Since 1967, MESA has held an annual meeting in the fall where members gather to share research. MESA has been the hub for scholarly exchange from its first meeting at The University of Chicago in 1967 where a small group gathered for eight sessions to MESA's 50th anniversary meeting in Boston in 2016 where 312 sessions delighted more than 2,000 attendees. The meeting features panels and special sessions on a variety of topics related to Middle East studies. It is complemented by meetings of MESA's affiliated groups, an exciting 4-day film festival, a comprehensive book bazaar featuring the latest books and software in the field, and other informal events. The meeting provides an opportunity for friends and colleagues from a variety of disciplines to gather to share their common bond: the study of this important region of the world.
Please join us in supporting our affiliated faculty and students presenting throughout the MESA conference:
Thursday, November 15
5:30PM-7:30PM
(5132) Fortune, Crisis, Catastrophe: Histories of Capitalism in the Global Middle East Chair/Discussant: Zachary Lockman, NYU
(5239) New Directions in Modern Arabic Poetry
Organizer & Chair: Ziad Dallal, NYU
featuring: Kevin Antranik Cassem, NYU - "Between: Punctuation and the Sea in the Work of Etel Adnan" and Ziad Dallal, NYU - "The Acephalic Fate of Prophecy in the Poetry of Ounsi el-Hajj"
(5249) Sights, ʼScapes, and Sonic Imaginaries: Dissecting Iranian Popular Cinema beyond the National
featuring: Negar Taymoorzadeh, NYU - "MeloDramatic Responses to Modernization in Yeşilçam and Film Farsi"
Friday, November 16
8:30AM-10:30AM
(5145) Contending Visions of Belonging in the Arabian Peninsula
Chair: Nelida Fuccaro, NYU Abu Dhabi
(5227) Gender and the Tech Industry - Views from the Arab Periphery
featuring: Sana Odeh, NYU - "Women in Computing in the Arab World: Representation, Challenges and Opportunities in Academia" and May Al-Dabbagh, NYU - "Mom-preneurs and Tech-preneurs: The Construction of Modern Motherhood and Work in the Gulf"
(5355) Political & Religious Development During the Safavid Period
featuring: Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer, NYU - "Sects and Sectarianism in the Early Modern Middle East: Ottoman Sunnism - Safavid Shiism and the Qizilbash"
11:00AM-1:00PM
(5078) Israel in the Trump Era Organizer: Robert O. Freedman Sponsored by Association for Israel Studies (AIS)
Chair: Itamar Radai, NYU
(5224) Anthropology in War-Torn Yemen: Challenges, Dilemmas, and Alternative Methodologies
featuring: Nathalie Peutz, NYU-Abu Dhabi - "Fieldwork in a Yemeni 'Village' Displaced and Constituted by War"
1:30PM-3:30PM
(5254) The Black Experience of the Middle East & North Africa: Colonialism, Healing, Literature, and Islam
Discussant: Zavier Wingham, NYU
(5367) Medicine, Life and Death
featuring: Tara Stephan, NYU - "Gender and Class in the Space of the Medieval Cairene Cemetery"
4:00PM-6:00PM
(5150) Modernization, Nation Building, and Indigeneity in Iraq and the Gulf, 1935-1991
featuring: Alex Boodrookas, NYU - "Credit Lines and Color Lines: The Reorientation of Banking Networks in the Persian Gulf, 1940-1965" and Matthew MacLean, NYU - "Property, Indigeneity, and Development in the Northern United Arab Emirates, 1950-1985"
(5302) Contemporary Arab and Persian Art
featuring: Maya Kesrouany, NYU Abu Dhabi - "The Power to Disengage: Revisiting Commitment in Contemporary Arab Art"
Saturday, November 17
8:30AM-10:30AM
(5108) Minstrelsy, Drag, Camp: Costuming and Performing New Identities in Persianate Eurasia, 1800-1940
