Conferences

2010
JANUARY 2010
29-31 January 2010–“Aiming for ‘The Third Place’: Intercultural Competence through Foreign Language Teaching and Learning” (Tucson, Arizona) The 2nd international conference on the development and assessment of intercultural competence. This conference is organized by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL) and co-sponsored by the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) Program and Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)at the University of Arizona. For conference details: http://www.cercll.arizona.edu/.

MARCH 2010
12-14 March 2010–International Management Week (Casablanca, Morocco) All inquiries will be answered at cesem.iae2010@gmail.com.

17-19 March 2010–“Rethinking the Middle East? Values, Interests, and Security Concerns in Western Policies toward Iraq and the Wider Region, 1918-2010” (London, United Kingdom) Sponsored by British Academy, British Institute for the Study of Iraq, European Studies Research Institute/University of Salford (Greater Manchester). For information, contact:: l.berger@salford.ac.uk.

24-27 March 2010–“Provincializing Europe? Towards a Local History of Maghribi Modernity” (Florence, Italy)  A workshop to be held as part of the 11th Mediterranean Research Meeting at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS). Full workshop description at: http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/Research/Mediterranean/mrm2010/desc_pdf/MRM2010_Ds04.pdf.
Contact: James McDougall (jm56@soas.ac.uk) and Etty Terem (tereme@rhodes.edu). The online form can be found at http://www.rscas.org/medform.asp. Conference details: http://www.eui.eu/RSCAS/Research/Mediterranean/mrm2010/pdf/MRM2010-InfoParticipants.pdf#page=3.

31 March-02 April 2010–“Intercultural Approaches to the Study of the Middle East and North Africa” (Tucson, Arizona) The 10th Annual Graduate Student Conference: Middle East North Africa Graduate Students Association (MENA) at the University of Arizona. We are inviting abstracts from graduate students who study the Middle East and North Africa. We ask that abstracts be no longer than 250 words. Please send a Word document which includes the abstract, your name, email address, and your institution to uamena@gmail.com. We encourage participants from all disciplines, including linguistics, literature, history, the social sciences, and the fine arts.  And for those interested in publishing their research, we are accepting manuscripts for our annual journal, Zaytoon. Visit our website www.uamena.org for submission requirements. Sponsored by the Middle East North Africa Graduate Student Association, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona. Abstracts received before December 15, 2009 will receive priority; however, we will continue to accept abstracts on a rolling basis through January 20, 2010. 

APRIL 2010
01-02 April 2010–“State of the Art: Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa” (Los Angeles, California) Co-organizers: Sherine Hafez, University of California, Riverside (sherine.hafez@ucr.edu); Susan Slyomovics, University of California, Los Angeles (ssly@anthro.ucla.edu).

10 April 2010–“The (Muslim) Woman Question”- Competing Representations, Contested Futures (Hartford, Connecticut) The 9th Annual Critical Islamic Reflections Conference at Yale University. Yale’s Critical Islamic Reflections committee is pleased to announce an extension in the submission deadline for our 9th annual conference, “The (Muslim) Woman Question: Competing Representations, Contested Futures.” The new deadline for the submission of abstracts is Monday, February 1, 2009. All proposals received by this date will be considered for presentation at Yale. This interdisciplinary forum will explore the politics of representation vis-à-vis women and gender in Islam and interrogate how representations of and by Muslim women may influence political futures. As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, global media continue to traffic in representations of Muslim women, while representations produced by Muslim women are gaining international traction. Contemporary discussions around the role of Islam in foreign and domestic policy, civil society and democracy, war, globalization, human rights, and the private sphere increasingly hinge upon the semiotics of gender. However, despite the race to represent—and through representation to understand—the Muslim woman, prevailing debates on gender and Islam remain trapped in neo-Orientalist discourses and occluded by political ideologies worldwide.As symbols of both oppression and liberation, Muslim women have historically been agents of political change and subjects of restrictive state policies in the West as well as in Muslim-majority societies. Lively religious debates on gender and the challenges of modernity prevail at the confessional level within Muslim communities. These debates are recast into objects of consumption by audiences unacquainted with the breadth and complexity of the Islamic scriptural tradition.This conference explores how representations of Muslim women within visual and material cultures and in historical and contemporary literatures inform popular imagination and public policy on Islam even as they are influenced by them. Presentations will explore not only how Muslim women have been represented and have engaged in practices of representation, but will critically examine the structures of power such representations may serve, subvert, create, negotiate, or complicate.This conference has four central goals: 1) to further interdisciplinary discussions about women and Islam beyond the discursive plateau of American popular culture; 2) to anchor that discussion in particular representations, their politics and histories; 3) to explore how religious identities are formed alongside gendered ones; and 4) to explore how representations of the Muslim woman shape political activism and religious practice.

