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THE CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, NEWS HARVARD UNIVERSITY SPRING 2015 1 LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR A message from William Granara 2 SHIFTING TOWARDS THE ARABIAN PENINSULA Announcing a new lecture series 3 NEWS AND NOTES Updates from faculty, students and visiting researchers 12 EVENT HIGHLIGHTS Spring lectures, workshops, and conferences LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR SPRING 2015 HIGHLIGHTS I’M HAPPY TO REPORT THAT WE ARE DRAWING TO THE CLOSE OF AN ACADEMIC YEAR FULL OF ACTIVITY. CMES was honored to host a considerable number of outstanding lectures this year by eminent scholars from throughout the U.S. as well as from the Middle East and Europe. I mention only a few highlights below. Our new Middle Eastern Literatures initiative was advanced by several events: campus visits by Arab novelists Mai Nakib (Kuwait), Ahmed Khaled Towfik (Egypt), and Ali Bader (Iraq); academic lectures by a range of literary scholars including Hannan Hever (Yale) on Zionist literature and Sheida Dayani (NYU) on contemporary Persian theater; and a highly successful seminar on intersections between Arabic and Turkish literatures held at Bilgi University in Istanbul, which included our own Professor Cemal Kafadar, several of our graduate students, and myself. In early April, CMES along with two Harvard Iranian student groups hosted the first Harvard Iranian Gala, which featured a lecture by Professor Abbas Milani of Stanford University and was attended by over one hundred guests from the broader Boston Iranian community. Also in April, CMES co-sponsored an international multilingual conference on The Thousand and One Nights with INALCO, Paris. Our new Arabian Peninsula Studies Lecture Series was inaugurated with a lecture by Professor David Commins of Dickinson College, and we are happy to report that this series will continue in both the fall and spring semesters of next year thanks to the generous support of CMES alumni. Finally, we capped off the academic year in early May with our Iranian Cities conference, organized by Professor Roy Mottahedeh. I close with thoughts of hope and best wishes for all the members of the CMES community who have family and friends throughout the Middle East who have been, and continue to be, subjected to the violence and turmoil that is scarring the areas so very close to all of us. —William Granara, CMES Director ON THE COVER: “Bosphorus Crossing,” by Caroline Silber (’17) SHIFTING TOWARDS THE ARABIAN PENINSULA The following is an excerpt of an interview with CMES William Granara (left) Director William Granara about CMES’s new Arabian introduces David Commins Peninsula Studies Lecture Series. Why Arabian the study of the countries of Peninsula Studies? the Arabian Peninsula in their Over the last twenty years the courses. Our new lecture series Arabian Peninsula has grown in is the first small step in that both geopolitical and academic direction, made possible by importance. When I was a generous alumni gifts, which student twenty or thirty years we will use to bring scholars ago, the Arabian Peninsula to CMES once a semester to was essentially a footnote. For give public lectures. [David a long time Middle Eastern Commins, Professor of History studies has been thought at Dickinson College, delivered of as centering around the the series’ inaugural lecture on Mediterranean and looking up April 21, 2015.] towards Europe—both during Another factor that has the colonial and post-colonial drawn my attention to the novelist and public intellectual but also from other schools periods, the field assumed a Arabian Peninsula is that over from Saudi Arabia, together on campus. I would like to long historical connection to the last twenty years, we’ve with faculty from Harvard. encourage all of our students Western Europe. More recently seen a dramatic rise in the CMES also recently invited Mai from undergraduates to however, there has been a production of the Arabic novel Nakib, a short story writer from master’s and doctoral students major shift in Middle Eastern in the Arabian Peninsula, Kuwait, to give a talk for the to consider going to the Arabian studies, from a Mediterranean- particularly in Saudi Arabia. Director’s Series. Peninsula to conduct fieldwork centered perspective towards Our effort to bring Saudi writer for their theses, and to facilitate the Persian Gulf. In response, and scholar Moneera Al- What are your hopes for a faculty exchanges, offering I would like to start building Ghadeer here as the Shawwaf larger program of Arabian short-term grants for our faculty up a multidisciplinary program Visiting Professor last fall was Peninsula Studies? to go to the region, and inviting focused on this area of the part of this larger project as A program like this should scholars from the Arabian world, not to replace, but to well. Professor Malika Zeghal be multi-targeted and Peninsula to come to Harvard. broaden the Middle Eastern and I organized a conference at multi-purposed, engaging studies curriculum at Harvard Radcliffe last fall that