Middle East Studies Program

Events

• Feb

  24

  Palestine and Arab-Israeli Peace February 24, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:15 pm Ingraham 206
  

  This presentation will cover Arab-Israeli peace initiatives and their impacts following the 1994 Oslo Accords. The focus will be on American-led peace initiatives under both the Trump and Biden administrations, with a discussion of projected American foreign policy under a second Trump term.

• Feb

  27

  Being Sufi in Central Asia February 27, 2025 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm Van Hise Hall, Room 1418, 1220 Linden Dr., Madison, Wisconsin
  

  Benjamin Gatling draws on ethnographic fieldwork to examine how Tajikistan’s Sufis have adapted since 2010. It discusses how murids cope with missing pirs, closed teaching circles, and limited ritual opportunities, while highlighting resilient expressions of Sufi piety, such as pilgrimage practices and narratives.

• Mar

  05

  The China-Morocco Relation: From Third World Internationalism to Strategic Hedging March 5, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:15 pm Ingraham 336
  

  Zaynab El Bernoussi is an associate professor of political science at The Africa Institute specializing in dignity politics, international relations, and the international political economy. 

• Mar

  17

  Projecting Anxiety: Lebanon, Africa, and the Diasporic Condition March 17, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm Ingraham 206
  

  Ghenwa Hayek (University of Chicago) engages with critical contemporary scholarship in diaspora studies by using the Lebanese case to consider how the diaspora is imagined from within the homeland; and, further, how specific diasporic imaginaries and entanglements have been used to conceptualize national identity domestically.

• Apr

  07

  A Tale of Two Diasporas: The Iranian-Jewish Communities in the US and Israel April 7, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:15 pm Ingraham 206
  

  Professor Lior Sternfeld (Penn State University) will discuss the making of the Iranian Jewish diaspora community in Israel and the US (especially in Southern California).