THE CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES NEWS HARVARD UNIVERSITY SPRING 2019 2 LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR A message from William Granara 5 NEWS AND NOTES Remembering Roger Owen; updates from faculty, students, alumni, and visiting researchers; Mecca colloquium; new staff; student profile 24 EVENT HIGHLIGHTS Lectures and workshops; Nobel laureate Nadia Murad; Jocelyne Dakhlia on women in the early modern Maghrib LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR SPRING 2019 HIGHLIGHTS GREETINGS AND SALAMAAT TO ALL THE MEMBERS OF OUR CMES FAMILY! I write this letter on a sunny summer morning reflecting on CMES’s events over the past semester. As you will see in this abundantly rich and beautifully collated and edited newsletter, this past academic year has been bustling with wonderful people and activity. The spring semester began on a sad note with the passing in December of our beloved professor, mentor, advisor, colleague, and friend Roger Owen. CMES had the honor of hosting a memorial reception in February, which brought together members of Roger’s immediate and extended family, many of his former students, and colleagues and friends from across the globe. Although he has departed from us, his presence at CMES is felt every day. On a happier note, we welcomed back Jesse Howell (PhD ’17), who is now our new Academic Programs Manager and Associate Director of the CMES AM Program in Regional Studies. Jesse joins us with a doctorate in Ottoman history, first-hand experience with Harvard life, and several years of directing our Turkey winter term program for undergraduates. Among the highlights of this past spring were the H.A.R. Gibb lectures, this year delivered by eminent historian and prolific scholar Jocelyne Dakhlia, Director of Studies at the Center for Historical Research, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris; and the colloquium Mecca: the Lived City, co-sponsored with the Graduate School of Design, which opened with a keynote address by our own Professor Rosie Bsheer. This year CMES Tunisia hosted a record fifteen Harvard students to its three-week winter term, and eight students joined our CMES winter term excusion in Istanbul. We also continued to fund research projects for an increasing number of students, many of whom conducted fieldwork throughout the Middle East. Above all, this spring we graduated our largest cohort of sixteen magnificent AM students and two joint PhD students. I conclude by sharing with you the news that I have been offered, and have accepted, a third three- year term as CMES Director. Since this upcoming year falls during my previously scheduled sabbatical leave, the Center will be directed by my very capable and esteemed colleague Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies, former Director of CMES, and current Director of Graduate Studies. With all my best wishes, —William Granara, CMES Director ON THE COVER: Roger Owen and Carol Ann Young ROGER OWEN, MY MENTOR AND MY FRIEND It is impossible to sum up the As a graduate student was too big and would be very my dissertation, and fearful life of Professor Roger Owen in working on the history of difficult (I would like to think that being a new mother would a few paragraphs; even Roger Egypt and Sudan, I made my that both of them were right in mean no one would take me found it difficult to edit his life pilgrimage to Oxford to see their ways). When two years seriously anymore. I was not in his wonderful memoir. I will Roger and Albert Hourani later Roger joined the CMES looking to be molded—I was focus on being his student and and receive their wisdom on faculty, I worried that he would looking to be heard. And I then his friend, and how he my project. Albert enjoyed its not agree to be my advisor. I was looking for an intellectual taught me how to pass forward potential but Roger told me was also hugely pregnant with colleague to provide a home for his special brand of mentoring. in no uncertain terms that it my first son, already writing historical ideas, as my husband Photo: Kris Snibbe/Harvard University Kris Snibbe/Harvard Photo: SPRING 2019 | CMESNEWS 3 With Ursula Owen With Susan Miller, William Graham, Thomas Mullens, and Roy P. Mottahedeh With Edward Said With Rami Khouri and I moved far from Harvard make room for the birth of my became a ritual, and because he fusal to sleep at night, I finished for his first academic job. baby and life with a newborn. was so regular in commenting my dissertation and graduated Roger got this. In September, This was in 1994, when email and so helpful with his insights, from Harvard in May 1995. we created a chapter schedule was but a dream. I would