AUB - Faculty of Arts and Sciences - CASAR

Past Activities and Events

Sponsored and Co-sponsored Lectures for year 2005-2006:

May 26 & 27, 2006: "UnAmerican Acts" CVSP Forum Workshop, co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost By Dr. Kathleen Cleaver and St. Clare Borne Kathleen Cleaver, former Communications Secretary for the Black Panther Party, is now professor of law at Yale and Emory Law Schools, and Co-Director of the Human Rights Research Fund. Active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she joined the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and became the first woman member of their Central Committee. She lived in exile with her former-husband Eldridge Cleaver iin Algiers and Paris for seven years. Among her many accomplishments and years of activism for social and economic justice including acting as a member of the legal team that freed Geronimo Pratt-Ji Jaga, she has also authored articles along with editing and co-editing several books including " Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party" (2001) and " Target Zero: Eldridge Cleaver, A Life in Writing" (2006).
St. Clair Bourne: In addition to directing and producing many documentaries and series for networks from PBS and NBC to HBO, he has made several documentaries dealing with race and class in the United States, among them, "Paul Robeson: Here I Stand", "Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper", "In Motion: Amiri Baraka", "The Making of Do the Right Thing" and "Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks" which was nominated for three Emmys. Curating several film festivals such as the prestigious "Full Frame Documentary Film Festival", films have been shown at Carthage, Toronto, Sundance, and Ouagadougou.
May 22, 2006: Dr. Timothy Marr, "The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism" Dr. Timothy Marr is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1998. He is the recipient of several honors and fellowships the latest of which is the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He is the author of The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the co-	Dr. Timothy Marr
editor of Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick (Kent State University Press, 2006). Dr. Marr is currently working on two additional book projects: Malays and Moros: Racial Orientalism in the American Pacific, and Muslim Masculinities and Twentieth-Century American Manhood.

*May 18, 2006: Dr. Susanne Wiedemann, "Picture (Im)Perfect of the Global Family of Man: Photography, National Narrative, and U.S. Cultural Diplomacy in Cold War Berlin"* Susanne Wiedemann is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at AUB. She graduated from the Free University of Berlin with an M.A. in North American Studies in 1997. She earned an M.A. in Museum Studies (1999) and a Ph.D. in American Civilization (2006), both from Brown	Dr. Susanne Wiedemann
University. She has taught American Studies courses at Brown University and Wheaton College. Dr. Wiedemann's research interests include transnationalism, diaspora cultures and literatures, and comparative genocide studies.


May 10, 2006: Dr. Noam Chomsky, "Biolinguistic Explorations: Design, Development, and Evolution" Lecture Text Noam Chomsky is a world-renown linguist, scholar, and political analyst. His 1957 book Syntactic Structures outlined his theories of transformational generative grammar and made him a prominent and controversial figure in the field. He claimed that linguistic theory must account for universal similarities between all languages and for the fact that children are able to learn language fluently at an early age.	Dr. Noam Chomsky
Dr. Chomsky has made contributions to a number of fields from an influential critique of behaviorism to a 2002 article in Science on language as a natural object . Dr. Chomsky is also known as a political activist suspicious of big media, big business and big government. His books include Manufacturing Consent (1988) and Propaganda and the Public Mind (2001), and Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians (1999). His traditional definition of himself is a anarchist, a political philosophy he summarizes as seeking out all forms of hierarchy and attempting to eliminate them if they are unjustified. Edward Said wrote of Chomsky that â??there is something profoundly moving about a mind of such noble ideals repeatedly stirred on behalf of human suffering and injustice.â? Dr. Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

