Marking the sixteenth-anniversary of the the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this event will reflect on the environmental, political, cultural, and social consequences of the 2003 war, as well as visions for Iraq’s future, and will center discussions around the implications, possibilities, and new directions in the study of modern Iraq. Through the panels and keynote address, this event will highlight the legacies of consecutive years of war, violence, and trauma. However, this event intends to move past fatalistic narratives of trauma and violence by highlighting how Iraqis continue to narrate their own histories and represent their identities through artistic, literary, and cultural production, protest against violence, and continue to shape their own future. 

Moreover, as Iraq continues to receive scholarly interest by historians, political scientists, artists, and anthropologists alike, and while recent controversies surrounding archives highlight the various ethical questions surrounding research on Iraq, this event invites scholars and students to reflect on both the hardships and the possibilities in conducting research on/in Iraq. In particular, and especially in the graduate workshop, we would like to ask questions about what is at stake with projects on Iraq; what constitutes an archive and what are the ethical implications of using particular archives; what types of histories do Iraqis want told; and finally, how do we address the recurrent problems and cliches within studies on Iraq.

Conference Schedule:

3/28

6pm Panel: "Creation after Destruction: Iraq & theIraq Diaspora's Art, Literature, and Cultural Production after 2003". 

3/29

9am: CLOSED Graduate Workshop

1:00pm Panel: "2003 and its Afterlives: Reflections on Iraq after the War"

6pm Keynote: Omar Mohammed

PANEL 1:

3/28 CREATION AFTER DESTRUCTION: IRAQ & THE IRAQ DIASPORA'S ART, LITERATURE, & CULTURAL PRODUCTION

This panel will focus on the art and culture that has emerged since the invasion of Iraq 2003. The discussion will engage with artists and their narratives, how Iraqis reflect and present their own histories and identities through their artistic or literary mediums.  Questions of how the war has, or even has not, manifested in their creative works. This event will also include an exhibition that provides a visual component that showcases a different method of re-telling the violence and trauma of the Iraq war. 

Moderator:

Shohat has also served on the editorial board of several journals, including: Social Text; Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies; Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. She is a recipient of such fellowships as Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Lectureship / Research, and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, where she also taught at The School of Criticism and Theory.

Discussants:

Her most recent work is a self authored illustrated book titled “Shams” about trauma, transformation and healing. Complimenting her studio practice, Abdul Hadi curates exhibitions as artist-curator. Most recently, she independently curated “Take Care of Your Self”, an exhibition and series of events about self-care and struggle, featuring 27 artists of diverse communities. She is the co-founder of The Medium, a global multidisciplinary artist collective. Her work has been exhibited in Palestine, UAE, Canada, USA, France, UK and Saudi Arabia. She has given workshops in Australia, Iraq and Kuwait, and has been a speaker at Nuqat, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, Telfair Museum, and multiple universities in Canada and the US. Abdul Hadi is a two time recipient of the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec (CALQ) Vivacite grant, and received the Makers Muse award from Kindle Project (2018). Her work is part of the Barjeel Art Foundation collection. Abdul Hadi also hosts "The Groundbreakers", a weekly radio show about art and culture on CKUT 90.3 fm in Montreal.

For his 2010-2011 project, 3rdi, Bilal had a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head to spontaneously transmit images to the web 24 hours a day – a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind. Bilal’s 2010 work, and Counting…, similarly used his own body as a medium. His back was tattooed with a map of Iraq and dots representing Iraqi and US casualties – the Iraqis in invisible ink seen only under a blacklight.

Dena is currently working on an in-progress book manuscript tentatively titled: The Architecture of War: The U.S. Invasion of Iraq and its Cultural Engineering Project. She is a recipient of the American Association of University Women Fellowship and has been a resident artist at Light Work and Mana Contemporary in New York.

Her work appears in a diversity of publications including:  Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics,  We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War, Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures,  Light Work, among others. As a practicing artist Dena crates performative, relational works, dedicated to participatory art socially engaged projects, and collaborative engagements. Her work has been exhibited internationally, at such places as Mana Contemporary, Light Work Gallery, Museum of Tunisia, OFF Biennale Cairo, Worth Ryder Gallery, Arab American National Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, Falaki Gallery, Mashrabia Gallery, and Bastakiya Art Fair,  among others.