We welcome papers from all disciplines on topics including but not limited to:

- Invocations of Tradition in Contemporary Gender Debates           
- Muslim Feminisms and Transnational Activism
- Muslim Women in Politics and Media Representations
- Mystico-Philosophical Conceptions of Femininity and Masculinity
- Sexuality, Reproduction, and the Body
- Depictions and Self-Depictions of Muslim Women
- Historical Perspectives on “The Woman Question”

SUBMIT: a 250-word abstract and author information to yalecir@gmail.com by February 01, 2010. Those selected to attend will be notified no later than March 1, 2010. For questions and further inquiries, please contact the Academic Chair, perin.gurel@yale.edu.

15-18 April 2010–“Authority, Leadership and Peacemaking: The Role of the Diasporas (Dover, Massachusetts)  The primary task of the conference is to learn through experience how groups function, how to exercise leadership in groups, and how to become more effective leaders within the organizations and communities in which we live and work. For information, contact: Janine.hackshaw@gmail.com; or visit: www.diasporaforpeace.com. 

16-17 April 2010–"Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others" (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois)  Hosted by the University of Illinois Department of Religion. The purpose of this symposium is to present and assess views on salvation in Islamic thought, particularly as it pertains to “Others,” i.e., non-Muslims– a topic with profound practical implications. Details will be posted on the conference webpage: http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/salvation. For information, contact: Mohammad Khalil (khalil@illinois.edu).

16-18 April 2010 (Hartford, Connecticut) –"Conceptualising Literary History: Foundations of Arabic Literature, 7th-17th centuries” . Contact (for the Yale meeting) Beatrice Gruendler, Yale University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, PO Box 208236, New Haven CT 06520 beatrice.gruendler@yale.edu; (for the Paris meeting) Julia Bray, Université Paris 8-Saint Denis, bray.julia@wanadoo.fr.

19-20 April 2010–“Bashar al-Asad’s First Decade: A Period of Transition for Syria” (Lund, Sweden) Organized by The Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at Lund University.This conference aims to further critical discussion between scholars from various disciplines within the social sciences and humanities who focus on contemporary Syria. For information, contact: Jaleh Taheri (jaleh.taheri@cme.lu.se).

22-25 April 2010–68th MPSA National Conference (Chicago, Illinois) For information, contact: Midwest Political Science Association, 320 W 8th Street, #218, Bloomington, IN 47404. For information, visit: (www.mpsanet.org/submitaproposal).

MAY 2010
31 May-02 June 2010–“Literature and History: Middle Eastern Perspectives” (Beer Sheva, Israel) The 15th Annual International Workshop of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Scholarly discussions about the intricate relationship between belletristic literature and history have long haunted literary criticism, historiography, cultural studies and literary practice. In recent decades numerous studies have addressed the question of belles lettres as a possible source for social, cultural and political history, while shifting the focus away from the study of aesthetics towards the study of literature as a narrative space that often represents forgotten, silenced or repressed histories. Suggested topics: reclaiming lost and repressed lived experiences in literature; the use of historical events in literary creativity; temporality – literary and historical time; ficto-historical writing / historical fiction; political and social resistance through fiction; manifestations of oppression and censorship; portrayal of the Other; the interaction between a text and its historical and political contexts; political, ethical and cultural implications of historical fiction; revisiting the literary significance of ‘history from below’; literary history and its mediations (gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, etc.); and aestheticism and anti-historicism in literature.Send a one-page proposal in English, along with CV. The proposal should briefly state the topic, and outline how the paper contributes to the aims of the workshop. Authors will be notified by February 1, 2010 whether their proposal was accepted for presentation at the workshop. Authors whose proposal is accepted will be expected to submit a full-length version of the paper by April 1, 2010. Participants from abroad will be offered round trip airfare and lodging. Proposals should be addressed by email to: Yair Huri (yairhuri@bgu.ac.il); Ariel M. Sheetrit (arielmb@bgu.ac.il). For details, visit: http://web2.bgu.ac.il/mideast/workshop/main.asp?page=about.CFP deadline: January 1, 2010.

