THE CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, NEWS HARVARD UNIVERSITY FALL 2014 1 LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR A message from William Granara 2 NEWS AND NOTES New faculty arrivals, student news, and a Q&A with Moneera Al-Ghadeer 7 UPCOMING EVENTS Director's Series lectures and two spring conferences 8 EVENT HIGHLIGHTS Lectures, workshops, and conferences from the spring and early fall LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR EXPANDING OUR HORIZONS 2014 CONTINUES TO BE A BUSY YEAR AT CMES. Our Arab Transformation Working Group’s History and Politics section, judiciously guided by Professor Emeritus Roger Owen, has held several talks on the current situation in the Middle East. Its Literature and Culture section convened a highly successful conference in April, Middle East Literature in Transition: New Frontiers in the 21st Century, which focused on literary and cultural production in the 21st-century Middle East. Scholars and students from nine universities and across the Harvard campus presented works from emerging writers, poets, and artists who exemplify the most exciting and innovative trends in Turkish, Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic literary culture. The fall semester began with a workshop, Arabic Sources in the Writing of Modern North African History, attended by students from the Departments of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and History and the Committee on the Study of Religion, as well as faculty from Harvard, Boston University, Holy Cross, Tufts, and Georgetown. Other early fall events included a panel discussion on Gaza and a lecture on sectarian divisions and the changing urban landscape of Baghdad by Radcliffe Visiting Scholar Harith Al-Qarawee. As we look forward, we seek to expand our horizons to include the Arabian Peninsula at the forefront of our academic and cultural programs. In November, through the generous support of the Radcliffe Foundation, CMES will host three Saudi Arabian scholars and writers for a symposium with Harvard faculty and students titled “Emerging Women Writers in the Arabian Peninsula.” In October, HE Jamal bin Huwaireb, Managing Director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, United Arab Emirates, delivered a lecture in Arabic on UAE’s role in supporting culture. Finally, through the generous support of CMES alumnus Dr. Mazen Jaidah, CMES will launch a new lecture series on Arabian Peninsula Studies, to start in spring 2015. —William Granara, CMES Director ON THE COVER: “Afternoon in the Ziz River Valley,” by Aizhan Shorman NEWS AND NOTES FACULTY NEWS NEW FACULTY ARRIVALS CMES welcomes three faculty members to Harvard’s Middle PhD students Akif Yerlioglu East studies community this fall. Kristen Stilt has joined the Dalia Abo-Haggar and Deniz Turker faculty of the Harvard Law School (HLS) as Professor of Law, and is the new co-director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program. (The program’s other co-director, Professor Intisar Rabb, joined the HLS faculty this past spring.) Professor Stilt, a leading expert on Islamic law and society and a graduate of CMES’s History & Middle East Studies doctoral program, was most recently the Harry R. Horrow Professor in International Law at Northwestern University School of Law and Professor of History at Northwestern University. Moneera Al-Ghadeer is in residence at CMES this fall as the 2014 Shawwaf Visiting Professor of Meagan Froemming (AM ’10), and AM students Aya Majzoub Arabic, and is teaching two courses in the Department of Near and Jennifer Quigley-Jones Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Joining the Middle East language faculty for the 2014-15 CMES welcomed new and returning faculty, students, visiting academic year is Persian Preceptor Nicholas Boylston, who is researchers, and other members of the Harvard Middle East teaching intermediate and elementary Persian. studies community at our fall reception on September 23, 2014. Q&A WITH MONEERA AL-GHADEER Moneera Al-Ghadeer is the poetry and oral tradition. We Ibn Raddas. He traveled Fall 2014 Shawwaf Visiting spoke with her in October about throughout the desert for a Professor, and a participant in her work and teaching. decade and collected these the November 2014 workshop on poems, but that collection Saudi Women Writers organized Your first book, Desert Voices, remained excluded from by CMES Director William was on Bedouin women’s academic and cultural studies. Granara and Professor Malika poetry. What got you After I had looked at these Zeghal. Her research focuses on interested in that topic? poems, and began studying Arabic and African American The book is based on an earlier the dialect and understanding literatures, Francophone collection of poems called the implications—the aesthetic literature and