Panel 2

3/29: 2003 and its Afterlives: Reflections on Iraq after the war

This panel will primarily reflect on the aftermath of the Iraq war encompassing the urban, environmental, political, and social implications of the war. Moreover, this panel will emphasize local, grass root reactions, organizing against, and activities following the war. The panel hopes to raise the following questions: how does the war/and its impact fall within a larger history of empire? What has the war meant for ordinary Iraqis? How do Iraqis deal with/organize against these ramifications? How has media characterized the conditions following up to and after the war? Where is Iraq now in context of the region? What were the most recent recurring protests in Basra and in Baghdad about? 

Moderators:

She has explored questions related to economic development and modernization theory, histories of psychology and pedagogy, gender and sexuality, childhood and youth, revolution and decolonization, Islamic and secular family law, land settlement projects, and the transition from British to American empire. 

Discussants:

His essays and creative writings in Arabic have appeared in major journals and publications in the Arab world and on Aljazeera.net and in The New York Times, The Nation, Middle East Report, Journal of Palestine Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, The Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, and Washington Square Journal.

His book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (SUP 2017), is the first study documenting the untold story of the rise of state medicine in Iraq under colonial and post-colonial regimes of rule and the unmaking of state infrastructure under decades of US interventions in the country. He is currently working on an ethnographic project that examines the ecologies of wounds and wounding. The research chronicles the biosocial life of war wounds, the rise of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria, and the reconfigurations of healthcare and humanitarian mobilities across East of the Mediterranean states. He is the author of numerous publications that have appeared in a number of medical, anthropological, and global health journals, including the Lancet. He is a long-term advisor to organizations, such as MSF and ICRC on the medical and humanitarian crisis in the region, and currently serves as a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Syria: Health in Conflict.

His research interests focus on the environment, energy, and the history of science and technology. He is the author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Harvard University Press, 2010), Running Dry: Essays on Energy, Water and Environmental Crisis (Rutgers University Press, 2015), and is currently working America's Oil Wars (under contract at Harvard University Press). He has written for the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of American History, Middle East Report, Raritan Quarterly Review, The Nation, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, and elsewhere. In 2015 Jones was recognized as a Rutgers Chancellor’s Scholar for distinguished scholarship.

3/29: WORKSHOP (Closed, only for Graduate Students)

This Workshop is co-lead with Sara Pursley and Zainab Saleh

As we approach the sixteenth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, it is important to reflect on scholarly production in and about Iraq, and in particular, to reflect on both obstacles to and possibilities in the study of modern Iraq. Of course, it is understandable why some foreign scholars hesitated in focusing their research on Iraq; successive years of war made it nearly impossible for foreign researchers to conduct ethnographic or archival work in Iraq. All the while, looted artifacts, archival material, and cultural property are currently housed in museums, libraries, and universities abroad, raising questions about ethical archival and research practices. Yet renewed scholarly focus and energies, as well as the prospects for research within Iraq marks a new – and indeed hopeful – chapter in Iraq studies. Therefore, this workshop aims to bring graduate students, faculty, and researchers of Iraq together to discuss new developments in Iraq studies.

This workshop invites contributions of brief presentations and papers (500-1000 words) from graduate students presently conducting research on Iraq related to challenges, possibilities, and ethics surrounding research on Iraq. Throughout this workshop we hope to raise the following questions: what are the possibilities of conducting fieldwork and/or archival work in Iraq? What are the ethical implications and limitations of using particular archives? What is politically at stake with the participant’s projects? How can we understand histories of trauma and violence without reproducing Iraq’s history as a history of trauma and violence?

She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, Diasporic Homes: Exile, Empire, and Iraqi Subjectivity. The book focuses on how Iraqi exiles in London live with the realization that they are not exiles waiting to return home anymore, but rather Iraqis in the United Kingdom, a place that is no longer a temporary sojourn in a journey back home, but rather, home itself. It draws from individual accounts, and it focuses on lived realities of Iraqis who experienced decades of military conflict, an autocratic security state, and years of imperial occupation.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

His focus has now shifted to advocacy of social initiatives for the people of Mosul including the international effort to re-supply Central Library of the University of Mosul. At the intersection of media, academia and civil society, Omar is motivated to develop new networks of collaboration and innovations in humanitarian action. As a historian and lecturer at the University of Mosul, he focuses his scholarly work on conceptual history and research dealing with local historiographies and narratives, micro histories and Orientalism. Omar is a regular media commentator on Iraq, has an MA in Middle East History from the University of Mosul, and was named 2013 Researcher of the Year by Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. His doctoral research explores history and historians in 19th and 20th century Mosul. He now lives in exile in Europe.

Co-Sponsors:

Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of History NYU, Department of Anthropology NYU