JUNE 2010
03-05 June 2010–“Veiled Constellations: The Veil, Critical Theory, Politics, and Contemporary Society” (Toronto, Canada) Co-sponsored by: Department of Political Science (graduate program), Centre for Human Rights, Graduate Students’ Association, Centre for Refugee Studies, Department of Sociology (graduate program), Department of Communication and Culture (graduate program), York University. This conference offers a forum to problematize the prevailing discourses surrounding the veil while exploring the veil’s subversive potential. For information, visit: www.veiledconstellations.com/callforpapers.html.

30 June-03 July 2010—“The 21st Century Gulf: The Challenge of Identity” (Exeter, England) The 2010 Exeter Gulf Studies Conference. A cutting-edge interdisciplinary conference exploring the multifarious challenges of ‘identity’ at all levels–political, economic, socio-cultural, and international–as the GCC states, Iran, Iraq and Yemen undergo paradigm-shifting but highly contrasting changes. Papers and alternative panel proposals are invited. Abstracts or panel proposals with abstracts must be received by 1 March 2010 (full papers are also accepted as a basis for selection). For information, or to submit and abstract/paper by electronic means only (in Word format, 1.5-spaced, 12-point, with footnotes and bibliography), to: Prof. Gerd Nonneman (Al-Qasimi Chair of Gulf Studies): g.nonneman@ex.ac.uk. CFP deadline: March 1, 2010.

15-16 June 2010–“Food, Power & Meaning in the Middle East and the Mediterranean” (Beer Sheva Israel) “Thinking about food can help to reveal the rich and messy texture of our attempts at self-understanding, as well as our interesting and problematic understanding of our relationship to social others” (Uma Narayan, 1997) Food, like the air we breathe, is essential for our survival as biological beings. Food is therefore amongst the most prominent means of power: while regulating the food intake of others or preventing them from eating altogether is the outmost form of coercion, access to, and control over large amounts of nutritious and expensive fare are manifestations of prestige, supremacy and potency. In this workshop we wish to explore the ways in which the food and foodways partake in the production, reproduction, negotiation and subversion of power and meaning in the Middle East and Mediterranean. We seek papers that approach the culinary sphere as an active arena of cultural production, that perceive of culinary artifacts as cultural icons that define different aspects of identity and that highlight power and power relations as tangible social forces. The workshop will be held in Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel (in the English language). The program will include ample time for discussion as well as tours to unique culinary venues in the region, where power is an important aspect of the culinary experience. Submission of Paper Proposals: Researchers (including postgraduates and early career researchers), theoreticians and scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, gastronomy, geography, history, cultural studies, tourism, economics and political science who deal with aspects related to food culture in the Middle East and the Mediterranean are invited to submit a paper proposal (250-word abstract) to: Mr. Rafi Grosglik (rafig@bgu.ac.il). Organizing committee: Dr. Nir Avieli, Mr. Rafi Grosglik, Prof. Yoram Meital, Prof. Uri Ram. For more information, contact workshop the convenor: Dr. Nir Avieli (avieli@bgu.ac.il). CFP deadline: February 01, 2010.

JULY 2010
05-07 July 2010–“Zoroastrianism in the Levant” (Oxford, United Kingdom) The 28th Aram Conference. Aram Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies is inaugurating a series of conferences on the subject of Zoroastrianism. These will be held every four years at the University of Oxford. The first in the series will take place in 2010 and explore how Zoroastrianism in the Levant interacted with Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Gnosticism and ancient Near Eastern non-biblical religions. Other papers on Zoroastrianism outside the Levant may be accepted if they include elements relevant to the main theme of the meeting. We will confirm that we have received your proposal on receipt of an abstract that should include the main sources consulted for the paper and the time needed to deliver the communication. In order to allow for discussion participants should speak for 35 or 20 minutes. Papers will be accepted from accredited academics in the field and please note that the committee will be very strict in only accepting papers relevant to the conference theme. Finally the organising committee reserves the right to reduce the length of a paper if necessary and all papers submitted for publication are accepted subject to peer review. All queries should be addressed to the conference secretary Dr Shafiq Abouzayd: Aram Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies, the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, England (Tel. ++1865-514041; fax ++1865-516824;  aram@orinst.ox.ac.uk).

