HAGOP KEVORKIAN CENTER REVIEW 20 13 /20 14

1 1 STAFF Director Michael Gilsenan Associate Director Greta Scharnweber Clinical Assistant Professor Benoit Challand Director of Graduate Studies Maya Mikdashi Program Coordinator Arthur Starr 2013-2014 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, Brooke Fisher The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU is a Title VI National Resource Center Copy Editor Lauren Marten (NRC) for modern Middle Eastern Studies as named by the United States Department of Education. NRC Layout and Design Melissa Runstrom 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 Cover Design The Goggles (Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons) general public. Title VI funding, through its Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, also enables important opportunities for NYU graduate students to intensively study the languages of the Middle Copyright 2014. All rights reserved. East and South Asia (including Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Persian, Turkish and Urdu).

2 3 Contents Letter from the Director 5 Letter from the Director Reflections p Faculty Roundtable: Reflections on Today’s Middle East 6 Research p Political Economy in Middle East Studies: Legacies of the Past, Agendas for the Future 11 New Directions for the Study of Gender and Sexuality 12

New Books In Europe, as I write (August 16th), commemorations of the centenary of the First World War have ended. Commentaries, television programs, Spaces of Negotiation, Desire, and the State: A Review of Professing Selves 14 dramas, readings of poetry, diaries, novels and essays, concerts, films and photographs continue. Yet more books are published. W. B. Yeats’ Driving Politics: A Review of Joyriding in Riyadh 15 famous poem of 1919, “The Second Coming,” is often quoted: “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.”

Visual Culture In a kind of macabre counterpoint to these commemorations, themselves punctuated by the violence and potential of confrontation in the Apples of the Golan: Nationalisms, Banalities, and Contradictions under Occupation 16 Ukraine, events throughout the Middle East, in Iraq, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank demand even more urgent attention from us, however help- Marmoulak: The Taming of Political Satire in Iran 18 Why does Televizyon become Vizontele? Kurds and Orientalism from Within 19 less and hopeless we students may so often feel. Gaza is yet again the theatre of vicious destruction and promiscuous killing. “Israeli security” is given a quasi-sacred status. “Palestinian security” seldom seems the equal and necessary term in any serious engagement with the conflicts. Archives Tired, shop-soiled and hollowed-out righteous denunciations, beyond parody and without shame, still threaten to drown out voices calling for Index of the Disappeared: An Archive of Dissent 20 stern and unsparing re-examination of histories, conflicts, ideologies, narratives and interests.

Collaborations In the Middle East, the passionate intensity that fills the worst is currently as fearful as the lack of conviction of the best. We, students of the Iranian Studies Initiative 2013-2014 22 region, have little if any effect. It is tempting to see our small and scattered efforts, personal and institutional, to pose questions, challenge as- Ottoman Studies Lecture Series, Spring 2014 22 sumptions, struggle to find some understandings, however unstable and weak, as doomed to failure and irrelevance. When swamped by such Alumni News feelings, I recall how, over a quarter of a century ago, I told Lebanese friends who had survived the brutalities of war and were either in exile, Spotlight on Anjali Kamat 23 silenced, or underground, that there was no point continuing to try to write the study of violence on which I had been unsuccessfully working In Recognition of Matthieu Aikins 23 (or avoiding) for so long. The Lebanese wars were too overwhelming in their brutalities, the scale of suffering too terrible, the futility of this tiny Wounds of Waziristan: What it Means to be Haunted by Loss 24 academic project too evident, the pointlessness too clear. There was no possible benefit or interest for anyone. Just abandon writing, which in so many ways I desperately wanted to do. Experiences Resisting Testimony 26 My friends would have none of this self-abnegation and retreat from responsibility. I had to write as if it mattered. We lost, just for now or for an Learning Turkish During a Revolution 27 age, and that makes it even more important that you write. “As if” might be all there was and is, but it is sufficient, it has its own imperative. Write.

Student News So a small institute such as the Kevorkian Center must be supported; student numbers must be brought to the optimum level; outreach and The Falak Sufi Memorial Essay Prize and Scholarship 28 events of all kinds must be constantly developed; the office must have new resources; there must be a new post of Clinical Professor and the MA Student News 30 university must support students to the limit, and encourage the faculty who teach and mentor them. They will make their own judgments about PhD Student News 32 their responsibilities and their capabilities. We all go on as if we can, regardless of the apparently insignificant contribution to public understand- Teacher Training ing and awareness. What heartens me and so many of my colleagues is the commitment, intensity and determination of students, administrators A Journey on the Great Silk Road: A Study Tour of Uzbekistan 34 and teachers to fulfill our shared responsibility. It has been a privilege to be director of the Kevorkian for the past eight years and to work with such dedicated colleagues. I thank all those who have contributed to the program’s remarkable strength. Faculty News 36 Events Archive 39 —Michael Gilsenan, Director The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

4 5 Arang Faculty Roundtable Keshavarzian

Associate t is a testament to the institutional powers of the office of Reflections on Today’s Middle East Professor of Ipresident in Iran that it has become increasingly common that pundits and media sources offer reviews of Iranian pres- Middle Eastern Helga hatever I may have wished to write about vis-à-vis them in current geopolitical trends, to frame them within a idents’ “first 100 days in office” or appraise their ability to ful- events in Israel-Palestine over the past year have historical understanding, to relate them to events elsewhere. and Islamic fill their campaign promises. These reflections appear in the Tawil-Souri W been superseded by the latest violence waged over Gaza. This time however, I am unable to do any of these. Studies, Iranian press as well as US sources and reflect a growing And about Gaza, there is so much I could choose to write Director of understanding among many that Iranian politics cannot be Incoming Director about: military disproportionality, international law, human Two hundred pages of text, and counting, the words on my reduced to the will of the Leader. The polity is not democratic and humane stories from within the Gaza Strip, an anal- screen are nothing more than rants and ramblings. I begin Undergraduate and executive power is not consolidated in the cabinet, but of the Kevorkian ysis of the underlying issues at the heart of this conflict, with an explanation of “the politics of spectacle” in order to Studies neither is the Leader able to impose his preferences com- Center, Associate an account of day-to-day events, a solution to politicians analyze the IDF’s Twitter feeds. I barely finish with that thread prehensively or without cost. that would probably fall on deaf ears, a critique of the IDF’s and I found I have moved on to explaining the difference Professor social media strategy, a dissection of the news coverage. I in detached legalese between “war crimes” and “crimes of With the electoral victory of Hassan Rouhani, most apprais- Image Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of Media, have tried to write about each and every one of these sub- war.” Before I know it, I’ve switched gears again and am se- als of his term in office have focused on his ability to address Hassan Rouhani Supporters in 2013 Election. jects. I confess I have been averaging 5,000 words a day mantically dissecting the term “target” in English, in Arabic, foreign policy matters, specifically the ongoing negotiations Culture, and since the bombing campaigns began. Ten days into it, by in Hebrew. I move on – I don’t know how – to assessing the over Iran’s nuclear program and the attendant sanctions im- validating state violence. It is still early to judge if Rouhani’s Communication pure numbers alone, I have written a book. reporting coming from Israel/Palestine, and in the process, posed by the US government, European Union, and Unit- “government of prudence and hope” will accomplish these find myself writing a letter to the New York Times. Ikeep ed Nations. There are clear reasons for this. During both objectives. To date it has only mustered a ground break- I have written about Gaza before. I have been in Gaza while banging on the keyboard: I seem to be going on about how his campaign and at the outset of his presidency, Rouhani ing, yet limited, step when in November 2013 Iran, the US drones fly and bombs drop overhead. I have watched the legitimizing armed conflict entails representational “work” emphasized that his primary goal is to resolve the interna- and other powers agreed to an interim deal including some last two Israeli military offenses – in 2008-09 and 2012 – and and how the US fans of Homeland owe it to the original Israeli tional conflict surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. Not only limited sanctions relief. Neither economic performance, nor was able to detach myself long enough to be able to write show, Khatufim, on which the American show is based. My does he reasonably claim that this is the biggest threat to protection of civil rights and social needs have benefitted something of substance, something I could call “academic” rant moves towards the anger of what I claim is a surrender the survival of the regime, but he sees it as integral to ad- significantly from the change in executive. or even “journalistic.” I have learned over the years to di- of political agency by reducing citizens to mere spectators. dressing the well-being of citizens. With this move he has vorce my emotional responses to events on the ground from And there are entire pages about the destruction of infra- (at least tentatively) bridged the gulf between regime elites Ultimately, Rouhani will have to satisfy the conflicting de- my ability to critically assess those events, to contextualize structure in Gaza right now and US bombings of roadways and ordinary Iranians. Meanwhile, Rouhani and his advisors mands of the US government (including a hostile Con- and telecommunications in Iraq, NATO bombing see ending the international crisis as essential for economic gress), Khamenei, various competing Iranian political fac- Image courtesy of Serbian broadcasting capabilities. I am trying development. The broad sanctions imposed on Iran during tions, and the myriad demands of citizens, many of whom of Wikimedia Commons to make parallels between Israel’s “buffer zone” in Ahmadinejad’s tenure combined with mismanagement and voted him into office last summer. This is a critical, yet Southern Lebanon and the flattening and evacuat- structural factors to undermine Iran’s economic performance overlooked point in many of the evaluations of Rouhani’s The water supply in ing of parts of Northern Gaza. measured in terms of economic growth, social welfare, rate presidency and posture. While his negotiation team is in the West Bank and Gaza. of inflation, levels of unemployment, or the number of high Vienna sitting across the table from the P5+1 (permanent To say that my words are all over the place is only profile corruption cases. The massive windfall of oil revenue members of the UN Security Council plus Germany), his half accurate. There is no seeming coherence to during Ahmadinejad’s presidency (approximating half a cabinet and allies in civil society and the electorate face this “book” that I have somehow written, but there trillion dollars), helped dampen some economic grievanc- criticisms and demands in Iran. Yes, some of these chal- is an underlying logic. All of these issues are con- es, but Rouhani’s team correctly views sanctions relief as lenges aim to prevent and circumscribe détente with the nected. All of these resurface when the kinetic vi- pivotal to addressing problems including attracting foreign US, but other social groups seek to translate international olence reaches the levels it did in early July. All of investment and importing critical medicines and inputs for windfall into specific domestic transformations. If in his these have a pressing need to be written about, industrial production. Those in Rouhani’s camp that see his first year in office Rouhani has capitalized on the good will published, shared when violence reaches these presidency as a vehicle for improving political freedom un- of not being Ahmadinejad, moving forward he will have to heights. What is most difficult however is to place derstand that the threats of war and climate of international demonstrate that he can forge a coalition that transcends aside the feeling of being overwhelmed, even only crisis spawned by the nuclear deadlock have enabled Ah- his jet-setting diplomats, incorporates allies and counter- for a minute, in order to thread these arguments into madinejad and other conservative forces to generate a se- acts obstacles. Unlike his election victory there is no mag- something I can share. For now, then, it is easier to curitized social climate impinging on citizenship rights and ic 51% threshold to secure success. keep banging on my keyboard and stay silent.

6 Reflections Reflections 7 urkey had yet another shot in the head (with a gas in the Turkish bureaucracy. use of authority for political t would not be unreasonable to con- ing behind the scenes to prepare a coup bulk of the media has done its part by ASLı Zachary eventful year. The af- canister) by the police during Reportedly Gülenist law en- gain and power. The latter clude that the events of the year since months before it actually happened. The hailing al-Sisi as the savior of Egypt and T I IĞSıZ termath of the Gezi Park the Gezi Park protests. Elvan forcement and the judiciary is certainly true for the law Lockman the military coup of July 3, 2013 that massive surge of popular protest on June viciously denouncing anyone who dares protests, government en- was not a protester; he was tried to corner Erdoğan by enforcement and judiciary removed President Muhammad Mursi 30 and President Mursi’s adamant refusal criticize the new order. In May 2014 al-Sisi Assistant croachment on public spac- shot while buying bread. opening court cases of cor- who contributed to butch- from power in Egypt have made it much to compromise gave them the pretext and was anointed president, supposedly win- es, rising authoritarianism, There are several similar in- ruption and leaking illegally ering of the existing laws Professor less likely that the aspirations that fueled cover they needed to overthrow Mursi and ning 97% of the vote – though to achieve a Professor of the corruption scandal, the stances and in each case, wiretapped phone conversa- and the establishment of an the popular uprising that toppled Husni seize power. credible turnout the authorities had to hur- of Middle Middle Eastern illegal wiretappings and law enforcement have had tions of Erdoğan and his cir- intelligence-operated sur- Mubarak in February 2011 – for democ- riedly declare the second day of voting a and Islamic surveillance scandal, the impunity: the surveillance cle. In fact, both the content veillance state. Eastern racy, social justice and dignity – will be Most secularist, liberal and/or leftist op- public holiday and then arbitrarily extend power struggle between the cameras in areas where the and the form of these leaked realized any time soon. But perhaps we ponents of the Muslim Brothers initial- the voting into a third day. Studies and Islamic Gülen movement and Prime police abused power or shot wiretapped conversations It is very clear justice is not should take the long-term view and hold ly welcomed the coup, a stance some Minister Erdoğan, the elec- civilians with gas canisters or reveal corruption and civilian indexed to law in Turkey. Yet, Studies on to at least a smidgin of optimism: his- of them have since come to regret. Six So it would seem that though Husni tions, random murders of bullets are always reported authoritarianism. The content how does one claim citizen- torical change does not proceed in a weeks after seizing power the new regime Mubarak was toppled in February 2011, and History Alevis by law enforcement, dysfunctional and the trials suggests PM Erdoğan and ship rights and justice in such straight line, and it is not clear that all the dominated by General al-Sisi proved it- the state he presided over has reasserted and the Soma mine trage- of murdered citizens (i.e., his close circle and family an environment? The picture gains of the “January 25th Revolution” self capable of a degree of brutality that itself with a vengeance, cloaking itself in dy are a few of the issues Alevis) are taken to different are part of hidden business looks obscure but there is have been irretrievably lost. even Husni Mubarak never dared display, the mantle of both the January 25th upris- that marked this year. At the cities or divided into several enterprises. This might be also hope. For the first time in ing and the June 30th protests intersections of all these is- portions, making it very hard true but offers only part of the the history of Turkish democ- The July 3rd coup was preced- to justify its seizure of power and sues, law has continued to for the family members and picture: illegal wiretapping racy, there has been turmoil ed by a massive mobilization, its suppression of all opposition. be a tool of power. supporters to follow the trials. of phone conversations is but there still has not been a spearheaded by the Tamarrud Yet the long-term stability of al-Si- yet another sign of a surveil- military coup. In the mean- (“Rebellion”) movement, that si’s regime cannot be taken for Law enforcement has con- The impunity of actual crimes lance regime. Over the last time, despite the atmosphere culminated on June 30, 2013 in granted. The Muslim Brothers tinued to brutally suppress committed by bureaucrats few years, this has become a of oppression, there are ef- huge demonstrations demand- as a movement has deep roots signature move of the law en- forts for organization. The Left ing early presidential elections. in Egyptian society, and the drive forcement in anti-terror and is being reformulated among The popular energy behind to eradicate it may prove a costly intelligence units that bend small, but growing circles. Tamarrud was no doubt authen- and divisive fantasy that gener- the law to include every al- Some Muslim groups such tic; there were certainly a great ates growing counter-violence; most activity under the label as the Anti-capitalist Muslims many reasons for Egyptians to the nasty counter-insurgency of terrorism. These acts are are uncomfortable with the want an early end to the Mus- campaign that the army is al- associated with the Gülen present political landscape lim Brothers-controlled govern- ready waging in the Sinai seems movement. and are also organizing. In ment. Mursi and his movement more likely to alienate people the judiciary, Democratic had refused to form a broad there than to win them over. Looking at the general Justice, a small but active coalition to defend and extend Moreover, from all indications picture, we can say that group of judges and pros- the gains of the revolution and Image courtesy of Voice of America and WikiCommons; taken by S. Behn al-Sisi plans to implement the instead of investigating po- ecutors, have made it their instead sought to govern, and Morsi’s ouster celebrations Tahrir. same neoliberal economic poli- tential administrative and mission to explain the current impose their will, from their own cies that Mubarak did, and in the criminal charges, the con- judicial problems in Turkey, limited popular base. In the process they including the massacre of a thousand long run this is likely to exacerbate poverty cept of crime, stripped from and the damages Gülenists, alienated a great many Egyptians who had largely peaceful pro-Mursi demonstrators and inequality, and generate new rounds its legal framework, has Kemalists, and AKP officials initially given Mursi the benefit of the doubt in the streets of Cairo. It then launched a of protest. Finally, millions of Egyptians been utilized discursively have done to the legal sys- but now turned against him. But there are full-scale campaign not merely to weak- were politicized by the dramatic events Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons as a political tool over the tem. In short, in the absence also indications that the security apparatus en the Muslim Brothers but to eradicate of 2011-2013. Many of them now support Demonstration in Turkey over the killing of Berkin Elvan. last years, however the AKP of military intervention, some – a central element of the “deep state” that it altogether from the Egyptian political al-Sisi because he promises stability and is not the only responsible citizens are taking their own was hardly touched, much less reformed, and social scene, in the name of “fighting order; but in the longer term, having ex- protesters throughout the (both civilian and military) party. Corruption, there- initiative to organize and ad- after Mubarak fell – intervened to support, terrorism.” Under that rubric it has also perienced the power that ordinary people year. Protesters, however, and law enforcement is noth- fore, should not be just con- dress the issues at hand. and perhaps manipulate, the Tamarrud unleashed an unprecedented wave of can collectively exert when they refuse to were not the only targets. Riot ing new in Turkey. A war that sidered for cases of abuse While what will come out of campaign; and it is very clear that Mursi’s repression, detaining, torturing and im- accept an oppressive status quo and take police also attacked mourn- erupted between the Gülen of power for economic all this is still unclear, there is Defense Minister General Abd al-Fattah prisoning activists, journalists and anyone to the streets, they may well make their ing crowds marching after movement and Prime Minis- gain (as Erdoğan and his hope as a growing crowd is al-Sisi and his co-conspirators began work- else who fails to fall into line. The great voices heard once again. the funeral of Berkin Elvan, ter Erdoğan has crystallized circle are often accused), questioning what “democra- a fifteen-year-old Alevi boy the scale of corruption with- but also for the fraudulent cy” means in Turkey.

