MESA 2007 Volunteer Panel Chairs

The MESA Secretariat invites members to volunteer their services as chairs of put-together panels (the panels that are assembled from individual paper submissions). If you are interested in participating as a panel chair, complete review the list of available panels and submit the form below.

Current MESA membership and annual meeting pre-registration are required to participate in the annual meeting and be listed in the program. Only persons meeting those requirements will be assigned chair positions.

Once assigned a chair position, you will receive via email a formal letter of invitation along with the abstracts of the papers that comprise the panel. A little closer to the meeting, we will contact the panelists on your panel to introduce you as chair and to ask them to send you a courtesy copy of their paper.

Positions are available on a first-come, first-served basis, although we do give priority to persons not already appearing on the program elsewhere.

Chair responsibilities: The chair is responsible for introducing each of the panelists, monitoring the time for their presentations, and insuring that the panel ends promptly at the scheduled time. The chair is asked to facilitate the discussion session, not by providing commentary about the papers, but rather by opening the floor to questions for the panelists. Each presenter will be expected to give a 15-20 minute presentation (depending upon how many papers there are on a panel), and each session will last for a maximum of two hours. Because "put-together" panels sometimes include papers on disparate topics that would be difficult to synthesize, MESA does not assign discussants to them.

Requirements for program participation:  Please remember, participation in the MESA annual meeting is restricted to MESA members. Current MESA membership and annual meeting pre-registration are required to participate.

Please direct panel chair questions to Mark Lowder at mlowder@u.arizona.edu. MESA greatly appreciates the services of volunteer chairs!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17
5:00PM-7:00PM

(NP26) Art and Politics

Satoshi Kawamoto, University of Tokyo
Court Ceremonies of Rum Seljuk and Their Spaces
Karin Ruehrdanz, Royal Ontario Museum
Adjusting to Changing Legitimization Strategies: The Bukharan Court Atelier in the Later 17th Century
Darin N. Stephanov, University of California, Los Angeles
Crowns, Swords, Thrones and the Like - Symbolic Deployment of Regalia in the Defense of Autocracy in the Late Ottoman and Russian Empires

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20
1:30PM-3:30PM

(NP35) Mapping Place, Space and Memory

Kimberly W. Segall, Seattle Pacific University
Performing Loss, Claiming Identity: Raffo's Depiction of Iraqi Women
Samuel Noble, Yale University
A Space Outside Islam: Monasteries in the Abbasid Imagination