Wednesday, 11 January

11:00 – 17:00

Registration, Hotel
 

17:00 – 17:45*

Opening Ceremony, Hotel

Dr. Alex Lubin, Director of CASAR., Opening comments

Dr. Patrick McGreevy, Dean of FAS, Comments

Dr. Ahmad Dallal, Provost of AUB, Welcome

Representative from Alwaleed Foundation

Dr. Alex Lubin, Brief logistical comments

17:45-20:00*

Opening address by Rami Khouri, Director of Issam Fares Institute for International Affairs and Public Policy, American University of Beirut, " Free at Last, Free at Last, Allahu Akbar, We're free at last: Understanding the Arab Citizen Revolts in a Transnational Context"  

20:00 – 21:30*

Cocktail reception

Thursday, 12 January

All paper sessions will take place on the AUB Campus in West Hall.

8:30-17:00

Late registration will be available at West Hall, Ground Floor.

 

8:30-10:30

Auditorium A

Session 1: Aesthetics and the Muslim International: Politics, Ethics and Islamic Futures 

Chair: Alex Lubin, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Suad Abdul-Khabeer, Purdue University, USA: “Muslim Cool: Blackness, Hip Hop and American Islam”

Sohail Daulatzai, University of California, Irvine, USA: “Darkness and A Blade: The Battle of Algiers in the Black Power Imagination”

Maryam Kashani, University of Texas at Austin, USA: “A Muhammadan Breeze, From Tarim to Oakland”

Junaid Rana, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA: “Sci-Fi Islamica: American Empire and the Fantasy of Pakistan”

8:30 – 10:30

AuditoriumB                                               

Session 2: Geneaologies of Zionism, anti-Zionism, and Orientalism in the U.S.  

Chair: Adam John Waterman, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Chapin Rydingsward, Yale University, USA: “Orientalism, Anti-Zionism, and the Arab(s) in America, 1945-1948”

Maurice Labelle, University of Akron, USA: ““A Historic Tragic Mistake”: Transnational Dissent and the U.S. Intervention in the Lebanese Civil War of 1958”

 Hazem Jamjoum, American University of Beirut, “The United States and Palestinian Autonomy, 1978-1984”

8:30 – 10:30

Auditorium C

Session 3: Cultural Borderlands

Chair: Magda Shahin, American University of Cairo, Egypt

Charles Sabatos, Yeditepe University, Turkey: “Slaves, Slavs, Turks, and Renegades: the ‘Ottoman Captivity Narrative’ as a Cross-Cultural Genre”

Jonathan Shannon, Hunter College CUNY, USA: “Routes and Itineraries of Culture: Song, Spice, and Struggle in the New Mediterranean: Notes toward a Pirate Ethnography”

Emrah Yildiz, Harvard University, USA: “The Market on the Road for Pilgrimage: Field Notes on Religion, Economy and Family across the Iran/Turkey/Syria Borderlands”

Christine Lindner, University of Balamand, Lebanon: “Resting in Peace: Identity Construction at the Anglo-American Cemetery of Beirut”

10:30 – 11:00

Coffee Break, West Hall, 2nd floor

11:00 – 12:30

Auditorium A

Session 4: America/ Middle East Intersections

Chair: Malini Schueller, University of Florida, USA

Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania, USA: “Practical Andalusias: How Democratic Practices Challenge the Discourse of Dominion”

Selma Mokrani Barkaoui, Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Algeria: “From Mascara To Elkader: Emir Abdelkader between (De)Territorialization and (De)Commemoration”

Allen Hibbard, Middle Tennessee State University, USA: “Middle East Meets Middle Tennessee:  Mosques, Immigrant Communities, Wars, Travel and Academic Programs”

Tsolin Nalbantian, Leiden University, The Netherlands: “The Lebanonization of the Armenian-Americans: From 1933 to the Present”

11:00 -12:30

Auditorium B

Session 5: Border Crossing, Translation, and Empire

Chair: Belinda Walzer, University of North Carolina Greensboro, USA

Shouleh Vatanabadi, New York University, USA: “Perspectives of a “Specular Border-Crosser”: Reconsidering Global Shifting Borders”

Jens Hanssen, University of Toronto, Canada: “Translating Revolutions – Hannah Arendt in the Arab World”

Lisa Arnold, American University of Beirut, Lebanon: “Rethinking History: Composition Studies as an International Discipline”

Karen Walther, Georgetown University, Qatar: “Mission to Morocco: American Perceptions of Muslim-Jewish Relations, 1880-1906"