8 Reflections Reflections 9 Maya here is a popular view that all Political Economy in Middle East Studies Tthat is happening in Lebanon to- Mikdashi day—from inflation to bombings to a month long Presidential vacuum and Director of the postponement of parliamentary Legacies of the Past, Graduate elections in 2013—can be explained through the metaphor of “spillover” Studies, from Syria and now Iraq. Perhaps it is Agendas for the Future Hagop comforting to relive the popular, but Kevorkian false, fantasy of “other people’s wars By Aaron Jakes, MEIS, Sherene Seikaly, MEIS, Ahmad Shokr, MEIS Center for on Lebanese lands.” Yet Lebanon was broken politically and economically, Over an intensive two days in late April and with the support Image courtesy of Wikimedia Near Eastern and polarized socially before 2011. of NYU’s Kevorkian Center and Rutger’s Middle East Center, a Commons Studies Sunni-Shi’i sectarianism and violence small group of scholars gathered for a workshop entitled New Di- has been on the rise in the region since The Jumeirah Lakes Towers rections in Political Economy. The workshop aimed to provide a Free Trade Zone in Dubai. the 2003 US invasion and occupation forum for graduate students and professors at various phases of of Iraq, both by design and on account their careers to share their work and reflect together on the resur- of the occupation forces’ incompe- gence of interest in a broad range of questions surrounding the tence. Lebanon has been in crisis, and place of both economic processes and ideas and the configura- dancing on the edge of civil war, since Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons tions of material objects and practices that make them possible in the At least two distinct approaches to these varied research agendas were the 2005 assassination of former Prime Singing helps ease the memories of conflict for Syrian children in Lebanon. ongoing political and social transformations of the modern Middle East. on display, and throughout the two days of the workshop the differences Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and the 2006 between them often led to lively debate. The first could be described as Israel-Lebanon war. For much of the 1970s, critical scholars of the modern Middle East aiming towards a new synthesis: between the concern for material social parents who grew up fleeing, or fighting, a different civil embraced political economy—a mode of social-scientific inquiry that processes that animated older traditions of research and the insights about Lebanon cannot be stable as long as Syria (and now Iraq) war and paying its price. The second is that the balance of deployed imperialism/world system and class as central categories of meaning and representation that have proven enduring contributions of is experiencing civil war. While events in Syria have a much power within Lebanon is heavily tipped to one side; that of analysis—in an effort to transform, with some success, a field that was the cultural and linguistic turns. Consequently, for many of the participants, more direct impact on Lebanon, those in Iraq are now tied Hezbollah and the country’s military, who hold similar posi- still dominated by variants of modernization theory and Orientalism. political economy is not simply a mode of analysis but also an object of to the war in Syria and thus to Lebanon as well. Lebanon tions on Syria and are working closely together to maintain After a relative decline that began in the 1980s, when culturalist ap- inquiry, a specific body of concepts and categories rendered meaningful only has two land borders, one with Syria and another with internal security. There is no armed Lebanese group or fac- proaches gained analytical prominence in the field, the last few years and compelling by the specific social and historical contexts of their artic- Israel—a state that has invaded and occupied Lebanon tion that would stand a chance against this alliance, which have witnessed a resurgence of academic interest in the study of polit- ulation. The second attempted a kind of new materialism that focuses pri- three times in its short history. The border is with Syria is is precisely why we see an increase in tactics like suicide ical economy from fresh intellectual vantage points. New research has marily on the arrangement and management of material objects. Drawing much longer, porous and nearly impossible to control. bombings and car bombs. With the rise of the Islamic State drawn on insights from environmental history, science and technology on the methodological contributions of actor-network theory, these papers of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) and its increased interest studies, network analysis, and heterodox Marxism to address questions were generally concerned with examining how the materiality of technical The Lebanese state has actually managed to function quite in Lebanon and Hezbollah, this might change. But ISIS has about state and class formation, the accumulation of capital, the history systems (transportation infrastructure, border control, militarization, etc.) well despite what is happening in Syria, Iraq, and across the limited support within Lebanon and the majority of this sup- of economic ideas, and the production of geographies of power. In- transforms political and social landscapes, generating new modalities of Middle East. Lebanon’s relative stability, and the continued port is rhetorical and sectarian in nature, rather than con- spired by such new works, a group of current and former students from power and resistance whose force cannot simply be reduced to “large pro- functioning of the state, can in part be attributed to an invest- sisting of actual military capacity. NYU’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Department decided to convene cesses” like colonialism, capitalism, and state formation. ment in the status quo by elites as well as powerful regional the workshop in the hopes of inviting critical reflections about the un- actors, and in part to the relative autonomy of particular state Barring dramatic developments (such as ISIS or its affili- even career of political economy in Middle Eastern Studies and explor- The wide variety of approaches that were on display in the workshop institutions and bureaucracies—regardless of how “well” ates entering into urban warfare against Hezbollah in Leb- ing new approaches and the areas of inquiry they can make possible. papers gave rise to several fruitful discussions about methodology. One they function. While events could still spiral out of control, the anon) a low-intensity conflict and terror campaign will last recurrent conversation was about the analytical possibilities and limita- political and economic threshold for state failure and all-out as long as the war in Syria does, and perhaps for a period The group was made up of historians primarily, along with one sociolo- tions of a method that posits a “flat ontology” to widen, sometimes quite war is much higher than most people would think. of time after that. The question therefore becomes how long gist and one anthropologist. Topics included the place of physical infra- radically, the range of possible actors/agents in a given socio-historical political leaders can continue to impose their collective will, structures in projects of colonialism/neo-colonialism and decolonization; setting. While this approach has the valuable effect of exposing the con- Two important factors contribute to these realities. The first which is against open conflict between the rival camps, the complex historical relationships between the crises and dislocations crete assemblages of material objects and systems of meaning that con- is that Lebanese are truly war weary, and the horrifying over the general population. In large part, this will come of agrarian capitalism and the emergence of rural mass mobilizations; the stitute seemingly abstract social processes, several participants raised spectacle of Syria has reminded many of the costs of civil down to how well the state-Hezbollah integrated security reception, reinterpretation, and critique of political-economic discourse in concerns about the way such a methodology risks obscuring the structur- war. Remember that those who are of fighting age have apparatus continues to function. the modern Middle East; and the role of economic processes in motivating al hierarchies of power and the possibilities of subverting or overthrowing and shaping popular social movements. them that were once at the center of critical materialist scholarship. “Legacies” continued on page 13 10 Reflections Research 11 for translating it into Persian in the future. The nizing that these relationships constitute a cer- East” as the dominant site of inquiry for recent EWIC is an effort to de-emphasize the West as tain kind of activism. The articulation of these studies of secularism and religion by incorporat- the sight of knowledge production and East as bonds often goes unnoticed or is sequestered ing South Asia, Europe, North America and their the object of study to create greater intellectual to an acknowledgment page that so many of diasporic minorities. Furthermore, participants exchange between these supposedly discrete us might skip through, but these bonds are im- took gender and the body seriously in ways zones. Joseph also stressed the importance portant reminders of struggles within the acad- previously ignored by scholars of religion and of making this body of knowledge available to emy and outside of it. secularism, and in particular the ways in which young people in North America. normative sexuality and religious difference is The following day’s workshop at New York Uni- produced and maintained by the secular state. The question of personal biography arose sev- versity’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Stud- eral times throughout the conversation, whereby ies was a more intimate conversation between An important aim of this session was to engage both scholars expressed their personal commit- the scholars of the Humanities Studio and grad- graduate students and create a venue for in- ments to the study of women in Islam or in the uate students. The workshop consisted of mini tellectual exchange. The session closed with Middle East. Both scholars remarked how they seminars led by Mayanthi Fernando, Judith Surk- more participation from graduate students, were compelled to do this work, to write against is, Anjali Arondekar, and Joan Scott. The schol- where students returned to questions that re- the violent misrepresentations that permeate ars of the Humanities Studio come from various mained unsettled, but also many others sought popular discourse in North America and Europe. disciplines, areas of study and methodological advice from the participants regarding their Joseph and Abu-Lughod both grappled with the orientation, yet broadly their work complicates own projects. The workshop met once again question of public engagement, and indeed, the scholarship of religion and secularism in par- the following day, but these sessions were limit- Image courtsey of Wikimedia Commons and Al Jazeera America several questions at the end of the night came ticular ways. Studio members assigned various ed to members of the workshop with members International Women’s Day in Egypt. from journalists about how to negotiate the imme- readings, which dealt with a range of topics, tem- presenting drafts of new work. Overall, the talk diacy that their field demands, with the nuances poralities and sites—from recent debates over and the workshop that followed represented of more rigorous scholarship. homosexuality and historiography in the Indian new directions in the study of gender, sexuality Penal Code to the question of transsexuality in and the body in the Middle East. This event was New Directions Throughout the evening, Joseph, Abu-Lughod Iran and personal status laws in Egypt. Impor- the first of Humanities Studio’s workshop series and Mikdashi all stressed the importance of tantly, the participants and their research worked and symposia devoted to critical scholarship on for the Study of Gender and Sexuality feminist mentorship in the academy—recog- towards displacing “Islam” and “The Middle the intersection of sex, religion, and secularity. By Omer Shah, NES ‘14 and Shirin Gerami NES ‘14

On January 31st, 2014 in a small but crowded seph, Abu-Lughod and Mikdashi was a heart- ultimately erase the role of the state or the econ- auditorium at New York University, students and felt reflection on the importance of mentorship omy in securing women’s subjugation, not just “Legacies” continued from page 11 political economy. The challenge, then, for scholars concerned to faculty gathered for a panel featuring Professors and activism in the academy. in the Middle East but the world over. follow “new directions” in political economy lies in devising methods Suad Joseph and Lila Abu-Lughod, moderat- Another set of recurring questions focused on the ways in which a to engage questions of both structure and meaning together. ed by Maya Mikdashi. The conversation was Lila Abu-Lughod spoke candidly about her Suad Joseph reflected on the difficulties of com- new methodology of political economy could or should honor the a reflection on the persistence of the “woman new book, which in many ways is the product piling an Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic contributions made over two decades by scholarship influenced by That even this small group of scholars encountered so many produc- question” in Islam, highlighting the relationship of her thirty years of scholarship, but also an Cultures (EWIC), especially in regards to in- the cultural/linguistic turn. One basic point of agreement among the tive points of disagreement was ultimately a sign of the vibrancy of between academia and activism and Joseph expansion and reflection on her famous article equalities of knowledge production. The EWIC participants was that such scholarship has tended to privilege the an exciting new area of scholarship. As Professor Zachary Lockman and Abu-Lughod’s contributions to the field. of the same name published more than a de- project, therefore, is commitment to knowledge analysis of discursive and/or embodied forms of power and dom- pointed out in the closing session of the workshop, “political econo- The event, entitled “Reflection on the Academic cade ago. Her talk touched upon the motivation sharing and breaking down the geopolitical ination at the expense of the material contexts in which forms of my” used to be a polite euphemism for Marxism in settings where the Study of Women and Islam,” was also part of a behind her new book—the tension between sites of knowledge production by incorporat- thought and representation circulate and become plausible. That latter was considered unfitting for scholarly inquiry and the “M” word larger effort to produce new critical scholarship her own personal experiences (in the field and ing scholars in the region and creating greater said, several contributors expressed provocative reservations about could not be uttered. Though for many of the contributors, the Marx- on sex, religion, secularism, and citizenship. otherwise), the everyday life of women in Mus- accessibility. In total, this project seeks to dis- the danger of ignoring the lessons of the cultural turn regarding the ian tradition continues to offer insight and inspiration, the diverse ap- Additionally, the event served as a launch-par- lim societies and the distortions that become rupt monolithic understandings of the “Muslim multiple modes and determinations of power. Of particular concern proaches and political commitments on display at the workshop sug- ty for Lila Abu-Lughod’s new book Do Muslim popularized in Western media accounts. This woman” by attempting to capture the diverse was the way in which the “new histories of capitalism” appearing gest that the future of political economy will be shaped by a broader Women Need Saving? and Suad Joseph’s The work disrupts commonplace discourses, which and complex expressions and experiences of both within and beyond Middle East Studies have often failed to ad- set of trends in critical scholarship. We are therefore hopeful that this Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. make religion and culture responsible for wom- women in the Muslim societies. The encyclope- dress or incorporate the powerful insights of gender studies, many will be the first in a longer series of meetings and conversations that More remarkably, the conversation between Jo- en’s deteriorated position. These discourses dia has been translated into Arabic, with plans of which first emerged from a critique of the old methodology of will attract a widening group of scholars in the field.

