Annual Middle East Studies Conference: The United States and the Middle East: Geopolitics, Resistance, and Power

Green Hegemony and Resistance: Political possibilities at sites of global environmental governance in the MENA
Lauren M. Baker

The UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) has evolved from technical meetings into spectacular mega-events that serve as unique intersections for global environmental organizers. This talk examines how host states like Egypt and the UAE use these summits to project a “green” neoliberal discourse while maintaining authoritarian domestic policies. She argue that the “Blue Zone”—a space governed by UN code rather than host-country law—functions as a site of dynamic political possibility. Drawing on participant observation at COP27 and COP28, she illustrates how these summits facilitate transnational learning and resistance, even within repressive political environments.

Lauren M. Baker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska Omaha. In her research, she works at the intersection of comparative politics, international relations, and environmental studies in the Middle East. Her current book project examines the “politics of garbage,” exploring how authoritarian states attempt to depoliticize contentious infrastructure to perform environmental leadership. Having conducted extensive political ethnography at various COP meetings and served as the Assistant Director for POMEPS, she investigate how critical geography and state power shape the global response to the climate crisis.

African American Christian Solidarities in Palestine and Israel: Cultural Roots and Political Trajectories
Roger Baumann

In the wake of October 7 and the escalation of violence in Gaza, African American clergy have emerged as pivotal voices in the global discourse on Israel and Palestine. This talk examines how these leaders mobilize African American Christians by invoking the identity and culture of “the Black Church” to promote divergent paths—from Christian Zionism to Palestinian solidarity. He argues that these competing spiritual mantles extend local racial concerns into global issues, revealing the complex transnational networks that define modern religious social spaces in the United States.

Roger Baumann is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Director of Peace and Justice Studies at Hope College. In his research, he focuses on the intersections of collective identity and social action, specifically how racial and religious identities converge to shape a group’s sense of purpose. He investigates the sociological dynamics of the “Black Church” to understand how historical roots inform contemporary political engagement. His work provides critical insights into how transnational conflicts are interpreted through the lens of domestic racial experience, uncovering the ways religious groups navigate their place in an increasingly polarized world.

Ansarism: Moral Economy of Turkish Migration Governance
Çetin Çelik

In a departure from traditional legal language, Turkey has reshaped migration governance through Ansarism—a regime rooted in Islamic notions of “brotherhood” rather than humanitarian law. This talk examines how this “moral economy” serves as a strategic response to political pressures, arguing that while it critiques Western hypocrisy, it simultaneously generates its own selective solidarities and repressions. He argues that Ansarism marks a shift from ethno-nationalism toward a religiously grounded framework that defines the changing nature of belonging and exclusion in the 21st century.

Çetin Çelik is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Koç University and a former Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His current research examines the dynamics of stigma and boundary-making in Syrian–Turkish encounters. Through his work, Çelik uncovers how the discourse of religious compassion reshapes social hierarchies, making us “inclusive” or “repressive,” “brotherly” or “exclusionary.” By bridging the sociology of education and migration, Çelik illustrates how the friction between transnational solidarity and state power defines the modern refugee experience.

From Ruins to Worlds: Decolonial Aesthetics and the Refusal of Necropolitical Logic in Gaza
Maha El Said

This presentation investigates how Palestinian cultural production disrupts the “necropolitical spectacle” that constructs Gaza as a zone of managed death. Engaging Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics and Walter Mignolo’s decolonial aesthesis, she demonstrates how poets and filmmakers contest the colonial gaze that spectacularizes suffering. She argues that these creative endeavors reclaim representational agency and enact a decolonial aesthetic that challenges the normalization of death. Ultimately, this talk explores how artists insist on the “grievability” of lives rendered expendable, reimagining human value from within the ruins of colonial violence.

Maha El Said is a Professor of American Studies and the former Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at Cairo University. In her research, she explores the intersections of Arab American writings, gender, and popular culture, with a specific focus on how new technologies transform literature. As the Chief Editor of Cairo Studies in English, she investigates the power of cultural production to navigate political transitions and challenge dominant narratives. Her work aims to bridge Middle Eastern and American academic discourses by foregrounding the role of creative expression in reclaiming agency and enacting ethical accountability in the face of political violence.

Security Without Interference? Algeria, U.S. Strategy, and Great-Power Rivalry in the Sahel–North Africa Security Belt.
Ferial Menaifi

As the Sahel becomes a primary theater for global power competition, a volatile “Security Belt” has emerged where organized crime, extremism, and climate pressures converge. This talk examines the shifting geopolitical landscape following France’s retreat, as the U.S., Russia, and China fill the vacuum with competing security discourses. These overlapping spheres of influence generate unprecedented strategic pressures on Algeria, forcing the nation to navigate a complex path between Western security partnerships and its historical doctrine of non-intervention. This analysis uncovers how Algeria reinforces regional stability while maintaining sovereign autonomy in an age of fragmented global leadership.

Ferial Menaifi is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Salah Boubnider University and a researcher with the Algerian Defense Policy Lab. She focuses on the intersections of security governance, state-building, and climate-driven instability across North Africa. Her recent work explores how environmental crises reshape conflict patterns; in 2025, she presented her research on “Climate Disasters and Ethnic Tensions: Algeria’s 2021 Wildfires” at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Handcrafted Books about Palestine: Inside the Publishing Project Andaleeb Cartonera
Saylín Álvarez Oquendo

This presentation explores the work of Andaleeb Cartonera, an independent cardboard-cover book press in Madison founded as a platform for protest and community education. Inspired by the Latin American cartonera movement, the project functions as a vital voice on the margins by producing low-cost, handcrafted books using recycled materials. She will discuss how publishing free literature about Palestine serves as a vehicle for creative resistance, illustrating how this grassroots model mobilizes community support through the physical and symbolic act of independent bookmaking.

Saylín Álvarez Oquendo is a Teaching Faculty member in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In her research she bridges the gap between academic scholarship and grassroots activism through the study and creation of independent book presses. Having co-founded Kutsemba Cartão in Mozambique and Andaleeb Cartonera in Madison, she focuses on the intersection of material culture and social justice. She investigates how recycled materials can be transformed into powerful tools for global solidarity, demonstrating how the “cartonera” model empowers communities to reclaim their narratives and engage in unconventional political expression.

How the Sabr Sees: On Palestinian More-than-Human Rights
Sherena Razek

The ongoing Nakba is a “weathering process”—an ecology of continuous human and environmental catastrophe bound by the forces of Zionist settler colonization. Through a close reading of the Al-Wah’at collective’s work, she interrogates the naturalized categories of plant species, specifically the sabr (prickly pear cactus). She argues for a framework of Palestinian more-than-human rights that decenters the fraught category of “the human” found in Anthropocene discourses. Ultimately, this talk examines how multimedia interrogations counter the wreckages of Zionism to chart anti-imperial planetary futures by unmaking the symbolic enclosures of colonial capture.

Sherena Razek is a President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA and a future Assistant Professor at UMass Boston. In her research, she tethers the elements of water, fire, earth, and air to their specific valences in Palestinian visual culture and counter-archives. Her first book project, Nakba Ecologies: On Elemental Intifada in Colonized Palestine, investigates the aesthetics of surveillance, oceanic degradation, and militarized borders. As the recipient of the 2025 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award, she explores how Palestinian feminist scholarship and labor organizing can help us reimagine ancestral knowledge as a tool for unmaking colonial enclosures.

Sisism and Trumpism: Common Logics of Dirty Populism in Egypt and U.S.A.
Atef Said