11:00-12:30

Auditorium C

Session 6: Regional views on the future of the Middle East and North Africa

Miloud Barkaoui, Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Algeria: “Post-Coloniality Revisited: the US and the Making of the New Arab Order”

Mounira Soliman, Cairo University, Egypt: “The Reception of U.S. Discourse on the Egyptian Revolution: Between the Popular and the Official”

Mohammad Ali Mousavi, University of Tehran, Iran: ““Rebirth of the Middle East”; not for the US Interests but for the People”

Waleed Hazbun, American University of Beirut, Lebanon: “Be identified with the emerging future rather than the decaying past: The US and Middle East in the wake of the Arab Uprisings 2010-11”

12:30 – 14:00

Lunch Break – See program booklet for restaurant suggestions

14:00 – 15:30

Auditorium A

Session 7: Obama, the Arab Spring, and the “American Autumn

Chair: Anne Sada'ah, Dartmouth University, USA

Adam Ramadan, University of Cambridge, UK & Sara Fregonese, Royal Holloway University of London, UK: “Sovereignty and responsibility: Between ‘a new beginning’ and ‘a moment of opportunity’ in Obama’s Middle East policy”

Juan Cole, University of Michigan, USA: “The Obama Administration and the Arab Spring”

Brian Edwards, Northwestern University, USA, “Arab Spring, American Autumn”

14:00-15:30

Auditorium B

Session 8: Literary Borders

Chair: Robert Gallagher, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Walid El Hamamsy, Cairo University, Egypt: “Egypt.. isn’t that in Switzerland?”: American Cartoons and the Egyptian Revolution”

Tawfiq Yousef, University of Jordan, Jordan: “Border Shifting in Naomi Nye’s Habibi”

Zohreh Ramin and Seyed Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran, Iran: “The failure of constructing a meaningful border for democracy in E.L.Doctorow's fiction”

Osama Madany, Menoufiya University, Egypt: “"That is No Country for Old Men": Shifting of Literary Borders by "Merit"-Based Egyptian Fiction Writers”

14:00 – 15:30

Auditorium C

Session 9: Gender, Sexuality, and the Arab Spring 

Chair: Sawsan Abdulrahim, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Nadia El Kholy, Cairo University, Egypt: “Shifting Borders, Gender Separatism and the Arab Spring : the Case of Egypt”

Razieh Shameli, Al Zahra University in Qom, Iran: “Bahraini Women in the Bahraini Uprising: An Islamic-nationalistic movement or one with a feministic hue?”

Nadia Dropkin, American University of Cairo, Egypt: “Agentive Silences: An Exploration of Female Same-Sex Sexuality in Contemporary Cairo”

14:00 – 15:30

Batihish Auditorium

Session 10: Hip Hop, Poetry, and the Borders of Sound 

Chair: Sirene Harb, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Cristina Moreno Almeida, University of London, UK: “From the West Coast to Tangier: translocal hip hop in the new Morocco”

Rayya El Zein, City University of New York, USA: “Rap and Resistance: Following the Beat from the Bronx to Benghazi”

Maha El Said, Cairo University, Egypt: “On the Road to Democracy:  Spoken Word Poetry Giving Voice to the Voiceless”

Marwan Kraidy, American University of Beirut, Lebanon: “False Promises: America and Iraq in Arab Music Videos”

15:30 – 16:00

Coffee Break, West Hall 2nd floor

 16:00-18:00

Bathish Auditorium  

Session 11: Plenary Session: Contesting the Foreign/Domestic Divide: Arab Revolutions and American Studies

Chair: Alex Lubin, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University, USA: “Contesting Foreign/Domestic Divide: Arab Revolutions and American Studies”

Monami Maulik, DRUM, USA: “Islamophobia in U.S. Social Movements: Non-profit Industrial Complex and State of Mass Organizing under Obama”

Melissa Garcia, Yale University, USA: “At Checkpoints: Visual Regimes of Border Crossings in Mexico and Palestine”

Jaime Veve, Retired Labor Organizer, USA: “Tercer Mundo Otra Vez? Latin America and Arab Africa and Asia Challenge Neo-Liberalism

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, City University of New York, USA: “Organization, Uprising, and the Anti-state state"

18:15- 20:00

Session 12: Hip Hop Performance: Brooklyn Beats to Beirut Streets by Mark Gonzales, Omar Chakaki, & Nizar Wattad

Friday, 13 January

All paper sessions will take place on the AUB campus in West Hall.