12 Research Research 13 A primary difficulty was that of translation, which in itself provides space in (Persian for both he and she) to “he” or “she” would potentially misrepre- which to maneuver for trans and homosexual persons in Iran. First, trans sent and distort the expressed identification of her subjects. Spaces of Negotiation, Desire, and the State activists translating terms coming from a gay international lexicon, such as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and appropriating them in different manners Be it the spaces between the state and trans activists in Iran, or be- made Najmabadi’s task challenging in that terms may have very different tween history and ethnography in academic writing, Najmabadi brilliant- A Review of Professing Selves meanings for different people claiming them. Secondly, translating for an ly navigates all in Professing Selves, a necessary read for any student By Belle Cheves, NES ‘15 English-speaking audience the non-gender specific Persian pronouns of history or anthropology, or for anyone with an interest in genders and posed another challenge for Najmabadi – incorrectly translating an “u” sexualities in modern Iran.

Afsaneh Najmabadi’s historical ethnography Pro- activists’ interaction with the state. While the title Notes fessing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex De- of the book and Najmabadi’s stated purpose are [1] Afsaneh Najmabadi, Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 3. | [2] Ibid., 3. | [3] Ibid., 4. | [4] Ibid., 230. | [5] Ibid., 15. | [6] Ibid., 275. [7] Ibid., 301. sire in Contemporary Iran gives insight into expres- evidently about transsexuality and same-sex de- sions of identification of genders and sexualities sire in Iran, the book truly addresses the state, and from the 1930s until now. In writing against the sen- the spaces of negotiation opened by the dialogues sationalizing and what particular misconceptions surrounding transsexuality. As Najmabadi writes, she perceives in US media coverage of the politics “the very process of psychological filtering and surrounding sex reassignment surgery (SRS) in Iran, jurisprudential demarcating, far from eliminating Driving Politics Najmabadi establishes a far more nuanced relation- gays and lesbians (if that is indeed what the Iranian ship between the state, transsexuals, homosexuals, authorities had hoped), has paradoxically created A Review of Joyriding in Riyadh and those considering sex change in Iran. new social spaces.”[3] To put it in another manner, “The very policies that may have been intended to By Matt Greene, NES ‘14 While Najmabadi admittedly “attempts to map out close the spaces for non-normative trans identifi- a situated ‘cartography of desire’ in Iran that lo- cations, imaginations, and living styles have par- When Pascal Menoret arrived in Riyadh in which entrenched socio-economic disparities gate length of municipal roads. The ability of cates the contemporary discourses and practices adoxically reopened and regenerated those very 2001 to conduct doctoral fieldwork, the an- are often overlooked, tufshan engenders a cal- privileged Saudis to purchase and develop real of transsexuality in a longer historical trajectory and spaces.”[4] One of the most crucial of these spaces thropologist did not intend to study the ur- lous outlook on Saudi society that at times may estate further fueled property speculation, and intersecting discursive sites, including medicine, re- in regards to interaction with the state, is that of ban history and politics of the Saudi capital. adopt a defiant character. Riyadh was morphed into a city of single-family ligious doctrine, psychology, criminology, the fami- the filtering process. At the end of the filtering pro- Menoret, currently at NYU Abu Dhabi, instead houses, commercial centers, and a sprawling ly, trans activism, and practices of everyday life,” it cess, which entails the applicant for SRS seeing was interested in the politicization of Saudi Repeatedly impeded in his research, Menoret network of asphalt roads. is not a cartography of desire in terms of expression a government sanctioned psychologist for a pe- youth and Islamist movements, and desired approached a group of joyriders who race of transsexuality and same-sex desire that ensues, but more notably a riod of time to determine whether or not they are “‘really transsexual,’ to critique the stereotype of Islamic groups as cars from night to early dawn across the Yet, the oil boom did not bring economic relief cartography of state apparatuses that intertwine with transsexuality and ‘really homosexual,’ [or] ‘intersex,’” will receive a certificate, if deemed hubs of radicalization. streets of Riyadh. The author learned that the and opportunity to the underclass of Riyadh. same-sex desire that come to the fore throughout her work.[1] Through ex- transsexual, allowing them to live their lives expressing their preferred phenomenon of drifting, or tafhit, is more the Efforts to replace the city’s shanties were often tensive interviews with trans activists, homosexuals, medical profession- gender, even pre-surgery, potentially indefinitely.[5] However, two years into his research, Menerot consequence of economic inequality and state counterproductive and reinforced econom- als, and state officials, attending trans activists’ meetings with government was unable to puncture a firm wall of resistance exclusion rather than an individual decision to ic disparity and social exclusion. Moreover, officials, and tracing Iranian media surrounding issues of transsexuality, It is the stories of some of the people who occupy these spaces, and demonstrated by Islamist youth groups and confront boredom. Menoret argues that their Menoret is careful to outline the expanding state surgical sex change, and historical events of note that instigated and ex- how they “profess themselves,” upon which she writes in chapters universities. Potential subjects were suspect of venturesomeness to pull motorized tricks at security apparatus of the 1980s and the stricter panded the dialogues surrounding transsexuality and same-sex desire in seven and eight. In particular she focuses on how identification with the Western academic’s intentions, the atten- speeds of 150mph, steal cars, and to partake surveillances placed upon public space. Iran, Najmabadi identifies spaces of negotiation that are, at times uncon- particular genders and sexualities impacts interaction with the state tion he may arouse from the secret police, or in a homosocial culture of unburdened mascu- sciously, created by those “intersecting discursive sites.”[2] and thus how people live their lives. And, as Najmabadi asks, quot- worse—his role as a covert spy operative. In linity is a symbolic response to Saudi state re- The road revolt of tafhit is not simply a chal- ing one of her sources, “does the issue of identification and naming one instance, the prospect to set up study in a pression and the concealed violence imposed lenge to traffic law and order, but is a political Her second through fourth chapters explore how the government sanc- oneself matter at all?”[6] Najmabadi illustrates through the stories of Bedouin village ended with a stealth evacuation upon marginalized residents in Riyadh. act that contests the foundation of state legiti- tioning of SRS arose. She traces the history of how transsexuality came her subjects that identification and naming creates one more space of after his interlocutor’s radical jihadist relatives macy. Joyriding exposes the spatial strategies into public and official discourse through examining not only the- psy negotiation, the ambiguities of which are what, as she reiterates at the threatened the outsider with violence. As Menoret indicates, the population of Riyadh used by the Saudi government to inflict social cho-medical and jurisprudential texts surrounding sexual deviance and end, make possible “living livable and loving lives.”[7] in 1970 was a fraction of the 6 million people order and political acquiescence, and demon- surgical sex change for intersex persons, but also the media hype sur- The hindrances and rejections left Menoret ex- who currently inhabit the city. Most of these ear- strates how large swaths of male Saudi youth rounding events of historical note both before and after the Islamic Rev- The insight Najmabadi gives into her research process and how she her- periencing a sense of tufshan, a feeling of inad- ly residents were Bedouins who were absorbed seek out the sport as an act of protest. Joyrid- olution of 1979. These chapters importantly elaborate upon not only how self struggled to ask the right questions and establish the best approach equacy explained in his words as a “subtle and into the city’s slum villages from the nearby Nadj ing in Riyadh is a unique and clearly presented her trans subjects tell their stories, but also how the media and legal-med- to writing history and ethnography of transsexuality in Iran provides us incapacitating torpor.” Tufshan is widespread steppe. The oil crisis of 1973 caused a great ethnography of a fascinating subculture. The ical apparatuses place the stories into broader public discourse. with another important space of negotiation. Grappling with both the eth- among Saudi youth, especially those of the increase in Saudi national income levels, as well work reveals that in Saudi Arabia driving is an ics and disciplinary approaches of merging history and anthropology, working class with nomadic origins. In a city in as the number of automobiles and the aggre- act that holds great revolutionary potential. Chapters five and six arrive at the crux of Najmabadi’s work –trans Najmabadi admits in her introduction the difficulties she faced in this task.

14 New Books New Books 15 are not as favorable to the cultivation of apples. It is thus no surprise that dance, form rock bands in their cramped bedrooms, and make fun of they are also a source of distinction from the Israeli settlers nearby. their parents’ outdated values. Two of the main youths in the film drive Contested Identities, Conflicted Narratives aimlessly around the town at night, smoking cigarettes and, with a Golani At times, such articulation takes a much more explicitly nationalist form, twist, eating apples while listening to Arabic rap music about Damascus. folding in the symbolism of state emblems. We meet a farmer in the Go- A Review of Apples of the Golan lan who slices an apple down the middle. He counts the five seeds. He It is interesting to note that throughout all these discussions about By Ella Wind, NES ‘15 goes on to explain the significance, making a connection to the Syrian Arab and Syrian identities, none of the film’s Golani interviewees ever

man places four apples on the ground in a rectangle. He Apaces back and forth between them. “The cell was seven- ty centimeters by 1.8 meters. I was sleeping with no mattress… twenty-four hours in darkness. I was there for seventy-three days.” He describes his torture: he was placed, exposed, in a tire, and lashed with a cable. He was lifted by his arms and tied up with ropes, left to support his body weight on the tips of his toes for hours at a time. Other prisoners had their entire bodies covered in cigarette burns.

Since what we are seeing is set in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the viewer is led to believe the subject is describing his time in Israeli prisons. But the documentary Apples of the Golan undercuts the viewer’s expectations with each scene. While the scenes in which he describes his torments are explicitly cut so as not to reveal to us whose prison he was in, viewers familiar with “al-falqa” and “tashbeeh” (torture techniques used in Syrian pris- ons) become privy to the secret sooner. The interviewee, a Syrian Druze from the Golan Heights, is in fact describing his time spent in a Syrian prison as punishment for escaping across the closed borders in search of his beloved, who had left to Damascus. If this is a surprise to the viewer, it was no less of a surprise to him. eventually creates a conversation between them. But within each national flag, which has a strong presence throughout the film: “Strange- bring up their Arab neighbors under Israeli occupation, the Palestin- “I expected to be interrogated, but the first question they asked scene, the subject is left to present their perspective on their ly, in the Jewish settlements, there are six seeds. The Syrian flag has a ians. Their absence from the film is striking: it’s difficult to imagine me was, ‘Why did Mossad send you here?’…They took me and own terms; most people are interviewed by themselves in their five-pointed star, and the Israeli flag has a six-pointed star.” Much later, that the residents of Majdal al-Shams do not define their identities in we went downstairs…and own home or work environments. In the beginning of the film, the the filmmakers meet an Israeli farmer on an illegal settlement. They ask relation to Palestinians – whether in contrast or affiliation. Many of the to my surprise they start- viewer may not even realize that a given topic has a great deal him to slice open an apple, revealing five seeds inside. daily struggles articulated by the Golanis in the film are the same as Directed by ed torturing me.” In this more controversy around it than one interlocutor articulates until those of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza: the usurp- Jill Beardsworth and Keith Walsh. scene, and throughout someone with a contrasting perspective readdresses the topic However, the film also introduces young people with a less nostalgic re- ing of water and other natural resources by encroaching settlements, Austria/Ireland/Syria, 2012. the film, we are continually much later in the film. The interviewees are never brought into ac- lationship to a country they are a generation removed from. One young severe limitations on freedom of movement, and even shared prison pulled in different direc- tual face-to-face conversations, but through the unfolding of the man declares: “the Syrians, who we are originally from, forgot about us.... cells. The question of Palestine’s absence from the film looms in the tions as the complexity of film, the presence of a larger dialogue between them becomes If they wanted to free us, they would have done it a long time ago.” They background, though it is never clear whether this is attributable to the a society is revealed, with each character contradicting others in increasingly explicit as more perspectives fill in the gaps, or com- describe an antagonistic relationship to the Israeli occupation, but they interlocuters or a choice on the part of the filmmakers themselves. On ways that are sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring. pletely overturn previous explanations. do not articulate it in their parents’ language of Syrian Arab nationalism, a similar note, female interviewees seem to be somewhat underrepre-

depicted through Syrian flags and pictures of Bashar al-Assad. Rather, sented in the film, in contrast to the diversity of perspectives otherwise. The characters throughout the film are slowly placed into- dia Throughout the film, apples form a backdrop as they are sowed, many of them choose to describe life under occupation through mu- logue with each other, at first in an unclear, disjointed way. The harvested, exported, and eaten. Apples are a focal part of Golani sic—in particular, rap music: “Between me and my country, fifty meters Apples of the Golan tries to show the many contested identities and narra- film uses a complex, achronological order, which prioritizes di- identity. Since 2005, the only trade between the Golan and other to the east, every meter inside my heart, burns and desires,” one lyric tives in the Golan; as a result, we can only catch a glimpse of each aspect. alogue over sequence, and very effectively highlights the com- Syrian communities is through the export of apples, and it is one of declares, and continues, “all the Arab money does not bring us freedom, The film makes no claims to be a deep study of any one particular issue or plexities and ambiguities of life in the Golan Heights. We revisit the few tangible connections between the Golan and Syria. They or any hope that we will see victory.” Golani youth throughout the film aspect of life in the Golan Heights. But it is worth watching, as a nuanced the same core characters throughout the film, at different points, are also a talking point that Golanis use to define themselves as a hardly seem different than their counterparts anywhere else in the world. and sensitive sampling of life in a deeply contested slice of land whose in- with their conversations spliced and rearranged, in a way that region within Syria, distinctive from other regions whose climates Despite the exceptional political situation they live in, they skateboard, tricacies are paradoxically unknown across both its East and West borders.