featuring: Rustin Zarkar, NYU - "Russian Dervishes and Red Minarets: Cultural Performance in the Soviet Gilan Republic"
(5151) Global Resource, Regional Development: Oil and Modernization in the 20th Century Middle East
Discussant: Nelida Fuccaro, NYU Abu Dhabi
(5307) Unorthodoxies Shi’ism, Sufism, Feminism
Chair: Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer, NYU
(5346) Space & Place in Turkey
featuring: Miray Cakiroglu, NYU alumni - "The Uses of Ancestors: Mobilizing the Tomb of Suleyman Shah"
11:00AM-1:00PM
(5161) Palestine, Latin America and the Caribbean: Encounters, Crossings, Parallels, Part I
featuring: Nadim Bawalsa, NYU - "Palestine West of the Andes: A History of the Formation of a Jaaliya"
(5236) The Politics of Art and Culture in the Gulf and Beyond
featuring: Dale Hudson, NYU Abu Dhabi - "Reorienting through Rebranding: Hollywood Film Production in the UAE as Post-oil Investment and Soft Power"
(5331) Early Women’s Voices
Chair: Tara Stephan, NYU
3:00PM-5:00PM
(5118) Challenges Facing Yemen’s Millennia-Long Cultural Heritage
Roundtable featuring: Nathalie Peutz, NYU Abu Dhabi
(5241) Memory and Mediation in Lebanon: Commodifying and Consuming Images of the Past
featuring: Jared McCormick, NYU - "Historical Views of Tourism in Lebanon: From Metadata to Interface, ‘A View from the View’"
(5323) Eurasian Encounters: Reconciliations and Circulations
Chair: Hazem Jamjoum, NYU
(5342) Pedagogy in Middle East Studies
featuring: Ozen Guven, NYU - "Fear, Mistrust, and Resentment in Resistance and Silence among Exiled Syrian Teachers in Turkey"
(5362) Topics in Arabic Language
featuring: Olga Verlato, NYU - "The Polyglot Mask: Multilingual Practices and Discourses in the Egyptian 1890s" and Allison Korinek, NYU - "Tongue Tied: The Transnational Roots of French Algeria’s Interprétariat, 1830-1848"
5:30PM-7:30PM
(5289) Issues in Israel’s Foreign Policy
featuring: Geoffrey Levin, NYU - "Zionism’s Wayward Son: Don Peretz and the Palestinians"
Sunday, November 18
8:30AM-10:30AM
(5106) Sound, Time, and Space in the Middle East and North Africa
featuring: Ian VanderMeulen, NYU - "Mapping the “Warsh Zone”: Networks of Tajwid Practice in the Precolonial Maghreb" and Hazem Jamjoum, NYU - "When the Music Became ‘Arab’: The Culture-Commodity and the Production of National Space"
(5181) Whither Iranian Politics? Protests, Factionalism, and Uneven Development
featuring: Arang Keshavarzian, NYU - "Crises of Representation: The Moral Economy of Iranian Social/Public Protests" and Mehdi Faraji, NYU - "Protests in Qom: Long Standing Grievances against Contradictory Governmental Policies"
11AM-1:00PM
(5153) The Spanish Civil War and the MENA
Roundtable featuring: Arash Azizi, NYU
(5176) 19th Century Modernity in a Comparative Context: Arab Nahda and Chinese Fuxing
featuring: Shuang Wen, NYU Abu Dhabi - "The Suez Canal and the Qing Railways: Translating Trans-Asian Experiences of Foreign Debts in the 19th and 20th Centuries"
(5252) The Production of Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Lebanese Civil War Culture
Discussant: Ziad Dallal, NYU
(5368) Late Ottoman Political Economy and Urban Reform
featuring: Aviv Derri, NYU - "Ottoman Non-Muslim Elites and the Political Economy of Debt and Credit in the Damascus Hinterland, 1840s-1890s"
1:30PM-3:30PM
(5083) Competing Visions of Development in the Era of Decolonization
featuring: Sara Pursley, NYU - "Producing Family Farmers"
For further details please view the full program here.
