Hagop Kevorkian Center Review 2011/2012
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HAGOP KEVORKIAN CENTER 1 REVIEW 2011/2012 The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU is a Title VI National Resource Cen- ter (NRC) for modern Middle Eastern Studies as named by the United States Department of Education. NRC support is essential to the Center’s graduate program (area and language studies) and bolsters outreach programs to the NYU academic community, local educators, media and culture workers as well as the general public. Title VI funding, through its Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fel- lowships, also enables important opportunities for NYU graduate students to intensively study the lan- guages of the Middle East and South Asia (including Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Persian, Turkish and Urdu). 2 STAFF Director Michael Gilsenan Interim Director Zvi Ben-Dor Benite Associate Director Greta Scharnweber Director of Graduate Studies Nadia Guessous 2011-2012 Program Coordinator Arthur Starr Administrative Aide Lauren Marten Hagop Kevorkian Center New York University 50 Washington Square South, 4th Floor New York, NY 10012 http://neareaststudies.as.nyu.edu Editors Greta Scharnweber, Khelil Bouarrouj, Fatima Malik Copy Editor Lauren Marten Layout and Design Melissa Runstrom Cover Design The Goggles (Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons) Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. 3 Contents Reflections and Acknowledgements 5 Reflections on the Uprisings Area Code for the Heart 6 Not the State, But a Way of Life 8 A Shift in Balance 10 Media A Life Unfinished: Anthony Shadid 12 Research Visceral Politics and Sartorial Rifts 14 From the Margins of Middle East Studies 17 Illegal Oil Trade in Eastern Turkey 18 Visual Culture A ‘Bridge’ to Iran? 20 New Books Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party 22 Towards a New Image of Hamas 23 K-16 Outreach Meeting Places: Friends in Ramallah 25 People Power: Revolts in the Arab World 28 Collaborations The Program in Ottoman Studies 30 Suddenly Something Recklessly Gay 30 Experiences All the News that’s Fit to Click 31 Notes from the Field 31 Students In Fond Memory of Falak Sufi 32 MA Student News 34 PhD Student News 36 Faculty News 38 Events Archive 43 4 Reflections and Acknowledgements The passing year was exciting for the center in many ways. We as our first Clinical Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies. Chal- began with financial uncertainties but have managed to weather a land received his PhD from the European University Institute, and storm of cuts to our federal National Resource Center (NRC) grant. has taught and completed research at universities across Europe. The generous support of NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sci- His mixed background in political sociology and history informs his ences ensured that we were able not only to maintain our various work on Arab civil society, questions of aid and development and first-rate programs, but have also renewed and increased our efforts religion and modernity. Challand’s and and Mikdashi’s expertise will through newly hired faculty and a conscious expansion to include add considerably to our curriculum and to our intellectual commu- more content related to Central Asia and the Indian Ocean regions. nity. We welcome them both. As the content of this HK Review demonstrates, events in the Middle The Center staff deserves recognition for the hard work that they do East continue to demand our attention, and we have vacillated be- to keep things running smoothly. Arthur Starr, in his first year in the tween admiration and despair as we watched unprecedented politi- Program Coordinator position, has managed to hit the ground run- cal changes unfold in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria and ning and will help us shepherd in our largest incoming MA class yet. beyond. Indeed, many of our students, alumni, and faculty have con- Lauren Marten’s invaluable assistance with virtually all of the Center tributed to the discourse and analyses of the uprisings across the operations has been carried out with great attention to detail, a will- region. Our robust academic events program dedicates a special ing spirit, and a sense of humor. Our graduate student assistants series to reflecting on the uprisings, and we will continue to provide continue to be an indispensable part of the Kevorkian team—and a forum through which our students and faculty may provide deeper this year we bid farewell to Rafat Azad, Gozde Guran, Rebecca Kele- context to these exciting, if all too often tragic, moments. her, Lila Nazemian, and Sean O’Neill. Now, as ever, a deep understanding of the languages, cultures, and We should take a moment to recognize the departure of Peter Magier- histories of the modern Middle East remains crucial to our collective ski from NYU Libraries as he makes the