Past Event Category: MES Lecture Series
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Feb 7Moral Matter: Property, Piety, and the Politics of Repair in Protectorate-Era CasablancaOnline via Zoom
This talk will consider how urban activists in 1930s Casablanca linked morality to materiality through critiques that politicized rent and repair under colonial rule. In the process, they articulated a vision for a more just distribution of urban resources that would remain a powerful pole for anti-colonial movements in the country.
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Dec 6Queer-Jewish-Muslim: Constructing Hyphenated Religious Identities through Tactics of IntersubjectivityKatrina Daly Thompson takes a queer anthropological approach to entangled queer-Jewish-Muslim identities and relationships, first in the existing literature and then examining how two contemporary individuals involved in queer-inclusive Muslim groups navigate their hyphenated religious identities, practices, and heritages.
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Nov 22Gendering Protest and Revolutionary Moments: the significance of body politics in the Middle EastThis talk will address gender as a central analytical concept in understanding contemporary processes and developments in the Middle East, and ask what feminist scholarship has contributed to our understanding of developments in the region.
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Nov 8Arab Fairy Tale Feasts: A Delicious Way to Explore Arab Culture, with author Karim AlrawiOnline via Zoom
Award-winning writer and storyteller, Karim Alrawi, draws on his personal knowledge of Arab culture to create original stories that are a feast for young minds. Told with intriguing details, the tales take young readers on a delicious cultural journey and invite them to consider an Arab perspective on food and the fantastical.
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Oct 25Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine, with Sophia Stamatopoulou-RobbinsBased on Sophia’s book, this talk offers an analysis unusual in the study of Palestine: it begins with the environmental, infrastructural, and aesthetic context in which Palestinians forge their lives, naming that context a “waste siege".
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Oct 11The struggle for Salafism in the Egyptian Transition (2011-2013)Salafism was the religious language that dominated Egypt’s aborted political transition in the wake of the fall of Mubarak. The leading and most vocal political actors of the moment all mobilized strands of Salafism in a a religious fight for legitimacy against each other: the Salafi Call and its political party al-Nour (with its internal divisions), Hazim Abu Isma’il and his revolutionary Salafis, and even the Muslim Brotherhood, whose religious references had earlier been distinct from Salafi ones. Why was that the case? And how does this shed light on some of the transition’s dynamics (and eventual shortcomings)?
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Oct 4Stories on Afghan Women, Art, and Everything in Betweenhttps://uwmadison.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIudOmsrjMuE9xJPajsh1tBSR3nIoHrm0E
Our community continues to be touched by Middle East displacements and conflicts with the latest development in Afghanistan and the ongoing Afghan refugee crisis. Given the urgency of this issue, we are honored to host this meaningful and pressing panel.
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Sep 27Time Will Be the Judge: Tawfiq al-Hakim, Taha Husayn, and the Competing Factions of 1930s EgyptRather than identifying the essence of Egypt, these authors asked their readers to understand national identity as a contingent construction that could be altered. In plays, interventions in public debates, letters, and a jointly written novel, al-Hakim and Husayn sought to distinguish the eternal realm of mythology and art from the constantly altering world of human affairs.
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Sep 13Arab Americans: We’re Not White, with Comedian and Professor Amer ZahrWe will discuss Amer’s upbringing as an Arab American, how comedy and law intersect, and how it is possible to reconcile multiple identities. We will also talk about how American society and politics affect the lives of immigrants in general and Arab-Americans in particular.
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Sep 13Arab Americans: We’re Not White, with Comedian and Professor Amer ZahrOnline via Zoom
Amer Zahr, founder and producer of the annual 1001 Laughs Ramallah Comedy Festival, is a rising star in both the US and the Middle East. Amer is an Arab-American comedian, speaker, political activist, writer, and adjunct professor at the University of Detroit, Mercy School of Law