16 Visual Culture Visual Culture 17 Marmoulak Why does Televizyon become Vizontele? Kurds and Orientalism from Within The Taming of Political Satire in Iran By Cevat Dargin, NES ‘14 By Shima Houshyar, NES ‘15 One of the movies screened at NYU’s Kevorkian Cen- ter during the Spring 2014 semester as part of a series When released, Marmoulak (2004) quickly became one of of films with the theme “political satire” was Vizontele, a the most widely-watched and oft-quoted Iranian movies in 2001 Turkish comedy-drama film written and directed by the history of post-revolution Iranian cinema. The plot fol- Yılmaz Erdoğan. The film is based on the writer-director’s lows the story of Reza Marmoulak (Reza “the Lizard”), a childhood memories of the arrival of the first television to thief with a proclivity for climbing walls, who is arrested and his village in the late 70’s. The keyword in this description subjected to harsh disciplinary treatment by the prison war- is “his” village. Yılmaz Erdoğan is a Kurd from Hakkari, den, who believes in a punishment-oriented system of reha- one of Turkey’s easternmost provinces, bordering Iran bilitating prisoners. When Reza is hurt during a scuffle, he and Iraq. Seen from this perspective and this “mapping” is taken to a hospital where he makes the acquaintance of a of the region, Hakkari seems like any other border city. genial and kind-hearted cleric, who leaves his clerical robe However, viewed from an alternative perspective, one and turban for Reza. Seizing this opportunity, Reza dons which is more reflective of the reality on the ground, Hak- the cleric’s clothes, walks out of the hospital and begins kari is at the center of an “un-mapping,” of Kurdistan. It to make his way to the Turkish border, which he intends to stands at the crossroads of a colonized land, divided by cross illegally. On his way he is mistaken for the imam of a the hegemonic mapmakers of the region: Turkey, Iran, local mosque in a small town and a series of funny events Iraq, and Syria, in alliance with various extra regional im- ensue as he is called upon to lead prayers (which he doesn’t know), give sermons, and help the poor. perial powers. Throughout the last hundred years of an anti-colonial and anti-assimilationist struggle of the Kurds, After a month of appearing in theaters in Iran, the movie was slowly banned in cities across the country Hakkari has occupied a central role both geographically by local authorities who deemed it an insult to clergy, even as Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guid- and politically. For anyone from Turkey, the word Hakkari impression that Hakkari, despite being “backward,” unproblematically fits ance insisted on the legality and acceptability of its screening. Meanwhile, discussion panels were held immediately recalls the Kurdish question. However, the film makes no into this Turkish nationalist narrative. The film demonstrates the “Turkish- with the film’s director, Kamal Tabrizi, film critics and members of the clergy to analyze and discuss the reference to how the history of Kurdistan is embedded in Hakkari and, ness” of Hakkari through the creation of the appearance that everyone film. In one interview, Tabrizi claimed that he made the movie in order to bridge the gap between the cler- in omitting this, erases the Kurdish question. The film, in other words, is in Hakkari speaks Turkish and “good” Kurds exist there who sacrifice for gy and ordinary people and bring the two closer in mutual understanding. The international press billed meticulously sanitized from its Kurdish context. the Turkish nation. Hakkari is depicted as a normal Turkish village with the movie as a political satire that mocks religion and challenges clerical rule in Iran, while condemning no specific history of political issues other than some bureaucratic issues the Islamic republic for censorship. The satirical aspects of the movie certainly pose a challenge both to This issue is not due to the apolitical nature of the film; in fact, the main sto- that could occur anywhere. Finally, the solution to all of Hakkari’s prob- certain elements of the state and to the people. However, in some ways Marmoulak is a depiction of the ryline of the film is overtly political, as it revolves around the appearance lems will be solved if “we” (the developed, Western Turks) “give more” to status quo in Iran and its message fails to transcend the power and control of the state. of a television in the village and the political ramifications of this event. Hakkarians so they can attain the same level of civilization. Instead, the missing Kurdish context arises from the colonial-orientalist If the criminal Reza cannot be reformed by the strict disciplinary mechanism of the state (i.e. the prison attitude, adopted by the Turkish film industry in general and the makers This film, watched through the political context in which it takes place, system), it is the mercy extended to him by God and religion (and its representative, the cleric) that can of this film in particular, towards the Kurds. One example of this attitude is is a perfect example of “embedded” politics in art. Most of the Turkish “tame” and “domesticate” him, and bring him back once again into the fold of the modern state’s subjects. exemplified in a scene in which a boy from the village is conscripted by film sector builds on a similar colonial-orientalist context towards the Indeed, it is not so much Marmoulak’s challenge to the state that makes it popular as it is the appeal to the Turkish army and dies during the Turkish army’s invasion of Cyprus Kurds in one way or another. These films depict certain typologies a moral humanism (“there is good and bad in everyone”) and literary universal humanism, represented in 1974. To a Turkish audience this stands out as a political message; a attributed to Kurds, who usually play a funny or tragic character. There by the recurring quotes from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, which the cleric in the hospital Kurd from a village in Hakkari is martyred for the most nationally laden is a great amount of work to be done to explore this convoluted rela- quotes to Reza as he teaches him about taming or the creation of love. The exigencies of religion prompt military operation of modern Turkish history. This incident works to situate tionship between art, cinema in particular, and the colonization-orien- the cleric to teach and domesticate Reza, the criminal, through an appeal to God and religion when the Hakkari within a Turkish nationalist narrative which erases the Kurdish talization of the Kurds in Turkey. Vizontele is just one example of this disciplinary and regulatory methods of the state have failed to manage and control the citizen-subjects. The struggle. This scene and the film as a whole leaves the audience with the relationship, though a formidable one. true hero of the story then is not necessarily the Lizard, but rather the cleric who tamed him.

18 Visual Culture Visual Culture 19 figure of the “Muslim terrorist,” and his role in the rhetoric of the War on as the lead plaintiff in a Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right Terror. Who is he, and what is it that he’s supposed to be up to? of Guantanamo detainees and other foreign nationals to file writs of habeas corpus, has a better-documented case. It is exactly through these fictive constructions of “the Muslim terrorist” or “Islamic terror” that the War on Terror produces a population always It is still a very fragmentary and partial chronicle of the magnitude of the Index of the Disappeared prone to terrorism. Brown bodies become a legitimate site of intervention, personal losses of post-9/11 life. Absent, for example, is the story of Mo- legitimate targets for surveillance, deportation, torture, bombing, and on hamed Yousry, a PhD candidate in our own MEIS department. Working and on, because of their propensity to terror. But it is not only that they be- as a translator for lawyer Lynne Stewart on the case of “The Blind Sheikh,” An Archive of Dissent come legitimate targets, but more terrifyingly, and more insidiously, that both he and Stewart were accused of passing messages from the Sheikh By Parisa Chavoshi, NES ‘14 they demand these interventions, and these interventions are therefore to a terrorist organization, and ultimately convicted under the material unremarkable. Quickly passed over, quickly forgotten, if even notable in support statute. He served over a year in prison and is now on parole. the first place, because, after all, who he Parasitic Archive appeared in the Ettinghau- would mourn a (would-be) terrorist? The Index juxtaposes these devastating narratives of the victims of the sen Library as a series of thick binders with la- T War’s broad sweep with materials that highlight just what a mundanely bels like “Isolation in US Prisons” and “NSA: Foreign It is in this reality that the archiving bureaucratic reality this is for some. The catalog on surveillance tech- Targets and Repercussions,” a sign alerting us that project becomes a radical practice, nologies, for example, is almost comical in this context. In a scheme the FBI had not (yet) been in our library, and portraits as Chitra and Ganesh insisted during uncomfortably evocative of IKEA, the catalog advertises products with of brown faces scattered in between the library’s an artists’ talk at the library. Where names like TOTEGHOSTLY 2.0 or MONKEYCALENDAR, software im- books. The Archive is a site-specific installation of Brown lives are lives that don’t mat- plants for the Windows Mobile OS or GSM SIM cards, respectively, the Index of the Disappeared, a project of artists Chi- ter, the very act of chronicling these capable of doing things like pulling your contact list from your cell tra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani that evolves into the lives and foregrounding their stories is phone. Or you can read the absurd and assiduously compiled report spaces it occupies. The Archive was accompanied a radical act. The materials in the ex- by a US military officer on “Islamic Rulings on Warfare.” at NYU by the Watch This Space installations in the hibit are diverse, pulling together per- Kimmel Windows Gallery, just two iterations of many sonal narratives, news articles, policy The archive is curated to draw a loose web of connections in time and that the Index has taken on as it has travelled from memos, documentaries, books, rights space, linking American history to American present, domestic policy place to place. The artists have collaborated on the groups’ reports, court cases, and por- with foreign policy, different racisms with each other. Binders detailing Index of the Disappeared project since 2004, pulling traits. But they collectively archive the “Isolation in US Prisons” and “Racial Profiling” stand alongside “Extraor- together a huge range of sources to chronicle the particular horrors of post 9/11 life. dinary Rendition” and “Torture Memos;” “COINTELPRO” and “Church ways that surveillance, drone warfare, rendition, and Committee Report” and thus provide history and context to “Corporate so on have seeped into the landscape of post-9/11 There are slim blue folders that gather Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations” and “Policing Dissent.” life. The Index stands as an intentional archiving of together what scant information there what would otherwise be silenced, of the lives and is on the victims of the War on Terror. I could have contributed a little folder of my own to the project. When I histories that post-9/11 wars and policies would pre- A few news articles roughly sketch was in high school, or maybe early college, there was a commotion in fer to see forgotten. together stories of people imprisoned our community over the head of our masjid, involving the FBI and all the for years without trial, sent to black related accoutrements of the War on Terror. I am not entirely sure what The Archive’s appearance was especially resonant sites for torture, families whose loved it was that he was supposed to have done. It had something to do with for me as I was completing my thesis at that time. In ones have disappeared. In one fold- terrorism, of course, and hinged on his military service abroad, I think. No February 2014, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD’s er there is only a photo without any one went over the details with me, but even now and with so little detail I massive surveillance of Muslim communities in New accompanying text. There is a larger feel uncomfortable writing about it. It’s just not spoken about. For the most Jersey was lawful and did not profile on the basis binder on Lakhdar Boumediene, who, part I forget it even happened. of religion, dismissing a lawsuit brought in 2012 by eight Muslims alleging that the NYPD’s profiling was unconstitutional. US District Judge William Martini explained that he was unconvinced that the spying hen even remembering causes nervousness and worry, program had targeted them because of their religion. “The more likely explanation for the surveillance was archiving is dissent. to locate budding terrorist conspiracies,” he wrote, W adding that “the police could not have monitored New Image courtesy of Parisa Chavoshi Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring Window display at “Watch this Space,” as a part of the larger Index of the Disappeared exhibit. the Muslim community itself.” My thesis explored this

20 Archives Archives 21 Iranian Studies Spotlight on Anjali Kamat

Ottoman Studies Lecture Anjali Kamat, a graduate of the Near Eastern Similarly, “America’s War Workers” explores Initiative 2013-14 Studies program in 2004, is now a produc- the connections between laborers, con- Series, Spring 2014 er and correspondent for Fault Lines at Al tractors and American institutions. Focus- ISI-NYU is collaboration between the Gallatin School of Jazeera America. Her work demonstrates a ing on the situation of contract workers on Individualized Study and the Kevorkian Center. Its mission By Alex Boodrookas, NES ‘14 desire to allow those who are typically ren- US military bases, this Fault Lines episode is to provide an intellectual and academic space for NYU dered voiceless to tell their stories. Kamat highlights the exploitation of third country faculty and students to study modern Iranian history, This spring, four distinguished young scholars presented their research is recognized as exceeding the standard of nationals who, through deception, become culture and society. Please see the ISI-NYU’s website for as part of the ongoing Ottoman Studies Lecture Series. Touching on fields what has come to be expected of American indebted and fill the ranks of an indentured additional information at http://isi-nyu.org. of environmental, architectural, intellectual, and even medical history, journalism. workforce upon which the US military relies they represent a new and creative generation of Ottoman historians. to serve American troops in war zones. For the academic year 2013-14, ISI-NYU organized 12 “Made in Bangladesh” explores a tragic lectures and other events. On September 13, we hosted An Eastern Europeanist by training, Holly Case, Associate Professor of His- garment factory fire in Bangladesh which Both of these documentaries highlight the Daryoush Ashouri, a prominent Iranian intellectual, who pre- Image Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons tory at Cornell University, traced the nineteenth-century emergence of the killed 112 people. It demonstrates the will- situation of workers and examine the insti- sented a lecture, in Persian, on “Hafez and Sufi Hermeneu- Garment workers in Bangladesh. “Eastern Question.” Describing the period as the “century of questions,” ful ignorance of large U.S. retailers such as tutional structures and misbehavior which tics.” On September 26, we had an event entitled, “On the Professor Case discussed when and why people started thinking in ques- Walmart regarding the dangerous practic- gladesh and the corporate behavior which allows these exploitative labor systems Occasion of the Publication of Shahnameh: The Epic of Persian Kings.” tions, from “The Jewish Question” to “The Polish Question”, and what such es and working conditions in the garment condones them, indicting corporations, to continue. Anjali Kamat’s work is an im- Professor Ahmad Sadri of Lake Forest College, who translated this work, formulations meant. Her talk also touched on her positionality as a Europe- industry. This Fault Lines episode won a contractors, and consumers in the contin- portant example of journalism working to gave a lecture on Succession and Charisma in Shahnameh and Hamid an historian studying the Ottoman Empire and her efforts to broaden the Peabody Award for its integration of a de- uation of a system which exploits laborers inform and influence the world in which it Rahmanian discussed the illustrations of this new book. On October 17, geographical scope of her next book, a history of the emergence of nine- piction of the working conditions in Ban- and engages in illegal labor practices. operates. Professor Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak from the University of Maryland gave a teenth-century questions, through learning Ottoman and Arabic. lecture entitled “The Pioneering Spirit of Early Persian Poetry: Khorasani Lyrics of 10th and 11th Centuries.” The discussant for this talk was our Ünver Rüstem, a lecturer and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia own Ph.D. student Arta Khakpour. On November 22, we hosted a special University who specializes in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, event in collaboration with Columbia University. We had a panel discus- examined geopolitics, Orientalist representations of the Ottoman Empire, sion celebrating Hamid Nafici’s four-volume work on “A Social History of and European-Ottoman cultural interactions through a discussion of a In Recognition of Matthieu Aikins Iranian Cinema” with Hamid Dabashi as the discussant. wax museum of lifelike Ottoman figures that opened in London in 1854. Matthieu Aikins, who studied in the joint M.A, program for Global Journalism and Near Eastern Established by a colorful Ottoman-Armenian diplomat, the “Oriental and On January 29, ISI hosted, in collaboration with the Department of Cin- Studies (2009-2010) and completed his M.A. in Near Eastern Studies in 2012, was awarded Turkish Museum” was a conscious effort to present a sympathetic version ema Studies, a film screening followed by a panel discussion on Irani- the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for his article “The A-Team Killings”. Appearing of the Ottoman Empire to potential European allies in the face of Russian an filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami. On February 27, Professor Mary Elaine in Rolling Stone Magazine, this article documents the war crimes committed by a 12-man U.S. expansionism. The museum exemplifies the dense web of connections Hegland from Santa Clara University gave a lecture on her new book Army Special Forces unit and their translators in 2012. Aikins investigates the disappearance between the Ottoman Empire and Europe in the time of the Crimean War. Days of Revolution. On March 6, Professor Nazanin Shahrokni, Har- and extrajudicial killings of ten civilians in the Nerkh district of Wardak province in Afghanistan. vard University, presented a paper entitled “Gendered Spaces and the Over the course of five months, Aikins and his team spoke not only with the US and Afghan Özgen Felek, a recent Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Religious Studies at Changing of the State in Iran.” Our colleague at NYU Arang Keshavarzian officials and interpreters for the Special Forces unit, but also to the civilians who had lost friends, Stanford University, discussed the ways in which the dreams and visions served as the discussant for this lecture. On March 31, Professor Afsaneh family, and community members to these crimes. Aikins’ piece simultaneously uncovers the of Sultan Murad III shaped his public image. Building on her previous Najmabadi from Harvard University gave a talk on “Professing Selves: horrific crimes of this Special Forces unit while also allowing these civilians to voice their own work on dream interpretation, she parsed a complex symbolism that ad- Transexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran.” Professor Rit- experiences of torture, abuse, and loss. dressed a wide range of particular audiences. She argued that dream ty Lukose from the Gallatin School was the discussant for this talk. interpretation is a long-neglected field of Ottoman Studies, despite its im- Aikins’ writing demonstrates the importance of thorough investigative journalism. His arti- portance in the early modern period. On March 31, we hosted a delegation of ten poets from Iran and organized cle has had a tangible impact as the military, which had initially denied the charges, has a poetry reading and discussion chaired by Sheida Dayani. On April 17, opened a criminal investigation and several human rights organizations have called for an Image courtesy of Matthieu Aikins Finally, in her critique of the concept of “medical pluralism,” Nükhet Varlık Peyman Jafari from Leiden University presented a paper titled “The Para- impartial investigation into these crimes. By focusing on the civilian victims of crimes per- suggested that a “marketplace of healing” is a more apt descriptor for the Matthieu Aikins received a dox of Revolution: Life and Polities of Iranian Oil Workers (1978-1982).” The petrated by this Special Forces Unit, Aikins forces his readers to think about the lives which Polk Award for his piece diverse array of medical professionals practicing in the early modern Otto- discussant for this lecture was our colleague Zachary Lockman. Overall are lost and destroyed in war. His journalism demonstrates courage, integrity, and a desire “The A-Team Killings.” man Empire. Her talk addressed the power struggles surrounding medical the Iranian Studies Initiative was successful in presenting a diverse array of to tell the stories that would otherwise be forgotten. issues in the empire at a time of growing state interest in public health. scholars and topics and is looking forward to another exciting year.

