivered by our guest speakers. |
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Wishing you all the best starting the semester & hope to see you soon at some of our programing.
Please follow our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
Sincerely,
Jared McCormick
Acting Director & Director of Graduate Studies & Faculty Fellow
Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies |
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