send I got used to being regular in Roger got to know my so that I would be able to Roger a chapter and he would completing my chapters. Under husband and both of my graduate that May. We created a send it back, with his com- the steadiness of this relation- children, visited us, let us stay workable, realizable schedule to ments, within two weeks. This ship and despite my son’s re- with him when we came to 4 CMESNEWS | SPRING 2019 NEWS AND NOTES FACULTY NEWS students in Dececember 2018. In fall 2018, Irit Aharony, The activity allowed both Senior Preceptor in Modern designers and participants to Hebrew, and NELC teaching interact with the language in assistant Osnat Aharoni led a ways that greatly differ from program-wide project regular class time. Results were designing a Hanukkah-themed presented at the Harvard Escape Room in Modern ABCD-TIE forum in April 2019. Hebrew. In this educational Rosie Bsheer, Assistant With Khaled Fahmy, Mona Makram-Ebeid, and William Granara activity, students have one hour Professor of History, gave the to decipher puzzles, unveil talk “Countering Revolution: clues, and ultimately unlock a Saudi Arabia and the Arab Cambridge, and read drafts of or writing, or sending us books box holding the answer to the Uprisings” as part of “Teach-In my second book as well. We for comfort. Losing Roger this escape room’s major challenge. on Current Events in the Arab have a lovely memory of Roger, past December was a punch The game teaches critical World: Return to Business as singing us a song and dancing a in my gut. I miss my friend’s thinking and complex problem Usual after the Uprisings?” jig in the middle of Philadelphia voice and I always will. solving. Language study in organized by Georgetown to make the boys giggle. I have Finally, Roger taught me particular lends itself to this University and George Mason memories of Ben and Belle that one’s students are future creative learning tool, because University, November 2018. when they were little as well. colleagues, and the investment it allows one to test all four She gave the talk “Yemen’s My older son is turning 25 in their work is an investment language proficiencies. In the Forgotten Wars” in February this year. It’s a benchmark of in what can be an amazing innovative semester-long 2019 at Brown University. In so much life being lived, and and unique alliance. He was project, funded by the Harvard April, she presented the paper a signpost of my relationship so proud of the people his Foreign Language Advisory “Building the Past: The Politics to my teacher. We were never students were and who they Group and the Center for of Modernity in Saudi Arabia” not in touch, we always talked, became as scholars. He gave Jewish Studies, the third-year at Harvard’s Middle East we sometimes argued, and that to me, and I feel the Advanced class created an Beyond Borders workshop, and we built, year by year, a lovely same way about mine. Just activity in Hebrew targeted for participated in a panel friendship. As Roger got older like Roger taught, there must the lingual level of the discussion at MIT with Harvey and so bravely dealt with his de- always be a writing schedule. second-year Intermediate Molotch and Davide Ponzini, generative illness, he taught me I will not forget that as course. The Highly Advanced co-authors of The New Arab the particular grace of aging. I forge ahead on a project— Seminar course tested the Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, He respected the wisdom that the first ever without Roger activity, which was held in the Ambition, and Distress, and comes from illness, and when there to read it. Because, as Bok Center Learning Lab, and other discussants. In May she my husband was diagnosed he always said in ending a provided feedback that was gave the keynote “Mecca: From with the cancer that ended his conversation: “Onwards!” used to tweak the activity Revolution to Redevelopment” life, Roger was always calling, —Eve Troutt Powell, PhD ’95 before its final presentation to at the Mecca: The Lived City SPRING 2019 | CMESNEWS 5 NEWS AND NOTES Preceptor in Modern Turkish, was awarded a Certificate of Teaching Excellence for fall 2018. She published two short stories in Turkish in October 2018 and March 2019: “A Bicycle Made in Germany” (Yeni E) and “Yellow Heat: Vienna” (Ek). Gareth Doherty has been promoted to Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design. With CMES Director William Granara, he organized the colloquium Mecca: The Lived City in May 2019. Kristin Fabbe published Disciples of the State? Religion and State-Building in the Former Ottoman World (Cambridge Sheida Dayani at the Mahindra Humanities Center University Press, 2019).