22 Collaborations Alumni News 23 What it Wounds of Waziristan Means to be Haunted by Loss legal system. Apart from four major states, Pakistan is also comprised of Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (Fata): a group of seven agencies in which the jurisdiction of Pakistan’s courts does not apply. Waziristan, divided into North and South, consists of two such agencies, and has been used as a battleground by American forces and Pakistan’s security forces as well as the insurgents that they collectively created. Although Waziristan is hardly a day’s drive from the capital, Islamabad, the documentary shows how with the help of American and Pakistani media, it’s made to seem a world away.

It is a widely known fact that, due to security concerns caused both by militants and the Pakistani military themselves, it is nearly impossible for journalists to enter Waziristan. Even in July 2014 when the Pakistan Army launched an operation in North Waziristan, the only source of information available was the army’s media wing. Despite this, upon release of her film, Tahir was widely criticized by some in Pakistan for making a documen- tary about a region she had never visited. No part of the documentary was shot within Waziristan, simply because no journalists, barring a handful under army protection, have recently been allowed to enter the tribal agency. But perhaps this makes Tahir’s documentary all the more important: she shines light on a people who do not wish to be voiceless, but have been silenced by deafening bombings. Tahir conducts interviews in Islam- abad, with Karim and Saddam, two residents of Waziristan who have lost family due to drone attacks. Other interviews take place in Peshawar and Bannu, cities in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that Tahir visited to conduct formal and informal interviews.

Perhaps the only legitimate critique of the film is the fact that it never introduces the concept of tribes to the audience. Not once during the interviews does Tahir ask any of the survivors what tribe they belong to; by completely ignoring their family lineages and connections the filmmaker creates confusion for the audience as to why these regions are even called tribal and why they don’t fall under the ambit of Pa- kistan’s legal system. But barring this critique, Tahir’s film delivers its promise: it succinctly conveys to us that the effects of war cannot be neatly summed up in facts and figures. Even though Barack Obama describes - and Tahir quotes him - the drones as “neat surgical tactics,” Still from Wounds of Wazistan By Maham Javaid, NES ‘15 Noor-Behram journalist who has been recording deaths from drone attack. the truth of the matter is that nothing about drone violence is neat or surgical. “You can’t take away the bad, and leave behind the good,” she explains. The entire idea, she says, of using physical violence to solve a political issue is senseless. Wounds of Waziristan features the unnoticed casualties of war. The of North Waziristan without credence to military or policy experts. documentary film does not make us feel for those lives that were cut “What I wanted to do with Wounds of Waziristan was to allow Karim Another reason Tahir’s film stands out is because, while the standard narrative states that America is bombing Waziristan to cleanse it of the short due to America’s drone offensive in Pakistan, but instead for and Saddam to tell their stories without reference to the whole ar- Taliban, not once during the film does she name this enemy. Instead she provides the audience with a background of the freedom fighters, those who are left behind and forced to pick up the bodies of their chitecture of expertise. We ought to be able to consider them legiti- comments on how Waziristan was used as a training ground for them and continuously refers to them as “insurgents.” Tahir explains that loved ones, those who are “haunted by loss.” Instead of focusing mate witnesses to their own lives. That is an intervention into the way she chooses to do this because the purpose of the film was not to debate the futility of the drones, as that has been done by many others, on the number of dead or the vague distinctions between ‘civilians’ war correspondence is generally done,” explains Tahir. but to convey the stories of the affected without using the already existing narratives. “Every country, every region has a slot. Pakistan’s slot and ‘militants,’ the creator of this project, Madiha Tahir, an inde- is ‘fanatical Islam’ and ‘terrorism.’ Even stories about beer production or fashion or business in Pakistan must reference these tropes in order pendent journalist and doctoral candidate at Columbia University, The 26-minute-long documentary shows that the area upon which the for the story to be legible to western audiences,” says Tahir. And in this she succeeds: Wounds of Waziristan is a story about drone violence attempts to capture the experience of the drone-affected people majority of the drones fall is not directly under the ambit of Pakistan’s outside of these clichéd tropes, and presents audiences with a fresh lens through which drones can be examined.

24 Alumni News Alumni News 25 Image Courtesy of Emma Quail Arba Wa Nus, South Sudanese neighborhood in Cairo. Learning Turkish During a Revolution By Nate Christensen, NES ‘14 Since the Arab Spring, organized labor has provided a sig- nificant challenge to authoritarianism, economic inequali- ty, and the military establishment in the Middle East. I was lucky enough to witness this dynamic firsthand as a FLAS Fellow in Istanbul during the summer of 2013.

In Turkey, the labor movement has long faced serious challenges to organization. A growing, largely migrant ur- Resisting Testimony ban workforce has bolstered Turkey’s status as one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Large profit margins in By Emma Quail, NES ‘14 the construction and industrial export sectors have been Tahrir is less a square and more an assemblage of expansive roads held together by the maintained through the repression of labor movements congestion of taxis, people, and mini-buses. In the weeks leading up to the military coup that seeking to raise the minimum wage, shorten long working ousted president Mohamed Morsi in summer 2013, the square lay in disarray—remnants of old days, and rectify abysmal work safety conditions. protest tents, life-sized effigies representing the SCAF (Supreme Council of The Armed Forces) hanging from traffic lights, and burnt out fire pits. In an apartment just down the street along Despite these conditions, the past few years have seen a small alley with a few kiosks, I met Matar Suleiman and his friends, huddled over laptops a rise in militant labor activism. The convergence in re- editing refugee testimony videos. Only the top two floors of the building are lived in—the rest cent years of leftists, labor unions, and pious youth or- Image courtesy of Nate Christensen is used as a storage facility for various kinds of merchandise. Matar and his friend Badr are ganized under the banner of an “Anti-Capitalist Muslim Tents in Gezi Park. Sudanese refugees and political activists living in Cairo. Matar is 31 years old, from Zalingei, a Youth” has signaled a break with the politics of the ruling A week into my stay a popular movement rose up against town in Western Sudan and the capital of the state of Central Darfur. He is a serious man, tall Justice and Development Party’s “capitalism with ablu- the abuses of this so-called “urban renewal.” Mass demon- and muscular, with a long scar just above his left eyebrow: tough looking. He wears a navy blue tions,” advocating in its place an Islamic conception of strations, marches, and clashes between police and youth in t-shirt and beige khaki pants. Badr is in his late 20s and is also a refugee from central Darfur. social justice rooted in a class-based understanding of the streets became a daily occurrence. I became a frequent Turkey’s economic development. visitor to Gezi Park, the center of the protests and an incred- Egypt is home to four million Sudanese refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented res- ible experiment in participatory democracy. At its height, the idents, in a country of 80 million. Refugees in Egypt do not have access to free education, The contours of Turkey’s rapidly expanding economy and revolutionary community in the Park ran free libraries, a radio housing, employment, citizenship or health care. The United Nations High Commissioner for the push back against the exploitation and dispossession station, day-care centers, and community gardens. Striking Refugees is the main governing body over refugees in Egypt, as the state rescinded its respon- it causes were readily apparent upon my arrival in Istanbul. workers joined university students in political conversations sibility in 1992. The UNHCR provides a negligible service to refugees, especially from Sudan. With construction cranes scraping the skyline everywhere I lasting through the night. Istanbul’s streets and parks be- Racial discrimination, at a state and societal level, leads to arbitrary arrests and harassment on turned, the city seemed to be in the process of reinventing came my most effective classroom, and I am eternally grate- the street. In the midst of this, refugees like Matar have engaged in resistance to the UNHCR itself. Hip boutiques and cafes lined streets that were once ful for the opportunity to learn Turkish through studying this and Egypt’s state apparatus through demonstrations, video production, and publishing stories. home to the city’s working classes, demonstrating the ef- incredible experiment in participatory democracy. During my research in Cairo, I discovered that testimonial narratives are forced upon refugees fects of displacement and gentrification. by neoliberal entities such as the United Nations. Sudanese refugees not only resist this control but also struggle for their refugee rights in a state undergoing a political transition.

26 Experiences Experiences 27 Aqsa Khalid will join the Kevorkian Center in Fall 2014. Aqsa obtained a Bachelor of Science in Economics, with honors, from Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. Her research explores the juxtaposition of past In Fond Memory of Falak Sufi and present socio-cultural norms in the Middle East and South Asia, especially pertaining to the role and position of women. Her interests have led her to probe further into women’s narratives as depicted in Near Eastern history, literature, film, and folklore.

Scholarships and Essay Prize Kevorkian also awarded the sixth annual Falak Sufi Memorial Essay Prize that recognizes originality and promise in M.A. scholarship in April 2014 to Sarah Yozzo ‘14. An honorable mention went to Nate Christensen ‘14.

In her Falak Sufi winning research paper “Producing Intifada: Security Narratives and Imagined Social Identities,” Falak Sufi was born in Pakistan in 1983. She Sarah examines the controversy surrounding the Khalil Gebran Academy in Brooklyn and, perhaps most famous- ly, its principal Debbi Montassar. Sarah used her own research in the school and among its students and other possessed a generous heart, the urge to engage Arab American children in the NY public education system to illustrate the ways that the controversy operated within the context of the “War on Terror” and its production of “good” and “dangerous” US citizens. She thought with and change the world, and a brilliantly through this fieldwork using literature on the state, on surveillance, and on power, and succeeded in writing a original, vivacious mind. She graduated from tight and well-written article on the ideological spaces of the “War on Terror” and the subjects that it produces.

the National University of Singapore with first In his research paper, “Tribalism, the ‘War on Terror,’ and the State in Yemen,” Nate studied the ways in which tribalism has been researched, (re)constructed and circulated in studies and policies related to Yemen. Nate class honors in Political Science. While young, related the academic development of “tribalism” as a trope, to its circulation in policy and war-making worlds. In doing so, Nate provided a fresh and innovative perspective to a field of inquiry that has preoccupied researchers she began to publish the work that showed of the Arabian Peninsula for decades. her great gifts and talent. Among her interests

were women and gender in South Asia, the Image courtesy of Maham Javaid Maham Javaid spent part of her summer in Bannu filming a documentary historiography of this region, and the strength about the displaced people from North Waziristan.

of the humanities. However, no list can capture his year, two Falak Sufi scholars are enrolled in our pro- A number of outstanding essays were submitted for competition, including (in alphabetical order): gram. Maham Javaid who joined the Kevorkian Center in the range of subjects about which she thought, T Brooke Fisher, ‘15: “Understanding the Arab Revolts: A Reimagining of Public Space” Fall 2013, will return in September to finish her degree. A grad- Gina Hakim, ‘15: “Rabaa al-Adawiya and Egyptian Military Chauvinism” uate of Lahore University of Management Sciences, Javaid is spoke and wrote. She was a much beloved, Maham Javaid, ‘15: “Approaching Lebanese Sectarianism through Indian Communalism” studying patriarchal norms and gender-based violence in so- Adam LoBue, ‘14: “Utopian Urbanism in the Gulf: Dubai in Comparative Perspective” cieties where the War on Terror is being waged. She spent her deeply admired graduate student in Near Emma Quail, ‘14: “Decolonizing Solidarities: Third Worldism and Indigenous Movement in Settler Colonial States” summer in Pakistan working in the Opinion/Editorial section of Eva Schreiner, ‘14: “Rawabi- A New City for ‘New Palestinians’?” Eastern Studies at New York University when she DAWN newspaper in Karachi. Additionally she spent time in Ella Wind, ‘15: “Brigade as Brand: Liquid Capital, YouTube Video, and the Syrian Civil War” Bannu in Khyber Pakhtunkwa where she filmed a documen- died tragically in Spring 2008. With the generous tary about the displacement of people from North Waziristan. support of her family, Kevorkian has awarded an She has also been freelancing for Pakistani as well as inter- Applications for next year’s scholarship will arrive in Fall 2014, and the essay prize competition will national publications. After completing her M.A., Javaid envi- take place in Spring 2015. The Hagop Kevorkian Center remains indebted to the family of Falak Sufi for annual scholarship in honor of her memory. sions embarking on a career in journalism in Pakistan. supporting this recognition of outstanding M.A. candidates and their writings.