move to Columbia University interests. Working closely with the departments of Middle Eastern over the summer. He helped build a number of exciting resources and Islamic Studies and Hebrew and Judaic Studies, we support a at the Middle East Collection at Bobst, including but not limited to robust language training program in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Persian, the Afghan Digital Library and the more recently acquired Jack G. Turkish, and Urdu. Despite the atmosphere of continued cutbacks at Shaheen archive on stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in US media the US Department of Education, we have been fortunate to continue and culture. This latter collection holds nearly 3,000 moving images granting Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) scholarships including motion pictures, cartoons, newsreels, and television pro- to students at the BA, MA and PhD levels to study these and other grams, as well as editorial cartoons, advertisements, books, maga- languages to advanced levels. zines, comic books, toys, and games, the Jack G. Shaheen Archive reveals U.S. representations of Arabs from the early-20th century to This year we graduated our largest ever class of students from our the present. The archive is a major focus for the Center’s fundraising MA program in Near Eastern Studies—29 received their degrees. We and outreach efforts in the coming months and years. We are proud wish them the best as they venture out into the world, and we plan to to have launched a travelling exhibition culled from the archive called welcome yet another large class this Fall. We unfortunately must say “A is for Arab” with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute this past Feb- goodbye to the inimitable Nadia Guessous, who has accepted a po- ruary. The exhibit will make a prominent appearance at this year’s sition in at Rutgers University in Women and Gender Studies. Nadia’s annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), and contributions to our graduate program have been insightful, and her NYU distinguished scholar Jack Shaheen will speak at a variety of attention to the well-being of our students is deeply appreciated. We events inspired the exhibit and by his work. We hope you will join us wish her well in her next exciting step and look forward to future col- in celebrating and supporting this amazing collection. laborations. Maya Mikdashi, just finishing her PhD in Anthropology at Columbia University will take on the Director of Graduate Stud- Last but not least, we welcome back the Center’s director, Michael ies role beginning Fall 2012. A legal anthropologist, Mikdashi’s work Gilsenan, from a fruitful research leave. He will see us through yet navigates the intersections and impasses between law and citizen- another dynamic year of programming and academic achievement. ship in Lebanon through an investigation of personal status laws. We also are fortunate to be adding a new faculty position in the Center. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Interim Director Benoit Challand, a political sociologist, joins the Center in September Greta Scharnweber, Associate Director 5 Area Code for the Heart by Ahmad Diab, PhD Candidate MEIS This article, originally in Arabic and published in Jadaliyya, was abridged and translated by the author. was a stupid idea. I woke up after a short sporadic actly as she ridicules our cowardly silence. We will laugh. It sleep and decided that the smell of shaving cream We will laugh a lot on our free tomorrow. We will laugh at all might lessen the bitterness of yesterday’s news. the times we laughed at this tiny joke of a Homs. How stupid! I was trembling in fear of what the process Today, however, we cry. We cry for how the killed will res- would entail: looking abject helplessness straight in the cue the killed––for a while. We cry for how the displaced face. will shelter the displaced––for a while. We cry for how we all abandoned you, Homs. My internationalist friend tells There, where the heart is, blood and limbs are everywhere. me “40,000 leftist foreigners went to Spain to fight fascism Their images flow out of my slick laptop screen into my in the 1930s. Today we can’t even acknowledge another nightmares. I stand before the mirror but see no one. “Al- Guernica happening even when it’s being broadcast live, right, trace the contour of your chin and shave quickly,” I in full color, 24/7.” I think of all of those who fought for Pal- thought. I rub in the cream and start with a stroke of the estine the day we lost it…of the benches of first love… blade. I cut myself, and blood flows warm and steady…. of “Al-Farabi”…the high school the regime of death has I look at the mirror again and I see half a bloody face with turned into a checkpoint for its sniper fire. My high school. the jaw blown off, bits of mouth and chin dangling below On my Facebook page, I make out the most recent names the collarbone.