07-10 July 2010–“The Impact of Migration on Gulf Development and Stability” (Cambridge, United Kingdom) Workshop directed by Philippe Fargues and Nasra Shah. The Gulf Research Center is proud to announce the First Annual "Gulf Research Meeting". The GRM is an activity of the Gulf Research Foundation in collaboration with the University of Cambridge where the meeting will be held. It seeks to provide an academic environment to foster Gulf studies and to promote scholarly and academic exchange among scholars working and/or having familiarity with the Gulf region - i.e. the countries of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The Gulf Research Meeting aims to identify issues of importance to the Gulf region and provide a basis for academic and empirical research into those fields. Particular emphasis is given to encourage young scholars to engage in the debate and take part in research collaboration. For more details, visit: http://grcevent.net/cambridge/index.php. CFP deadline: December 15, 2009.

08-09 July 2010–“Astrology in the Near East” (Oxford, United Kingdom) 29th ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian conference with a special focus on the use of the Zodiac in the Syro-Mesopotamian arts. Each speaker’s paper is limited to 30 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion. If you wish to participate in the conference, please contact our Oxford address:ARAM, the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, England. ( ++1865-514041. Fax ++1865-516824;  aram@aramsociety.org). All papers given at the conference will be considered for publication in a future edition of the ARAM Periodical, subject to editorial review. All proposals should reach Aram Society before December 2009.

19-24 July 2010–World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) (Barcelona, Spain) For information, visit: http://www.wocmes.org/wocmes/. CFP deadline extended to March 1, 2010.

AUGUST 2010
09-12 August 2010–“Visible Evidence” (Istanbul, Turkey) The 17th edition of the ambulatory conference on documentaries at Bogazici University. Hosted by docIstanbul, a  non-profit training, research, policy and networking center focusing on documentary film and the Department of Western   Languages and Literatures at Bogazici University. We welcome all proposals, and encourage proposals on the following topics: documentary from Turkey, Iran, the Middle East, more  generally, the Balkan States and Greece; Turkic Documentary (from Turkic nations including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan; and communities such as Tatars); border-crossings in documentary: transnationalism, border  trade, migration, and exilic diasporic documentary (especially, but not exclusively: German, Dutch, Belgian, British, North American, etc. ­­Turkish/ Kurdish documentary);fortress Europe (exclusion, policy and ideology) minoritarian discourses within the Region (Kurdish, Armenian, Arab, Alevi, Assyrian, Jewish, queer, etc.); and activist media from the region.

Please note there is a three-tiered proposal process:

1. Panel Topic Proposals deadline: 29 January 2010 (300-word proposal);
2.  panel-specific papers deadline: 12 March 2010;
3. open call for papers not already included in panels deadline (250-300 words, one page): 30 March 2010.

Submit electronically to: Alisa Lebow: asl36@earthlink.net. Conference website: For: http://visibleevidence.org/

SEPTEMBER 2010
24-25 September 2010–“Negotiating Trade: Commercial Institutions and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Medieval and Early Modern World” (Binghamton, New York) An interdisciplinary conference presented by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Binghamton University (SUNY) The conference will explore the institutions that facilitated and accommodated long-distance trade and the globalizing of capital in the medieval and early modern world. Send all inquiries to cemers@binghamton.edu.  For information about CEMERS, please visit our website (cemers.binghamton.edu).

OCTOBER 2010
06-09 October 2010–12th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America (Lincoln, Nebraska) Hosted by The Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design, College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.“Textiles & Settlement: From Plains Space to Cyber Space,” the symposium theme. For information, visit: www.textilesociety.org/symposia_2010.htm. Contact: Janice Lessman-Moss, External Relations Director, TSA, jlessman@kent.edu.

DECEMBER 2010
15-18 December 2010–“The Utopia of Tradition” (Beirut, Lebanon) 12th conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE). The conference seeks to study how tradition inspired and informs changing concepts of utopia in theory and space. Utopian theories and plans emerge from a complex symbiotic relationship with traditions that confront notions of the ideal. Examining changing notions of the ideal allows for an understanding and interrogation of the traditions that influence our increasingly globalized built environments. Three sub-themes: Utopian Ideal vs. Traditional Physical Realities; The Practices of Utopia and the Politics of Tradition; and Utopia and the Space of Difference. Submit a 500-word abstract and a short biography online at: http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/iaste/12010cconference.htm. For information: ITASTE 2010 Conference, Center for Environmental Design Research, 390 Wurster Hall, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1739 (510 642-6801; fax: 510 643-5571; iaste@berkeley.edu). CFP deadline: February 12, 2010.