Elements of Border & Infrastructure 2021-2022

This virtual series explored both border and infrastructure in the Middle East through a lens of Elements. The series started in Fall 2021 and ended in Spring 2022.

EARTH / AIR / FIRE / WATER framed panels across the year and allowed for new ways to explore materiality, mediation, and scale that problematize how we imagine both border and infrastructure. Thinking elementally is to think through the material continuities between border and climate crises. It problematizes not just time and space, but changing relationships of ecology, construction, and movement in the social world around us. Each elemental theme was addressed twice over the course of the year, and each panel brought together a diverse range of scholars and practitioners across disciplines and fields to provide insights, field-fresh research, and original interventions into critical issues that concern the Middle East but branch out far beyond.

See a listing of events in this series below and view a playlist of event recordings from our Youtube channel here.

Spring 2022

February 23, 2022: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Water II with Jatin Dua (Michigan), Laleh Khalili (Queen Mary Univ. of London), Nathalie Peutz (NYU-Abu Dhabi), and Discussant Atossa Abrahamian (The Nation). Watch a recording here.

March 9, 2022: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Earth II with Nimrod Ben Zeev (Polonsky Academy), Ana Sekulic (University of Pittsburgh), Omer Shah (Columbia), and discussant James Ryan (NYU). Watch a recording here.

March 30, 2022: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Air II with Gökçe Günel (Rice), Waleed Hazbun (Alabama), and Andrea Stanton (Univ. of Denver), and discussant Jared McCormick (NYU). Watch a recording here.

April 6, 2022: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Fire II with Natasha Iskander (NYU), Ali Ismail Karimi (Architect), Feras Klenk. Register here (Independent Scholar), and Jared McCormick (NYU). Watch a recording here.

Fall 2021

September 29, 2021: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Water I with Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania), Michael Christopher Low (Iowa State University), and Ekin Kurtiç (Brandeis University). Watch a recording here.

October 20, 2021: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Earth I with Max Ajl (Wageningen University), Bridget Guarasci (Franklin and Marshall), and Caterina Scaramelli (Boston University). Watch a recording here.

November 3, 2021: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Air I with Samuel Dolbee (Harvard University), Asher Ghertner (Rutgers University), Aya Nassar (Royal Holloway, University of London). Watch a recording here.

November 17: Elements of Border and Infrastructure: Fire I with On Barak (Tel Aviv University), Joanne Randa Nucho (Pomona College), Eleni Myrivili (City of Athens). Watch a recording here.