brought undergraduates and graduate → Visit http://cmes.fas. University, and to encourage Professor Al-Ghadeer and students and as many faculty harvard.edu/news/aps to read the full interview. and support faculty in including Umayma Khamis, a prominent as we can, not only from FAS SPRING 2015 | CMESNEWS 2 NEWS AND NOTES FACULTY NEWS talks at the American University of Beirut, Princeton, Hebrew Preceptor Irit Yale, Brigham Young University, Aharony recently organized University of Connecticut, two talks for the Modern George Mason University, Ohio Hebrew program: a talk by State University, and Harvard. Lilach Lachman entitled Murray A. Albertson Professor “Veiling and Unveiling: The of Middle Eastern Studies poetry of Avot Yeshurun, Erez William Graham wrote the Afsaneh Najmabadi Ousmane Kane Biton and Haviva Pdaya,” and section “The Qur’ān as a a second by Edna Shemesh Discourse of Signs,” for No entitled “We, The Children— Tapping Around Philology: A Second Generation to the Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler Holocaust: Complex Past, McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th a Contemplative Present.” Birthday (Harrassowitz Verlag, CMES Associate Don Babai 2014). William Granara, CMES contributed an article to the Director and Gordon Gray third edition of the Wiley Professor of the Practice of Encyclopedia of Management Arabic, visited Egypt and (2014), entitled “Business Turkey in January. His trip Ethics in the Middle East.” included consultations with Persian Preceptor Nicholas university faculty and William Graham speaks with a Boylston co-translated, along administrators at the American guest at the Iranian Gala in April with PhD candidate Farhad University in Cairo. At Bilgi Dokhani, an article on Mulla University in Istanbul on Hadi Sabzawari’s Ghurar January 16, he co-led, with Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Getty Project on cultural al-Fara’id (The Blazes of the Cemal Kafadar, a roundtable Studies Cemal Kafadar will history in the Balkans. In Gems) for the Oxford Handbook discussion entitled “Inter- again direct the Harvard October and December 2014, of Islamic Philosophy sections between Turkish and Summer School program in Professor Kafadar gave lectures (forthcoming). Professor of Arabic Literature.” They were Istanbul on “History and at two conferences in Istanbul, Government Melani Cammett joined by Turkish literary Human Rights” in 2015 for its on the reign of Mahmud I and published A Political Economy scholars Murat Belge and Jale second year. Professor Kafadar intellectual life under Mehmed of the Middle East (Westview Parla as well as several graduate is part of a team of Harvard II, and in March 2015 he gave a Press, Fourth Ed., 2015). Since students from CMES and the faculty including Gülru series of lectures and seminars joining the Harvard faculty on Department of Near Eastern Necipoğlu, Aga Khan Professor at the University of North January 1, 2015, she has given Languages and Civilizations. of Islamic Art, involved in a Carolina and Duke University. 3 CMESNEWS | SPRING 2015 CMES Associate Director and the Harvard West Africa rescuing hundreds of refugees was a finalist in the Lambda Director of the AM Program Program 2015–2017. Lecturer during and after World War II. Literary Award for her 2014 Susan Kahn chaired a session on Near Eastern Languages and Last fall Professor Miller book Professing Selves: on “Ethics and Regulation of Civilizations Luke Leafgren received an Honorable Mention Transsexuality and Same-Sex Inter-Country Medically translated two Arabic novels: from the American Institute of Desire in Contemporary Iran Assisted Reproduction” at the Dates on My Fingers by Muhsin Maghribi Studies’ L. Carl (Duke University Press). The UNESCO 10th World al-Ramli (AUC Press, 2014), and Brown Book Prize for her book book received the 2014 Joan Conference on Bioethics, Oh, Salaam! by Najwa Barakat The History of Modern Morocco Kelly Memorial Prize from the Medical Ethics & Health Law in (Interlink, 2014). Lenore (Cambridge University Press, American Historical January 2015 in Jerusalem. Dr. Martin, CMES associate and 2013). Roy P. Mottahedeh, Association for best book in Kahn is also coordinating the chair of the Department of Gurney Professor of History, women’s history and feminist “Harvard Animal Studies Political Science at Emmanuel was an honoree at the first theory, and was co-winner of Project,” a new interdisciplinary College, was interviewed in the annual Iranian Gala held in the 2015 John Boswell Prize initiative to bring animal Turkish publication Analist in April 2015, and gave a talk at from the Committee on studies to Harvard—Kristen January 2015 on “Turkey-U.S. Princeton on March 31, 2015 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Stilt, Cemal Kafadar, and Relations in 2014.” She entitled “Ghaznavid Panegyrics Transgender History. Roger Roy Mottahedeh are among presented several papers over as Historical Source.” Professor Owen, A.J. Meyer Professor of the many esteemed faculty the last year including “China Mottahedeh’s recent Middle Eastern History on the steering committee.