postcolonial Sh’rat Min Al-Badiyah (Poets and also cultural and socio- studies, literary theory and from the Desert), that were historical significance—I translation studies, and Arabic collected by a poet named realized that I had found this (continued on next page) FALL 2014 | CMESNEWS 2 NEWS AND NOTES treasure that needed to be this literary production: we English literature, and then STUDENT NEWS preserved and studied and know just glimpses about I started writing in Arabic, shared. In my study of this the different countries in experimenting with the form HARVARD MIDDLE work, I wanted to first of the Arabian peninsula. The of the short story. I was a EASTERN CULTURAL all elucidate some of the students are extremely literary editor at al-Riyadh ASSOCIATION misconceptions or beliefs fascinated by these authors, newspaper when I was an The Harvard GSAS Middle about the feminine oral and are really engaged in undergrad, and that connected Eastern Cultural Association genre, and show also how discussing them. me with the literary world, (HMECA) would like to the rhetorical force of My other course is and with language, and ignited extend gracious thanks to all Bedouin women’s poetry is “Invisible Societies in the my interest in creative writing those who helped make the not only in its vernacular Contemporary Arabic Novel.” and world literature. I met a Fall Book Sale such a success, diction, meter, rhyme, all For this class, which is taught number of writers, from Saudi from faculty donations and of the poetic traces and in Arabic, I experimented Arabia and elsewhere, and staff support to each and every schemes, but also is with social media. We created also all kinds of journalists patron who supported the sale. intertwined with very a hashtag for the course, and scholars coming from the A fortnightly film screening theoretical questions about , and the students U.S. and Europe. In graduate headlined the club’s cultural politics, gender, and language. post two tweets per week in school I continued to write events this semester, featuring Arabic using this hashtag. these experimental short the international hits A What are you teaching this Social media creates this stories at different intervals. Separation, The Gatekeepers, and fall at Harvard? amazing platform to reach out Working in academia took Caramel. Interdepartmental and I'm teaching two literature to different communities— me on another path. After interdisciplinary events were courses. The first, “The some of the authors we are being a professor I stopped also held in cooperation with the Racialized Other in the reading follow critics who writing in Arabic, and writing Divinity School and Graduate Arabian Peninsula Literature retweeted us, so they know fiction was put on hold. It’s School of Design, with more to and Culture,” is in translation. what we are reading. I’ve also very interesting, when I am come in the spring. Individual It's a way of introducing the had some of the authors in tweeting in Arabic I feel like HMECA members have also literature of the Arabian Skype conversations with the I am returning to a relation spearheaded the student peninsula, because we don't students, and they enjoyed with Arabic and poetic body’s engagement with the really have in the U.S. academy that immensely. language. I feel it’s that writer wider Harvard and Cambridge any courses that exclusively who stopped, I don’t know community: Elsien van Pinxteren focus on this part of the You have been a fiction how many years ago, who’s was a panelist and member of world. Usually I say we have writer yourself—how did writing. As a writer in Arabic the planning committee for these texts “smuggled in” to you come to that and to my sentence is succinct and Harvard Arab Weekend, Nora literature courses. There is a studying literature? highly poetic, so it fits well. It’s Lessersohn opened doors for surge of new writing in the My interest in literature as if I return to a younger me participation as an organizer Arabian peninsula, especially started early in languages. I through Twitter and through of the Boston Palestine Film from Saudi Arabia. It's really studied six or so languages returning to Arabic. Festival, and Andrew Watkins noticeable, and they are when I was young, and that presented a paper to the winning literary prizes. It's opened windows to the → Read the full interview at Middle East Beyond Borders cmes.hmdc.harvard.edu very important to look at outside world. I majored in graduate student workshop. 3 CMESNEWS | FALL 2014 CONGRATULATIONS 2013–14 GRADUATES JOINT PHD PROGRAMS ■■ Yasmine F. Alsaleh (History & MES)—Dissertation: of Art and Architecture & “Political Literacy and MES)—Dissertation: “'Licit the Politics of Eloquence: Magic': The Touch And Sight Ottoman Scribal Community Of Islamic Talismanic Scrolls” in the Seventeenth Century”