28 Student News Student News 29 MA Student News: Class of 2015 MA Student News: Class of 2014

Sara Abi Saab: This summer, I arship to study the Farsi and Tajiki in Iran where I will be visiting Anna Reumert: Happy to join Sara Afzal: As a Global Journal- movements in the Middle East, but East, while polishing my classical Matthew Greene: I do not have will be the project coordinator dialects of Persian. friends and family. Additionally, the Near Eastern team as a trans- ism student, I enjoyed the two very am looking forward to the opportuni- and modern Arabic skills over the any set plans for the remainder of for the LEAP program in Bourj I hope to conduct some field- ferring student! I will be spend- vigorous years at the Kevorkian ty to put into practice the knowledge whole academic year. This sum- the summer or the immediate fu- El Shamaleh refugee camp in Jeff Eamon: My first year at the work and archival research, while ing most of my summer at Ahlan Center. I am working on publishing I gained at the Kevorkian Center. mer, I seek to apply the learned ture. I still live in New York City and Tyre, South Lebanon. I will also Hagop Kevorkian Center was checking out the art and cultural Language Center in Alexandria, my long-form journalistic thesis pa- knowledge into practice and con- I am currently looking into future begin conducting interviews for very rewarding. This summer, I scene in Tehran. Egypt, improving my Arabic. In the per on middle class youth culture Matthew Coogan: This year I tinue further research on my thesis employment options. I hope to find my thesis, speaking to members will be traveling to Lebanon to fall, I will start planning my thesis, and urban space in Tehran, Iran. completed my MA after writing my related to “bank interest debates myself abroad sometime soon or of the Druze community of Leb- do an intensive Arabic course Maham Javaid: After complet- some of which might include field- I will continue to live in New York, thesis on the history of foreign in- in Islam after 19th century.” During continue living in the area. anon about reincarnation, and at the American University of ing my first year at the Kevork- work in Beirut this coming winter. and report on the Middle East from tervention in Syria. I am currently this summer in New York City, I also how their experiences impact fa- Beirut with funding from the ian Center I flew to Pakistan for afar. I am actively freelance writing working as the Program Assistant plan to attend academic events Adam LoBue: I am currently look- milial relations and their political David S. Dodge Arabic Fund. the summer. I am working in Ella Wind: I was a FLAS fellow in for PolicyMic and The Guardian. on the University of Virginia’s sum- along with visiting different parts ing for full time employment, pri- affiliations. The highlight of my first year the Opinion/Editorial section of Turkish and began my study of mer Arabic program in Irbid Jor- of the United States of American to marily in New York City but also was attending the many great DAWN Newspaper in Karachi Turkish, which I will continue this Margaretha Blignaut: This year, I dan. Once that concludes, I plan enhance my understanding of the exploring opportunities in other Yasmine Al-Sayyad: I am cur- guest lectures at the Center and I will continue to freelance for summer at Boğaziçi University in completed my master’s thesis on on doing some traveling in the re- vast American way of life. After ac- cities in the U.S. and abroad. rently working as a Junior Re- and, of course, getting to know Pakistani as well as international Istanbul. Throughout the year, I the genetic studies of the Roma gion and returning to New York to complishing my academic and rec- I hope to be able to find a po- searcher at the UNDP Bureau of a whole new set of colleagues publications over the summer. continued my work as a co-editor and the implications for this line of find full-time employment. reational agendas here, I will return sition in either the non-profit or Arab States helping with the re- and professors. Next year I plan for the Syria page on Jadaliyya, scientific inquiry for the production to Turkey for a length of time. academic fields, particularly view process for the Arab Human to do an internship alongside Hannah Lawrence: This sum- in addition to a project with the of a Roma ethnicity for the purpos- Cevat Dargin: During my second pertaining to the social sciences Development Report and new re- my studies and get to know the mer, I will be a research intern Arab Council for the Social Sci- es of medical and state interven- year at Kevorkian Center, in addi- Tom Finn: With generous funding and especially something litera- gional project on women partici- bars and restaurants in the city at the Center for Economic and ences building an online informa- tion in Roma communities across tion to Persian language courses, I from the UK/US Fulbright com- ture related. I had a really pos- pation in the public sphere. I will even better. Social Rights (CESR) in Brooklyn. tion and legal resource portal for Europe and the Middle East. This completed my regular coursework mission and the Kevorkian Center itive collaboration with my two be traveling to Egypt in August to I’m hoping to pursue another in- Syrian refugees summer, I will continue to work on and wrote my thesis titled “Politics I was able to complete my MA in thesis readers, professors ASLı start reporting for my thesis. Brooke Fisher: This summer I ternship this fall, and use both ex- my language skills as I prepare to of Historiography and the De-His- Near Eastern Studies and Journal- IĞSıZ and Hala Halim, and after will be staying in New York where periences as a basis for my M.A. Keenan Wilder: This summer I enter the Anthropology PhD pro- toricization of Kurdistan” under ism. This summer I will be working receiving positive feedback and Thalia Beaty: I will be studying I will be working at the Kevorki- thesis. Thanks to the generosity am continuing my Arabic studies gram at Harvard in the fall. I hope to the advisory of Micheal Gilsenan at ABC News’ London bureau, trav- encouragement from them, I am Arabic in Tunis this summer on a an Center. I will also be studying of the FLAS program and the at the Qalam wa Lawh institute in continue to my work on both Turkey and Nahid Mozaffari. Working as elling to Estonia for a reporting trip also going to be submitting my FLAS and conducting interviews Arabic at the Lebanese American Kevorkian Center, I am grateful Rabat, Morocco. I received fund- and the Roma in the years to come. an Outreach Assistant under the and pitching my thesis ‘Mothers thesis for publication, hopefully in for my thesis. I plan to write about University campus in New York. and excited to continue my sec- ing for this summer both from supervision of Greta Scharnweber of the Revolution: Yemeni Women the Science Fiction Studies jour- the continuing problem of unem- ond year as a fellow in Arabic. FLAS and from Qalam Wa Lawh’s Alex Boodrookas: Next year I’ll has been a great experience. The and the Arab Revolt’ to magazines. nal. I am planning on applying to ployment in Tunisia three years Gina Hakim: This summer I will own scholarship program. be starting the joint History and upcoming year will be a break in I plan to return to the Middle East PhD programs in the near future, after its political revolution. I in- be working as a teacher’s aide Adnan Moussa: This summer I Middle Eastern & Islamic Stud- my formal studies. I will be working, in the fall to continue working as either in Comparative Literature terned in the news room at WNYC in a junior school located in Pas- am studying Persian at Arizona Boya Xu: After a great year at ies Ph.D. program here at NYU. writing, and traveling in and around freelance reporter there. or Cultural Studies; depending this past semester and hope to adena, California while explor- State University, and conduct- Kevorkian Center, I am intern- I’m looking forward to many more New York. Working with Maya Mik- on how fruitful my current job continue working in radio. ing the topic of education pol- ing preliminary research for my ing at UNRWA this summer until years in the department. dashi to create a Kurdistan page on Sherin Gerami: In my second search goes, I may end up ap- icy and reform in North Africa. thesis topic, which tentatively August. I will mostly be doing Jadaliyya, and with my dear friends year, I focused on my PhD ap- plying sooner rather than later. Fi- Belle Cheves: My first year at Kevo Additionally, I will be traveling to examines transnational move- research and attend meetings Nathan Christensen: Having been Shima Houshyar and Rustin Zarkar plications and thesis while I nally, I am really looking forward as a FLAS fellow was incredible. I’m Cairo, Egypt in order to contin- ments between Lebanese and concerning Palestinian refugee involved in student-labor solidarity to publish pieces on Ajem Media continued working for the Ira- to catching up on my non-school looking forward to next year and ue my research. Iranian Shi’ite communities. I issues, especially with regard to work at NYU for the last two years, Collective stands as the potential nian Studies Initiative. After two related reading and attaining a continuing to study modern Iranian hope that with Persian added the Syria crisis. I’m hoping to use I am now working with the labor exiting side of the year. intense but rewarding years at semi-normal sleep schedule. history. This summer, however, I am Shima Houshyar: Having fin- to my research skills, I will gain this summer to read more about movement here in NYC. As I transi- the Kevorkian center, I am plan- very excited to spend two months in ished an amazing first year at the access to more material, thus the Gulf for future research. I’m tion away from the Academic Life, I Recep Erkmen: In the fall semes- ning on traveling this summer Molly Oringer: For my Master’s Tajikistan on my second State De- Kevorkian Center, I am looking helping to shed more light on my interested in the relation between hope to continue writing about Ye- ter, I intensely focused on analyzing before starting my PhD at Uni- Thesis, I explored narratives of in- partment Critical Language Schol- forward to spending my summer specific direction. the Gulf and the Pacific Asia. men, the “War on Terror,” and social the political sociology of the Middle versity of Toronto. digeniety and consumption in dias-

30 Student News Student News 31 Ilker Hepkaner: My first year at MEIS has been prehensive exams. In the spring, I presented the United Arab Emirates.” pora tourism to Israel under the guidance of Maya Mikdashi. I am currently am going to spend this summer in Turkey and have some rest before very exciting. I presented a paper on Turkish au- papers on the readings and receptions of am- working as a development associate and grant writer at the World Cares the PhD as much as political agenda of Turkey allows. thor Sabahattin Ali at MESA 2013 in New Orle- biguity in the Maqamat of al-Hariri at the annual Susynne McElrone: I was abroad for the Center in New York City, an organization that helps to train first responders in ans, and I co-organized a seminar on “Right to meeting of the American Comparative Literature fall of 2013. In September, I had an article low-income communities, thus lessening their reliance on NGOs and govern- Eva Schreiner: While studying Arabic at AUB in Lebanon last summer I Untranslatability” with David Gramling from the Association and at the Northeast meeting of published in Jerusalem Quarterly. Exploring ment agencies. I plan to apply to doctoral programs in anthropology this fall. became interested in Beirut’s urban layout and what it has to do with the University of Arizona at ACLA 2014. We will be the Modern Language Association. As for the mobility in the late-Ottoman Palestinian rural ongoing violence in the city. I then wrote my thesis on the (re)construction co-editing an issue from the proceedings of the summer of 2014, NYU awarded me a predoc- sphere, this article argues that there is a need Jackson Perry: In January of my second year, thanks to a grant from the of Downtown Beirut in terms of its neoliberal goals and establishing the area seminar for Critical Multilingualism Studies Jour- toral research fellowship to conduct manuscript to go beyond the traditional approach to his- Kevorkian Center, I conducted research in the Rome archives of the Food as a security zone. I want to continue pursuing questions around urban nal of the University of Arizona. An excerpt from research in support of my dissertation project, torical non-urban studies, which has tended and Agriculture Organization of the UN. This research was the basis for space and will apply for both jobs and PhD programs in the field. But first, my co-translation of Sabahattin Ali’s novel “The which focuses on the extensive commentarial to view villages as dependent satellites of ur- my master’s thesis, titled ‘Planting the State: the FAO forestry division in this summer will be about relaxing, traveling and becoming a Yoga teacher. Madonna in the Fur Coat” with Dr. Gramling was practices surrounding medieval literary texts, ban centers. In October, I was invited to give mid-20th century Morocco.’ I plan to continue my studies in Middle East- published in Transit Journal of UC Berkeley. In particularly the Maqamat of al-Hariri. I also re- a presentation at Tel Aviv University. This talk ern environmental history at Georgetown University this fall. Omer Shah: I will be starting my PhD in Anthropology at Columbia Univer- summer, I made a short research trip to Pales- ceived a summer FLAS fellowship to pursue ad- was on Bedouin as part of late-Ottoman so- sity in the fall, where I will continue my research on the hajj. For the summer, tine/Israel for my project on Turkish migration to vanced Arabic study in Morocco. ciety in southern Palestine, one of the foci of Emma Quail: During summer 2013, I spent a month conducting research I plan to work in the non-profit sector and continue studying Arabic. Israel. I also taught “The Emergence of the Mod- my dissertation-in-progress on the social his- for my MA thesis on Sudanese resistance in Egypt, focusing on the co- ern Middle East” course during Summer. Shimrit Lee: During the 2013-2014 academic tory of Hebron and the Hebron region in the lonial legacies of race and domination in the United Nations High Com- Sarah Yozzo: During the past academic year, I continued my work as year, I presented a paper and co-organized a long nineteenth century. I returned to NYU for missioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I am now working as a researcher for Youth Program Assistant at the Arab-American Family Support Center, Aaron Jakes: I plan to submit and defend my panel at the American Comparative Literature the Spring 2014 semester and now continue the labor union UNITE HERE in New York City, which fights for low-wage while organizing the Arabic conversation hour and working alongside dissertation, entitled “State of the Field: Agrarian Association annual meeting, and published a to write my dissertation stateside. At the end workers’ rights in the hotel, gaming and food service industries. Gayatri Kumar and Greta Scharnweber to coordinate a political satire film Transformation, Colonial Rule, and the Politics of paper in the Northern Ireland Legal Quarter- of February, I was an invited presenter at the series. My thesis, entitled “Producing Intifada: Security Narratives and Material Wealth in Egypt, 1882-1914,” at the end of ly on the use of oral history as a method for New Directions in Palestinian Studies con- Brooke Reynolds: I will be continuing my research on prison hunger Imagined Social Identities,” focused on the multiplicity of ways in which August 2014. I will spend the 2014-15 academic feminist legal theory. My oral history project ference organized by Beshara Doumani.and strikes and confinement, and searching for ways to more deeply incor- Islamophobia, implicated within state security narratives that target Ar- year as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Mid- with Israeli and Palestinian women is currently hosted by Brown University. This spring I was porate healing arts into political resistance. abs and Muslims, manifests itself in media, word of mouth, and the inner dle East Studies at George Washington Universi- featured in the Centre of Contemporary Visual selected to present my research findings on workings of institutions such as schools, that cumulatively affect the lives ty, and in the fall of 2015 I will begin a tenure-track Arts in Bordeaux, France. I also published a late-Ottoman, southern Palestinian Bedouin Elif Sari: I graduated with my MA in Near Eastern studies after complet- of Yemeni youth in Brooklyn. Since graduating, I have been working as appointment as assistant professor of history at review of the Arab Film Festival in Mashallah at the biennial CIEPO conference in Buda- ing my thesis on queer refugees in Turkey. Starting from next semester, I the Program Coordinator for AAFSC’s summer camp and preparing to the New School University. During the 2013-14 News and a film review of the Israeli documen- pest in October 2014. will pursue my PhD in Anthropology at Cornell University. I will also con- move to Nablus, where I will be teaching a Literature class to high school academic year, I held a dissertation completion tary “Women/Pioneers” in Jadaliyya. This sum- tinue working as Media Roundup co-editor at Jadaliyya Turkey Page. I students at a baccalaureate school for the coming year. fellowship from the American Council of Learned mer, I will study Arabic at the Qasid Institute in Amir Moosavi: During the 2013-14 academic Societies as well as a Global Research Initiative Jordan on a FLAS Fellowship. year I worked as Visiting Instructor of Arabic fellowship at NYU Washington DC. Alongside at Bard College, teaching Arabic language work on the final chapters of my dissertation, this Matthew MacLean: In addition to completing courses as well as a course on the topic of PhD Student News spring I presented papers at two workshops, both my exams and advancing to PhD candidate war and writing in modern Middle Eastern lit- of which I helped to organize. The first was a pa- status, this year I was awarded the Association eratures in translation. I plan on spending the per entitled “Debugging the Colonial State: Cater- for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Gradu- summer of 2014 at NYU-London’s Dissertation Dena Al-Adeeb: I am a fourth year doctorate stu- it titled “The Space Between,” a collaboration at the international symposium Navigating the pillars, Imperial Agrarianism, and the Contradic- ate Paper Prize at MESA for a paper I complet- Writing Program and then participate in a sum- dent in the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies between Mana Contemporary and Lelia Heller Tides: Urban Transformations in the Arab World tions of Commercial Geography in Egypt,” which ed in Maya Mikdashi’s seminar. In addition to mer workshop entitled “Conflict and Mobility department at New York University, Culture and Gallery. In 2014, “The Taste of Pomegranates” organized by The Yale Arab Alumni Associa- I prepared for a workshop on Critical Agrarian presenting at MESA, I will be presenting at the in the City: Urban Space, Youth and Social Representation track with a focus in Arts Politics. was performed at Mana Contemporary and is tion in association with the American University Studies held at UC Berkeley in March 2014. The Gulf Research Meeting in Cambridge, UK, and Transformations” held in Rabat and sponsored I completed my first comprehensive exam in currently being edited for a video art project. My of Beirut. During the 2013-14 academic year second paper “Fields of Finance: Credit, Colonial the World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies in by the Berlin-based Europe in the Middle East, 2013. I am currently working on my second com- first solo in New York, “Architecture of Memory” I was based in Berlin, hosted at the Zentrum Rule, and the Making of Egypt’s Economic Boom, Ankara, Turkey this August. My review of Abdel Middle East in Europe (EUME) program. prehensive exam and dissertation prospectus. premiered at MECA at Mana Contemporary. Moderner Orient (ZMO). I presented my work 1897-1907” was presented at the New Directions Razzaq Takriti’s book Monsoon Revolution was My publications for 2013-2014 include “Visual on multiple occasions including a lecture at the in Political Economy workshop held at Kevo/MEIS published in Arabian Humanities, and I have Jennifer Varela: During the 2013-2014 ac- Arts and Artists: North America,” Encyclopedia Mohamed Elshahed: Last year I presented my ZMO, and another at the Forum Transregionale in April 2014. two forthcoming book reviews in peer-reviewed ademic year I co-organized a panel and pre- of Women and Islamic Cultures, Brill Press, as research at several public events as an invited Studien, where I was a fellow for the year. I was journals. Next year I will be based at NYU-Abu sented at the American Comparative Literature well as “Migratory Sacred Spaces: Re (Creating) speaker. In May 2013 I was invited to participate also on a panel titled “Art between History and Matthew Keegan: During the 2013 - 2014 ac- Dhabi, where I received a fellowship to conduct Association conference and was invited to give ‘Ashura,” We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in in the sixth edition of Home Works, the interdis- Practice” which was part of the conference Ar- ademic year, I completed my second year of research for my dissertation, the working title a lecture at the University of Toronto. Having a Time of War Anthology, Nadje Al-Ali and Debo- ciplinary Forum on Cultural Practices organized eas and Disciplines: Lessons from Internation- coursework in premodern Arabic literature and of which is “Infrastructures and Identities: The completed my coursework, this summer I will rah Al-Najjar, eds. Syracuse: Syracuse University by Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon. During that alization Initiatives in the Humanities and Social Islamic studies while also preparing for my com- Transformation of Space and the Formation of be preparing for my comprehensive exams. Press. In 2013, I participated in a group exhib- month I was also an invited speaker in Doha Sciences in Germany.