 8:30-17:00

 Late registration will be available at West Hall, Ground floor

8:30 – 10:30

Auditorium A

Session 13: Arab Revolutions and the West
 

Chair: Waleed Hazbun, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Craig Jones, University of British Columbia, Canada: "Targeted Assasination from America to the Middle East and beyond: A Revolution?"

Osamah Khalil, Syracuse University, USA: “Arab Spring or new Arab Cold War?: Revolutions, Counterevolutions, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East”

Yaghoob Javadi, University of Tehran, Iran: “Tectonic Shifts in the Middle East: A Civilizational Challenge for the United States”

Mohamed Dajani Daoudi, Al Quds University, Palestine: “The United States and the Arab Spring: Crossing Linkages of Democratic Ideals and National Interests”                                                     

8:30-10:30

Auditorium B 

Session 14: Mapping Transnational Geographies

Chair: Patrick McGreevy, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Manijeh Nasrabadi, New York University, USA: “Remapping Diasporic Imaginaries: The ‘Green’ Uprising and Iranian American Transnational Solidarity”

Andrew Patrick, New York University in Abu Dhabi, UAE: “The Contingencies of Pro-Americanism in World War I-Era Greater Syria”

Suzanne Wiedemann, Saint Louis University, USA: “Measuring the “great distance from our shores”: New Western Geographic Imaginaries of the Middle East/North Africa”

Rita Sakr, University College Dublin, Ireland: ““A New MENA?”: Re-inventing the American “Democratization”  project in the Arab world’s monumental squares”

8:30 – 10:30

Auditorium C

Session 15: Environmental Politics and Borders

Chair: David Correia, University of New Mexico, USA

Sam Markwell, University of New Mexico, USA: “Acequias, Polycultural Ghosts, and Decolonization”

Omar Imseeh Tesdell, University of Minnesota, USA: “Staging environments: agriculture, science, and aid in the West Bank”

Yara El-Ghadban, University of the Witwatersand, UK: “Camp Utopia: Pre-Casting The Future in Nahr El-Bared”

Benjamin Morris, Open University, USA: “Heritage Ecology: Climate Change and Cultural Heritage in the MENA”

8:30-10:30

Bathish Auditorium

Session 16: The American-Style University at Large: Transplants, Outposts, and the Globalization of Higher Education

Chair: Kathryn Kleypas, American University of Kuwait, Kuwait: “Introduction” 

James McDougall, American University of Kuwait, Kuwait: “Performing American: The Globalization of Higher Education and the American-Style University”

Mary Queen, American University of Kuwait, Kuwait: “Branding Diversity & Difference: “American-Style” Education in the Arabian Gulf”

Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton, Effat University, KSA: “A Neocolonialist Invader or a Postmodern Exile?: the American-Style University in the ‘Desert of the Real’”

10:30 – 11:00

Coffee Break, West Hall, 2nd floor

11:-00-12:30

Auditorium A

Session 17: Visual Economies

Chair: Marwan Kraidy, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Eid Mohamed, George Washington University, USA: “Media(ting) Otherness: Visual Representations of the U.S./West in the Post-9/11 Era”

Ashley Dawson, City University of New York, USA: “Visual Economies of Urban Empire”

Jakob Schiller, University of New Mexico, USA: “The Politics of Seeing: A Comparative Analysis of American and Israeli Border Photography”

Helga Tawil-Souri, New York University, USA: “From Digital Occupation to Digital Revolution? Media Infrastructures as Borders”

11:00 – 12:30

Auditorium B

Session 18: U.S./Middle East Cultural Politics

Chair: John Pedro Schwartz, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Adam John Waterman, American University of Beirut, Lebanon: “The United States of Al-Andalus: Washington Irving´s Granada and the Disestablishment of Zion”

Judith Tucker, Georgetown University, USA: “Shifting and Crossing Borders as an Eighteenth Century Exile from Algiers in Colonial Virginia”

Andrew Arsan, Princeton University, USA: “Between Bilad al-Sham and Uncle Sam: Metaphors of America in Eastern Mediterranean Political Writing c.1900-1914”

Bassem Ra’ad, Al Quds University, Palestine: “Reimagining Pilgrimage: Shifting Our Reading of Twain and Others for Today”

11:00 – 12:30

Auditorium C

Session 19: Shifting Policy and Faith
 

Chair: Hugh Goddard, University of Edinburgh, UK

Sarah Marusek, Syracuse University, USA: “Understanding Islamic Movements: Where Faith and Rationality Commingle”

