News & Happenings The King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies Newsletter Upcoming Events Page 2 Recent Events Page 6 Faculty News Page 10 Graduate News Page 16 King Fahd Center Undergraduate News for Middle East Studies Page 18 at the University of Alumni News Arkansas Page 21 Volume 3 • Issue 1 October 2014 202 Old Main, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701• http://mest.uark.edu •
[email protected] • 479-575-2175 King Fahd Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arkansas We certainly have not been lacking for headlines of UPCOMING: late in our part of the world. When we held a King Fahd Center forum in late August we contemplated MESA ANNUAL MEETING the ‘worst summer in history.’ Some of us came up November 21-25, 2014 with alternate dates, but few could argue that the geographic spread of civil strife, military activity, King Fahd Center faculty, students and alumni will be sectarian-national antipathy, and the destruction of attending and presenting their work at the upcoming human life, cultural heritage and the environment Middle East Studies Association annual meeting to be reached startling new levels in terms of scope, held in Washington, D.C. intensity and simultaneity. Ahmet Serdar Akturk (PhD/HIST 2013) ‘Kurdish Nationalism Our mission remains ongoing: to teach about the and Clothing Reform in the Post-Ottoman Era’ Middle East and Islamic world, to humanize its people, Sanket Desai (PhD/HIST) ‘Just Keep the Sheep Thieves Away: to describe realities without veiling them, from the Minority Challenges to Iraqi Nation-State Building, 1933-1945’ vantage points of our various disciplines and years of experience on the ground.