32 Student News Student News 33 “I learned so much about a part of the world that had been a gap in my students’ study of the Silk Road. The fabled cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva are truly wonderful. A trip to Central Asia was incredibly exciting and enlightening. Our guide, Lazig, was great, and the two NYU professors who accompanied us really added a lot to the whole experience.” A Journey on the Great Silk Road Barbara Moore, Grade 6, English and History

“I’m amazed by the incredible diversity and the different wares of the people who have moved through A Study Tour of Uzbekistan this region. This diversity will allow me to incorporate the culture and history of Uzbekistan in multiple units in my World History course ranging from the Silk Road to Tamerlane and the Mongols.”

In July 2014 the Kevorkian Center Chi-Ann Lin, Grades 9-12, Global and East Asian Studies teamed up with the Global Exploration “Participation on this trip has enabled me to better prepare my students with an understanding of how Uzbekistan was indeed the “cradle of civilization” and a crossroads of Khans, cultures, and for Educators Organization (GEEO) to cuisines. A must do for any teacher of ancient history of literature! host an outreach trip for K-12 teachers to Elizabeth Graf, Grades 10-12, Literature Uzbekistan. Masha Kirasirova (MEIS, ‘13) “Traveling on the Heart of the Silk Road trip with GEEO allowed me to experience Central Asian history and culture in a way that brings to life the knowledge that I’ve gained from books. This allows my lessons in and Maurice Pomerantz, faculty members World History about this region of the world to become more meaningful. My students will benefit tremen- dously from the information provided by my guide, images I took and mementos I brought home to share.” at NYU Abu Dhabi, served as Academic Cassie Elliot, Grades 9-12, History, Government and Economics Directors. The trip focused on the history of Images courtesy of Donald Starr “This opportunity to travel the same path as previous travelers will allow me to present facts about cultures, Top: Poi Kalyan Mosque complex in Bukhara. Bottom: Gur Emir Mausoleum in Samarkand. the Silk Road, highlighting the importance and customs to my students that will enhance their knowledge of differences from the past to the future. of Central Asia as a crossroads of empires, Carol McCormick, Special Education Diagnostician trade and religion. Professor Pomerantz’s “Being in Uzbekistan was a unique experience. One can see the ancient, medieval, and modern histories side by side, and all three have combined to form modern Uzbek identity. There is much I will take back to my classes from this trip, particularly ancient and medieval glo- Image courtesy of Arthur Starr scholarship on pre-modern Arabic A group of teachers traveled to Uzbekistan to learn about balization via the Silk Road as well as better understanding of Islam in Central Asia. These are just two of the many new ideas that I might culture, religion, history, and literature. include in my future courses. This was an enlightening trip and I have become richer for it.” Literature and Islamicate Literary cultures Nandini Sinha, Grades 9-12, Global History as well as Professor Kirasirova’s work on “The Great Silk Road was not one continuous route from China to Rome from a set time in history but rather a nexus of encounters driven by the history of exchanges between Soviet commerce, empire, exploration, science, and religion, in short every human activity between and among a myriad of cultural centers both proximate and far-flung lasting variously for generations, reigns, centuries, and in some cases millennia.” Eurasia and the Middle East added context Philip Scharper, Grades 6-8, Assistant Principal and additional knowledge to the tour as the “It was fascinating to travel along some of the exact routes that were traversed by caravans hundreds of years ago. The monuments were truly group traveled from Tashkent to the ancient beautiful and relayed the power that various rulers held over the centuries. It is amazing that the ancient trading centers of Khiva, Samarkand, Image courtesy of Donald Starr and Bukhara continue to flourish as centers that capture many of the elements of the Silk Road. I enjoyed the sights, food, landscape, and cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. Sunset in Bukhara. meeting many friendly and warm Uzbeks. The homestay with the Uzbek family and the yurt stay in Kyzyl Kum desert allowed me to experience the Silk Road as many traders along the Silk Road experienced it. The extreme heat helped to de-romanticize many aspects of the Silk Road. I have gathered an immense amount of information and images which I will utilize to enrich my unit on the Silk Road.” Fazeela Scharper, Grades 9-12, History and Government

34 Teacher Training Teacher Training 35 Faculty News

Benoit Challand: The highlight of my last into American society. This summer like ev- at Abydos. We now have the first volume and an undergraduate course based on an research in the coming year! course that I designed for the Spring 2014 year was the publication of a special is- ery summer for the past seven years, I am ready to go into production at with Lock- article I published on the Gezi Park protests. semester, “Politics of the Persian Gulf across sue I guest-edited for Constellations - An participating as an instructor in the Summer wood Press. Eventually, we hope to have Throughout the year, I have continued to work Phillip Kennedy: This year was spent on the the Twentieth Century.” Last, but not least, I International Journal of Critical and Dem- Arabic Program organized jointly by The a two volume work containing large-scale on my book manuscript on the limits of liber- Library of Arabic Literature editing and trans- culminated my tenure as the Department’s ocratic Theory and which came out last University of Virginia and Yarmouk Univer- plates, photographs, and commentary. We al multiculturalism and the recollection of the lation project for pre-modern texts. We were Director of Undergraduate Studies which has September. The focus is on “Social Theory sity in Irbid, Jordan. also wrote a joint article on our preliminary 1923 Greek-Turkish exchange of religious successful in renewing the grant for a further kept me busy for much of the last four years. and the Arab Uprisings”, with seven contri- findings that appeared in the most recent minorities in contemporary Turkey. A portion five years. I carried on through the year over- While I will miss advising with all our majors butions (with, among others, articles from Sibel Erol: Turkish classes had the expe- issue of Journal of the American Research of this work will be published as an article in seeing the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute’s public and minors as an advisor, I am looking for- Mohammed Bamyeh, Armando Salvatore, rience of having two different teachers this Center in Egypt (JARCE). In addition, the CSSAAME. This year, I also taught a gradu- outreach program as Vice Provost. In my ca- ward to returning to a regular teaching load. Melika Zeghal, and Charles Tripp), and year. After teaching them in the fall my- Festschrift for Dorothea Arnold, the former ate seminar on the subject. In the fall, I will be pacity as host of these events I was lucky to which analyzes aspects of the 2011 revo- self, I left my students in the expert hands curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan teaching two new courses: “East/West? Poli- meet some great luminaries in various fields. Zachary Lockman: During the 2013-2014 lutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria. of Bilge Ozel in the spring while I was on Museum of Art, which I have been co-ed- tics of Cultural Representation and the Middle A book I coedited with Marina Warner ap- academic year, I taught two undergraduate This publication gave me also the chance leave. I had two pieces published last year: iting is finally with the printer. It will have East” and “Repertoires of Cultural Represen- peared in the Fall, entitled Scheherazade’s courses and two graduate courses. My abil- to present my own research at 20th anni- one, an essay entitled “Turkish Literature” close to sixty articles and it is expected to tation and the Middle East: Civilization, Hu- Children: Global Encounters with the Arabian ity to devote time to my research project on versary conference for Constellations (New in the award-winning Oxford Encyclopedia appear later this year. manism, and Branding the Nation.” This year, Nights. In May this received a full page re- the history of Middle East studies in the Unit- School for Social Research, New York, 25- of Women and Islam, and a book review I have continued to serve on the MESA Com- view in the TLS which I hope will encourage ed States more or less came to an end when 27 April 2014). My intervention focused on of Moris Farhi’s Journey Through the Wil- Hala Halim: In the fall 2013 semester, I had mittee on Academic Freedom as one of the adoption of the volume in the classroom. My classes resumed in September 2013, but the meaning of “representation”, both as derness, and Children of the Rainbow in the pleasure of teaching “Third Worldism: two scholars responsible for reporting griev- project on anagnorisis has transmogrified I did manage to get to Washington D.C. in in the Saidian sense of a discursive tech- The Turkish Studies Association Journal. Bandung, Afro-Asianness and the Mid- ances in Turkey. into a three volume series. I am currently pre- January 2014 to conduct some additional re- nique, and in the political sense of political I gave a talk in Turkish on Orhan Pamuk’s dle East”. Building on previous research, paring a prospectus for the three volumes for search at the Library of Congress. I delivered delegation, and generated rich exchanges “Istanbul” at the Department of Near East- the course sounded out the period that Marion Katz: In the fall I gave papers on “’Or- my editors at Edinburgh University Press. the Wadie Jwaideh Memorial Lecture at Indi- with scholars not automatically versed into ern Studies at Princeton University in De- begins with Bandung (1955) and contin- phaned’ Manuscripts and the Reconstruction ana University in October. Closer to home, Middle Eastern studies. cember. In January, in Washington, D.C., ues through the Tricontinental Conference of Pre-Modern Islamic Legal History” and “The Arang Keshavarzian: During Fall 2013, I was I helped organize a workshop on “New Di- I served as a panelist on the standard (1966) on its relationship to postcolonial Ethical Body and the Gendered Body in the occupied with various writing projects and rections in Political Economy,” held at NYU Medhat Credi: In addition to my regular setting panel for the Turkish Reading and theory and legacies of South-South com- Qur’an” at the American Academy of Religion continued my research on the Persian Gulf in in April with generous funding from both the courses during this academic year, I was Listening Proficiency Test administered by paratism—avenues of investigation that annual meeting in Baltimore. The second fed the long-twentieth century. Among my publi- Kevorkian Center and the Center for Middle contacted by a student at Parsons The New the American Councils of International Edu- yielded rich papers by the students. That into a new undergraduate seminar on Islam cations this year was an essay published in Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. Last School for Design who was making a short cation. My term as a member on the IJMES semester was also a turning point for me as and the Body that I offered for the first time this the Arab Studies Journal that critically exam- but not least, I continued to serve as chair of documentary about second-language ac- editorial board continues. I’m delighted that it marked the publication of my first book, spring. Also in the spring, I gave talks on my ined several works pondering authoritarian re- the North America wing of MESA’s Commit- quisition for her class assignment. She we will be joined by a Fulbright assistant Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism: An Archive research on the history of women’s usage of silience in the Middle East. I also co-authored tee on Academic Freedom, which produced wanted to visit one of my Arabic classes from Turkey in next year’s Turkish classes. (Fordham University Press). It was a delight mosque space at the University of Denver and an essay, forthcoming in Economy and Soci- numerous letters regarding threats to and and asked if it would be possible for her to engage with a panel of four colleagues at Princeton (the book is due out from Columbia ety, with Narges Erami that marries our ethno- violations of the principles of academic free- to film during class. I accepted and also Ogden Goelet: With the end of the spring from different disciplines discussing the University Press in September). I also had the graphic research on bazaars in post-revolu- dom in the United States and Canada. appeared in a short interview in the vid- term, I am beginning a phased retirement book at a launch event hosted by the Hu- opportunity to present a paper on “Reconfig- tionary Iran to explore the multiple effects of eo. I was also contacted by ART Ameri- and will no longer be teaching at MEIS. manities Initiative in the fall as well as to uring Muslim Marriage: Sex as a Marital Right smuggling. A MESA panel on the production Maya Mikdashi: This year I continued as Di- ca, an Arabic TV channel that broadcasts However, I am moving my base of opera- address the Postcolonial Colloquium of the and Duty” at the Symposium on Gender and of space in the Middle East and a workshop rector of Graduate Studies at the Kevorkian throughout the United States. The chan- tions over to the Institute for the Study of English Department, NYU, about it. Sexuality in Law and Religion at the University series on Gulf cities held at the Georgetown Center. I worked with our graduating cohort nel has a weekly show called The Bridge the Ancient World where I will continue as of Michigan. The paper is part of an ongoing University campus in Doha were excellent to ensure the fulfillment of their academic and which wanted to interview me about two a Research Associate. At the same time, I ASLı IĞSıZ: Academically, 2013-2014 has project on the history of the Muslim marriage opportunities to present my analysis of spatial professional goals. I also supervised nine ex- main issues: the Arabic language taught am very pleased to report that Dr. Sameh been a very busy and exciting year. I have contract that I will be pursuing in AY 2014-15 transformations and multi-scalar political pro- cellent MA theses. In the fall I taught a gradu- in American universities and who are the Iskander (a MEIS graduate) and I are now two new courses, attended several confer- on fellowships from the Institute for Advanced cesses in the Persian Gulf under capitalism. ate seminar on the Anthropology of the State in Arab Americans, where are they coming in contract to publish the scenes and in- ences and gave invited talks. My new cours- Study and the American Council of Learned Some of these ideas, questions, and read- the Middle East, and in the spring I developed from and to what extent do they assimilate scriptions of the temple of Ramesses II es included a graduate seminar on war and Societies. I’m looking forward to plunging into ings in my research informed a new graduate and taught a seminar on the intersections and

36 Faculty News Faculty News 37 2013-2014 Events Archive impasses between Middle East Studies and Iranian constitutional period entitled “Civic on Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic and Feminist and Queer Theory. This year I also Piety: Visions of Secularity in Constitutional Indian Oceans.” I also co-organized with worked closely with Greta Scharnweber, our Iran” was published in the book Religion and Robert Stam the “Transnational Cinema/Me- associate director, to host a three-day work- Secularity edited by Lucian Holscher and dia Studies” conference in conjunction with Research Workshops From Yarkand to Sindh via Kabul Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Waleed Ziad, History, Yale University; Lale shop in partnership with the University of Cal- Marion Eggert. (Brill, 2013). In the summer, the NYU-AD Institute. On the occasion of the Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran Can, History, City College of New York (Duke University Press, 2013) by Afsaneh ifornia Humanities Research Institute on Reli- I continue to work on a book on the history 20th anniversary of Unthinking Eurocentrism, Najmabadi, History, NYU gion, Secularism, and Gender. In the Spring I of slavery in Iran and the Persian Gulf, but Routledge celebrated with a special 2nd he program’s academic cornerstone received the news that I had been awarded a I am sure that the disciplined pursuit of this edition that includes a new postscript chap- features new unpublished work by two-year Mellon postdoc grant at the Institute goal will be frequently interrupted by events ter. My published essays include: “Tropical T New Books Beyond the Two State Solution: A Jewish established and up-and-coming scholars (Polity Press, 2012) by Yehouda for Research on Women at Rutgers Univer- occurring at the World Cup in Brazil, family Orientalism: Brazil’s Race Debates and the Political Essay of the region. Promotes cross-regional Shenhav, Sociology, Tel Aviv University sity, and made the difficult decision to leave visits, and hopefully a real vacation. Sephardi-Moorish Atlantic” (with R. Stam) and interdisciplinary engagement of NYU in the Fall of 2014. I will miss working in Paul Amar’s The Middle East and Brazil; series featuring new, groundbreaking analytical issues in Middle Eastern Joyriding in Riyadh (Cambridge University with the staff, faculty, and most importantly, Everett Rowson: A highlight of the 2013-14 and “Afterword: History, Empire, Resistance” publications with relevance to the field Press, 2014) by Pascal Menoret, Arab the students, at the Kevorkian Center. academic year for me was the opportunity to (with R. Stam) in Rebecca Weaver-Hightow- Studies and beyond. A of Middle East Studies. Crossroads, NYU Abu Dhabi participate in February in a panel at the Uni- er & Peter Hulme’s Postcolonial Film: History,