Michelle Browers, Wake Forest University, USA: “Minorities in Islam/Muslims as Minorities: Fadlallah’s Role as a Translocal Force”

Sean Foley, Middle Tennessee State University, USA: “When the Qur’an was America’s Weapon for Freedom in the Middle East: Muhammad Siblini and the Defeat of the Axis in North Africa”

Nathaniel George, The American University of Beirut, Lebanon, “’Black May’ in Lebanon? US Intervention and the Lebanese Crisis of 1973”

11:00-12:30

Bathish Auditorium

Session 20: Arab-America, Islamophobia, and Hybridity

Chair: Sam Haselby, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Salah Hassan, Michigan State University, USA: “At the Border of the Imagination: Figures of Arab American Immigrants”

Charolotte Karem Albrecht, University of Minnesota, USA: “Arab America Obscura: The Racial Intimacies of Working Class Syrian Migrants in the Early 20th Century”

Moustafa Bayoumi, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA: “No Name in the Street: Questioning the Citizenship Narratives of Muslim Minorities in the West”

Shirin Zubair, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Pakistan: “Co-constructing America and Pakistan :  Hybridity and Transculturality in Pakistani English Fiction”

12:30 – 14:30

Lunch Break- See program booklet for restaurant suggestions

14:30 – 16:30

Auditorium A

Session 21: The Politics of Higher Education

Chair: Patrick McGreevy, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Maria Bashshur Abunnasr, American University of Beirut, Lebanon: “The American Lives of Ras Beirut”

Betty Anderson, Boston University, USA: “What You Know vs. How You Think:  American Higher Education in Crisis?”

Elizabeth Matsushita, San Francisco State University, USA: ““Fellow Citizens in the World of Nations”: The Secular Mission of the American University of Beirut in the Interwar Period”

Seyed Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran, Iran: “Iranian History Textbooks and Representations of the United States and Iranian-American Relations”

14:30 – 16:30

Auditorium B

Session 22: Technology and Geography

Chair: Alexander Hartwiger, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Steve Niva, The Evergreen State College, USA: “Disappearing Violence:  US Counterinsurgency and the Pentagon’s New Geography of Life and Death”

William Carruthers, University of Cambridge, UK: “Re-Affirming Borders: Egyptological Practice, Nuclear Science and America in Egypt”

David Correia, University of New Mexico: “Techno-Tahrir: Technology and Anti-authoritarianism in the Arab Spring”

14:30 – 16:30

Auditorium C

Session 23: Drones, Robots, and Security

Chair: Lisa Portmess, Gettysburg College, USA

Paul Jahshan, Notre Dame University, Lebanon: “Averted Gazes, Deferred Consumption: Osama bin Laden’s Cinematic Life and Death”

Robert Ross, Point Park University, USA: “Gentrification, Robots, and Warfare: Deception and the Defense Industry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Kabul, Afghanistan”

Ronak Kapadia, New York University, USA: “Up in the Air and On the Skin: Wafaa Bilal, Drone Warfare, and the Human Terrain”

John Lupien, FAO-FOA in participation with MEFOSA (MENA Food Safety Associates), Italy: “Food Security, the Moving Borders of Poverty, Free Markets and Political Interventions”

14:30 – 16:30

Bathish Auditorium

Session 24: Academic and Culture Boycott of Israel: Colonialism, Orientalism, and Eurocentrism

Chair: Rayan El-Amine, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

J. Kehaulani Kaunanui, Wesleyan University, USA: “Native American and Indigenous Studies and the Academic Boycott of Israel”

Malini Johar Schueller, University of Florida, USA: “The AAUP, Left Critiques of U.S. Higher Education, and the Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel”

Magid Shihade, Birzeit University, Palestine: “Boycott and Normalization: Jews, Arabs and Decolonization”

16:30 – 17:00

Coffee Break, West Hall, 2nd floor

17:00 – 19:00

Bathish Auditorium

Closing Address, Introduction: Alex Lubin

Vijay Prashad, Director and Professor of International Studies and Co-director of the Trinity Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Trinity College, USA: It's Just Night After All: Reflections on a post-American World

20:00 – onward*

Closing Reception and Dinner at Hotel.*

Saturday, 14 January

9:00 -19:00*

Meeting place:

Optional all day field trip to the south of Lebanon that includes a visit to Mlita (museum of Hezbollah), Beaufort Castle (also known as Shakif castle), Khyam and passing through Gate of Fatima at the Southern Borders. And lunch will be in Hasbani.