Past Event Category: MES Lecture Series
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Apr 6Jāl Mythmaking: Embodied Indigeneity in the Marshlands and Coasts of the Persian/Arabian GulfIngraham 206
Hanan Al-Alawi (UW-Madison) will explore how the marshland inhabitants of Iraq and coastal communities of southern Iran reimagine Indigeneity through mythmaking practices and embodied interactions with land and water.
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Mar 2America’s Middle EastIngraham 206
Marc Lynch (George Washington University) details the United States’ disastrously failed approach to the post–Cold War Middle East, where aspirations for US leadership and a calm region have only produced war, instability and humanitarian catastrophe.
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Feb 23Fluid FrontiersIngraham 206
Seçil Binboğa (University of Minnesota) will discuss how US influence expanded through Turkey’s airspace between 1951 and 1954, crossing borders to counter the spread of communism.
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Feb 9Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and SucceedIngraham 206
Killian Clarke (Georgetown University) dives into the big question at the heart of his new book, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed": why do some revolutions triumph while others collapse?
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Dec 4Palestine on Screen: Stories of Survival and ResistanceMemorial Library, Room 126
Join us for a powerful evening of award-winning Palestinian short films that bear witness to life under displacement, setller colonialism, and unyielding resilience.
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Nov 17Steadfast on Campus: A Century of Global Palestinian Student ActivismOnline via Zoom
In this wide-ranging talk, Dr. Maha Nassar (University of Arizona) examines the transnational history of Palestinian student activism over the last century.
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Nov 3Society of the Righteous: Ibadhi Muslim Identity and Transnationalism in TanzaniaIngraham 206
Drawing from her new book "Society of the Righteous: Transregional Muslim Networks and Ibadhi Moral Reform in East Africa" (UNC Press, 2024), Dr. Kimberly Wortmann (Wake Forest University) will explore how Omani-Ibadi Muslims in Tanzania have navigated questions of religious belonging, moral reform, and heritage in the aftermath of empire.
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Oct 22Narrating the Margins: Mohamed Choukri’s Short NarrativesIngraham 206
Choukri blends harsh realism with creative storytelling, following Zola’s idea that literature should be rooted in real human experience. His stories reveal the difficult truths of poverty, oppression, and social exclusion, rejecting idealized portrayals.
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Oct 6Cross-Stitching the Scattered: Women’s Literary SubjectivitiesIngraham 206
Professor Shereen Abouelnaga (Cairo University) looks at how women writers create their sense of self through stories that are often broken, layered, and full of contradictions. She uses cross-stitching—both as a real craft and a metaphor—to show how women piece together identity, memory, and voice across different times and places.
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Apr 7A Tale of Two Diasporas: The Iranian-Jewish Communities in the US and IsraelIngraham 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).