Ali Mirsepassi: I was on leave for the 2013- versity of Louisville on “History and Homo- Empire, Resistance; and “In Memory of Ed- Politics of Arabic, Politics of Arabs: How To Put 2500 Years of Maghrebian The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu 2014 academic year. I spent the fall semes- sexuality in the Middle East,” which had an ward Said—the Bulletproof Intellectual” in the Early Zionist Settlement in Palestine Literature Into One Book: The Making of Nationalism and Colonial India (University ter as a visiting professor of sociology at engaged audience with lots of questions and University of Toronto Quarterly. and the Possibility of pre-1948 Mizrahi The University of California Book of North of Hawai’i Press, 2013) by Kavita Datla, the London School of Economics. I gave a was also streamed on the Internet. My mono- Intellectual History African Literature (University of California Mount Holyoke College talk at LES titled, “Social Sciences on Trial graph on homosexuality in medieval Islamic Helga Tawil-Souri: As part of a Steinhardt Moshe Behar, MES University of Manchester; Press, 2013) by Pierre Joris, SUNY Albany and in Tehran,” and another public lecture at societies is nearing completion (finally!), and Dean’s Global Honors program, my “Borders, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, History and MEIS, NYU; Nicole Peyrafitte, Performance Artist and Writer SOAS titled, “The Life and Thought Ahmad I was pleased to gain access in Krakow to a Barriers, and Buffers” class met regularly Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University

Fardid,” an Iranian conservative philoso- manuscript of a seventeenth-century Arabic throughout the Fall 2013 semester and cul- Seminars Reflections on the Academic Study of pher. I also conducted a few interviews and work condemning sodomy, one more piece minated in a ten-day trip to Israel-Palestine Indigenous Hybridity: Women and Islam: a panel discussion did some library research for my new book of a complicated and multivocal story. Aside in January 2014. The experience of seeing Dutch Colonial Legal Administration of featuring Lila Abu-Lughod, Anthropology on “Ahmad Fardid,” while in London. In No- from my teaching obligations, I also contin- in “real life” what we had analyzed in class, Arabs in the Netherlands Indies, 1860-1942 and Women’s and Gender Studies, Columbia n interdisciplinary series of vember, I gave a talk in Sophia, Bulgaria. ued to serve as one of five executive editors of translating what we read onto the compli- Nurfadzilah Yahaya, Jewish, Islamic and lectures and presentations University and author of Do Muslim Women My new book, “Islam, Cosmopolitanism, of the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Is- cated landscape in front of us, and spending Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, A Need Saving? (Harvard University Press, pertaining to the field of Middle East and Democracy,” came out late March 2014 lam, as well as one of four editors of the En- twenty-fours a day with a group of freshmen Washington University in St. Louis; Eric 2013) and Suad Joseph, Anthropology and Studies. (co-authored with Tadd Fernee), published glish translation of the works of the ninth-cen- and sophomores consumed by what they Tagliacozzo, History, Cornell University Women’s Studies, University of California, by Cambridge University Press. tury historian al-Ya`qubi, a collaborative effort were experiencing was more challenging, re- Davis and author of Women and Islamic Settler Colonialism: Then and Now which will be delivered to the press this fall, warding, exhausting, and thrilling than I had Mediating Modernities: Cultures: Disciplinary Paradigms and Mahmood Mamdani, Government and Nahid Mozaffari: In the fall of 2013, I enjoyed after a decade of work. ever imagined. Notwithstanding other events, Tribe and State in Yemen Approaches, 2003-2013 (Brill, 2013) Anthropology, Columbia University teaching a course on the modern history of classes, travels, publications, and the like, I’ll Najwa Adra, NES, NYU; Jillian Schwedler,

Iran, and on its 50th anniversary, a seminar Ella Shohat: My highlights include: Hon- remember 2013-14 for that unique teaching Political Science, Hunter College; Michael Speaking Soviet with an Accent (University Muslim Elites in the NeoLiberal Sphere: focusing on the history of the 1953 coup orable Mention in the Non-Fiction category experience. Looking towards the year ahead Gilsenan, NES, NYU of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) by Ali Igmen, Shaping Sharia in the West: Research Case against Prime Minister Mossadegh from a va- for the 2014 Arab American Book Award for as I step in as Kevorkian Center’s new direc- History, Cali State Studies from New York, London and Sydney riety of perspectives. In the spring, I taught a my co-edited volume with Evelyn Alsultany, tor, I look forward to many interactions with Narrating Gender Violence: Joshua Roose, Religion and Society Research course on the history of slavery in the Middle Between the Middle East and the Americas: Kevo students, faculty, staff, and affiliates, Arab Asylum Applicants in the United States Yellow Peril: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear Centre, University of Western Sydney East utilizing new perspectives and sources, The Cultural Politics of Diaspora. While at and am excited to continue building on and Rhoda Kanaaneh, Center for Palestinian (Verso Press, 2014) edited by Jack Tchen, and a course on the history and theoretical NYU-Abu Dhabi, I presented a paper enti- strengthening everything that makes the Cen- Studies, Columbia University; Miriam Ticktin, A/P/A Institute, NYU and Dylan Yeats, Private Space and Female Honor: Negotiating interpretations of a number of popular up- tled “The Sephardi-Moorish Atlantic” in “How ter an intellectually-invigorating, exciting, and Anthropology, The New School History, NYU risings in the Middle East. My article on the Migration Makes Meaning: A Conference welcoming place at NYU. Jewish Households in Fatimid Egypt Eve Krakowski, Judaic Studies, Yale University

38 Faculty News Events Archive 39 Writing at the Borders of Violence George Washington University Before The Spring, After the Fall: Literature, Berkeley University Iranian Studies Initiative The Paradox of Revolution: Hoda Barakat, Lebanese novelist; Sinan Rock, Rebellion, Revolution (2013) Life and Politics of Iranian Oil Workers Antoon, NYU Gallatin Against Humanitarian Intervention: Jed Rothstein, director; Mark Levine, producer Installation: Index of the Disappeared: (1978-1982) Watch this Space & Parasitic Archive Peyman Jafari, Social History, University of The Case for Syria cholarly presentations of Iran, Past Classified Memories: Trying To Try Terror Asli Bali, Law, UCLA Apples of the Golan (2012) Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani, A/P/A Amsterdam; Zachary Lockman, History and and Present, curated by Professor Suspects Who Were Tortured by the CIA Keith Walsh, co-director Institute Artists in Residence, NYU MEIS, NYU AliS Mirsepassi with a steering committee Lisa Hajjar, Sociology, University of The Lives of Muhammad: Modern With the Asian/Pacific/American Institute, NYU Californian Santa Barbara Biographies of the Prophet A Conversation with Marwan Rechmaoui, drawn from MEIS and other faculty and Kecia Ali, Religion, Boston University Visual Artist Wounds of Waziristan (2013) students with support from the Gallatin Program in The Revolution As Music: Authenticity and Marwan Rechmaoui, Artist-in-Resident, Madiha Tahir, filmmaker; Vasuki Nesiah, NYU School and Hagop Kevorkian Center. Ottoman Studies Authorship in Studying the Arab Uprisings Offshore Citizenship: The UAE’S Market Alwan for the Arts Gallatin Mark LeVine, History, UC Irvine Solution to the Problem of National Hafez and Sufi Hermeneutics Incorporation My Neighborhood (2012) Postcards from Tora Bora (2007) Daryoush Ahsouri, independent Scholar, France Public Workers, Private Properties, Noora Lori, International Affairs, Harvard Suhad Babaa, Director of Programming, Wazhmah Osman, filmmaker; Faye Ginsburg, and Ali Mirsepassi, moderator: NYU Gallatin he program in Ottoman Studies is led Visual Legacies: Slaves in ‘Ali Mubarak’s University Just Vision Center for Media, Culture and History, NYU; by Professor of History Leslie Peirce Historical Records (and how to see them) David Kriser, Anthropology, NYU Shahnameh: T

Eve Troutt Powell, History and Africana Translating the Nakba: Reading and Terrorism and Kebab (1992) The Epic of Persian Kings/Succession Intellectual Transformations in an Studies, University of Pennsylvania Writing Elias Khouri in Hebrew Directed by Sherif Arafa; Discussant: Eman 1st International Yemeni Film & Arts Festival and Charisma Imperial City: Yehouda Shenhav, Sociology, Tel Aviv Morsi, MEIS, NYU Felisa Jimenez, director of Socotra: H’er wa Hamid Rahmanian, illustrator and designer; Istanbul from the Late Ottoman to the Event, Metaphor, Memory: The Shaykh University Imshin; Ahmed Alshaiba, activist; Hamza Ahmad Sadri, Lake Forest College; Sheida Early Republican Periods Alshargabi, journalist; Tom Finn, NES, NYU; Dayani MEIS, NYU Salih al-‘Ali Revolt in Syria Between Kosher Cinema: M. Sait Özervarlı, Department of Humanities and Hamdi Mansur, filmmaker Sectarianism and Nationalism Popular Politics in the Making of the Women and Orthodox Filmmaking Social Sciences, Yıldız Technical University Max Weiss, History and Near Eastern Screening of The Pioneering Spirit of Early Persian Poetry: Modern Middle East The Dreamers (2011) Studies, Princeton University John Chalcraft, Government, London School Ayala Fader, Anthropology, Fordham; Rachel Khorasani Lyrics of the 10th and 11th The Eastern Question In the Century of of Economics Chanoff, Sundance Institute, New York Centuries Coverage in Context Questions Jewish Film Festival; Rose Waldman, MFA Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, University of Freud, Dewey, and al-Ghazali in Hashimite Holly Case, History, Cornell Student, Columbia Maryland; Arta Khakpour, MEIS, NYU; Mehdi Iraq: Pedagogies of the Unconscious and the Sciences of the Soul Khorrami, MEIS, NYU Visual Culture Series eflections on journalism and Redeeming the Sick Man of Europe: Sara Pursley, History, CUNY Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) the Middle East by journalists, An Ottoman Wax Museum in Nineteenth- Directed by Elia Suleiman; Discussant: Molly Writing Iranian Cinema History R Century London Oringer, NES, NYU academics, and other contributors to Hamid Naficy, Department of Radio/ The Meanings of Martyrdom in Ba’thist Iraq Ünver Rüstem, Art History and Archaeology, Dina Khoury, History and International series of films, presentations, public discussion about the region. Television/Film, Northwestern University; Columbia University Affairs, George Washington University performances, and exhibitions Hamid Dabashi, Middle Eastern, South Asian A Vizontele (2001) centered on visual art and media from Directed by Yilmaz Erdogan and Ömer Faruk Egypt in Flux: and African Studies, Columbia University Ottoman Dream Culture and the Dream Civil War, Radio, and Fairuz (Again): and about the modern Middle East. Sorak; Discussants: Ozan Aksoy, SCPS, Essays on an Unfinished Revolution Letters of Sultan Murad III NYU; Cevat Dargin, NES, NYU Adel Iskandar, Georgetown University; Days of Revolution: Musical Shifts in the Syrian Radioscape Ozgen Felek, Middle East and Middle East Ahmad Shokr, MEIS, NYU History, Politics, and Anthropology in an During the Crisis Gaza Strip (2002) American Center, CUNY Beau Bothwell, Music, Columbia University Helga Tawil-Souri, Media, Culture and Iranian Setting Marmoulak - The Lizard (2004) Communication, NYU Directed by Kamal Tabrizi; Discussant: Documenting Yemen’s Revolution Mary Elaine Hegland, Anthropology, Santa The Ottoman Healing Arts: Plotting the Tales of the Grammarians Shima Houshyar, NES, NYU Tom Finn, NES, NYU; Sara Ishaq and Nawal Clara University; Ali Mirsepassi, NYU Gallatin Health, Medicine, and the State David Larsen, Liberal Studies, NYU Maghafi, film directors The Law in these Parts (2012) Nukhet Varlik, History, Rutgers University-Newark Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Director Art/Violence: Gendered Spaces and the Changing Face

Commanding The Economy: The In Memory of Juliano Mer-Khamis (2013) Narrative as Violence, Narrative as of the State in Iran Egyptian Military in the Context of the Confession #1: Udi Aloni, filmmaker; Slavoj Zizek, Institute Resistance: Investigative Journalism Nazanin Sharokni, Harvard University; Arang Revolution Lecture Performance for Sociology and Philosophy, University and the War on Terror Keshavarzian, MEIS, NYU; Ali Mirespassi, Shana Marshall, Middle East Studies, Rima Najdi, NYU Tisch Alumnus of Ljubljana; Judith Butler, Comparative Matthieu Aikins, freelance journalist; Maya NYU Gallatin Mikdashi, NES, NYU; Adam Shatz NES, NYU

40 Events Archive Events Archive 41 K-16 Teacher Training Heart of The Silk Road: A is for Arab A Study Tour for Educators in Uzbekistan Masha Kirasirova, MEIS, NYU; Maurice Traveling Exhibition Pomerantz, Literature, NYUAD s mandated by our Title VI grant, K-16 workshops are hosted by the Hagop Faculty Resource Network: A owerful, accessible and compelling, A is for Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies The Middle East After the Arab Spring in collaboration with the Steinhardt School Ali Banuazizi, Political Science, Boston College PArab, which features images from the Jack of Education at New York University as G. Shaheen Archive, reveals and critiques the well as NYU’s Faculty Resource Network. NEH Summer Institute: stereotypical portrayals of Arabs and Muslims Middle and High School teachers as well as A Reverence for Words: in U.S. popular culture. Providing historical Community College faculty from the tri-state Understanding Muslim Cultures Through context about these images, which range from area regularly attend alongside teachers- Poetry & Song film stills to comic books to editorial cartoons, Jawed Mojaddedi, Religion, Rutgers; in-training from Steinhardt. The programs this traveling exhibition aims to educate and Sylviane Diouf, NY Public Library; Bruce increase the quality of Middle East-related stimulate discussion about the impact of Lawrence, Religion, Duke University stereotypes on both individual perceptions content in our region’s K-16 curriculum. and national policy. This year, the exhibit was Understanding Sharia, Then and Now featured at several universities, organizations, Intisar Rabb, MEIS and Law, NYU; Marion Jack G. Shaheen Archive and conferences. Katz, MEIS, NYU; Joshua Roose, Religion and Society Research Centre, University of Portland State University, Western Sydney Portland, Oregon YU holds the archive of media scholar Jack Shaheen, which Music, Art and Resistance: Teaching the N Arab Center of Washington, Culture of Social Movements includes over 3,000 TV shows, feature Seattle, Washington Mark LeVine, History, UC Irvine and documentary films, movie posters,

comic books, editorial cartoons, and Pope John XXIII High School Central Asian Connections: personal papers focused on stereotypes Sparta, New Jersey Crossroads of Empire, Trade, and Culture and images of Arabs and Muslims in Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, MEIS, NYU; Masha American popular culture. This year University of Virginia Kirasirova, MEIS, NYU; Lale Can, History, we hosted Dr. Shaheen on campus for Charlottesville, Virginia City College of New York two events featuring materials from the

collection: Western Illinois University Unpacking “Terrorism” Macomb, Illinois Jack Shaheen, Visiting Distinguished Archiving Stereotypes: Scholar, NYU; Malcolm Clarke, journalist and Documenting and Remaking the Images of University of Maryland filmmaker; Remi Brulin, Journalism, NYU Arabs and Muslims in U.S Popular Culture College Park, Maryland

Jack Shaheen, Visiting Distinguished On Humanitarian Intervention Scholar, NYU; Hazem Jamjoum, MEIS, NYU Indiana University Purdue University Asli Bali, Law, UCLA Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana

Terror in the Promised Land (1978) Islam and U.S. Slavery: Malcolm Clarke, filmmaker, Jack Shaheen, Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland, Ohio Cultures and Historians in Connection Visiting Distinguished Scholar, NYU; Adam Aisha Khan, Anthropology, NYU; Ala Alryyes, Shatz, NES, NYU Colby College, Waterville, Maine Affiliated Scholar, Queens College; Barbara

Petzen, President, Middle East Outreach Council Bettendorf Public Library, Bettendorf, Iowa

42 Events Archive 43 HAGOP KEVORKIAN CENTER REVIEW 2 0 1 3 / 2 0 1 4

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