May 9, 2006: Dr. Noam Chomsky, "The Great Soul of Power" "The Great Soul of Power" Text Noam Chomsky is a world-renown linguist, scholar, and political analyst. His 1957 book Syntactic Structures outlined his theories of transformational generative grammar and made him a prominent and controversial figure in the field. He claimed that linguistic theory must account for universal similarities between all languages and for the fact that children are able to learn language fluently at an early age.	Dr. Noam Chomsky
Dr. Chomsky has made contributions to a number of fields from an influential critique of behaviorism to a 2002 article in Science on language as a natural object . Dr. Chomsky is also known as a political activist suspicious of big media, big business and big government. His books include Manufacturing Consent (1988) and Propaganda and the Public Mind (2001), and Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians (1999). His traditional definition of himself is a anarchist, a political philosophy he summarizes as seeking out all forms of hierarchy and attempting to eliminate them if they are unjustified. Edward Said wrote of Chomsky that â??there is something profoundly moving about a mind of such noble ideals repeatedly stirred on behalf of human suffering and injustice.â? Dr. Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


May 3, 2006: Dr. Ussama Makdisi, "America before Anit-Americanism" Dr. Ussama Makdisi is an Associate Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. He completed his PhD in history at Princeton University in 1997. Dr. Makdisi is the author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (University of California Press, 2000), as well as numerous scholarly articles on the Ottoman empire, the Arab world in	Dr. Ussama Makdisi
the twentieth century, and Islam and the West. He is the organizer of a semester-long lecture series â??The Arab World: History, Politics, and Cultureâ? at Rice University.


April 26, 2006: Ms. Laura Hanna & Ms. Martina Radwan, "Zizek !" Zizek! The author of works on subjects as wide-ranging as Alfred Hitchcock, 9/11, opera, Christianity, Lenin and David Lynch, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is one of the most important--and outrageous--cultural theorists working today. This captivating, erudite documentary explores the eccentric personality and esoteric work of this incomparable academic and writer who has been called everything from "the Elvis of cultural theory" to "a one person culture mulcher".
Laura Hanna: Laura Hanna has worked in film/television in New York City for the past five years doing post-production editing, sound design, and mixing as well as location recording. Her latest projects are: Road to Paris (CBS, 2002), Shots in the Dark (CTV, 2002), Justifiable Homicide (2002), A Day in the Life of Africa (2003), The Perpetual Life of Jim Albers (Sundance, 2003), Academy Awards Open (Errol Morris, 2003), Hollywood High (AMC, 2003, and Some Kind of Monster (Sundance, 2004). She co-founded Hiddendriver pictures with Astra Taylor in 2005. Hiddendriver	Ms. Laura Hanna
is currently in production on several socio-political documentary films.

Martina Radwan: Martina Radwan, native of Germany, started in the film industry in 1987 as a Camera Technician at ARRI Berlin. She worked with cinematographers Robby Mueller, Juergen Juerges and Sophy Mantigneux. Martina worked on the German feature film, Game of Death, which received the Bundes Film Preis, the German Oscar. Martina was Director of Photography for the documentary project Ferry Tales, which was nominated for the 2004 Academy Award. She is the cinematographer for Zizek! and is currently making her own film about immigration policies.	Ms. Martina Radwan


April 18, 2006: Dr. Khadija Fritsch El-Alaoui, "The Clash that Cashes: Unpacking the relationships between Power, Knowledge, and Culture in US Representations of the Arabs" Dr. Khadija Fritsche El-Alaoui received her Ph.D from Technical University in Dresden in 2005. Her current research focuses on the politics of representations and how its analysis reveals the messy intersections of power, knowledge and culture. Dr. El-Alaoui's research interests include the connectivity among the	Dr. Khadija Fritsch El-Alaoui
various struggles against the new imperialism with(out) colonies and the history of political dissent in the US.

April 6, 2006: Dr. Koray Caliskan, "What is a Global Market Place? The Politics of Cotton Exchange and Production in Egypt, Turkey and the US" Koray Caliskan is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogazici University. His dissertation (New York University, 2005) won the Malcolm H. Kerr award from Middle East Studies Association of North America. Dr. Caliskan is the author of numerous articles in Turkish and English. His research maps the social	Dr. Koray Caliskan
universe of a global market as articulated in different locales by following the circulation of cotton and by attending to the voices of its agents from options traders to Egyptian farmers, from Kurdish workers to Tennessee cotton dealers. He carried out field work in a Turkish village (6 months), two Lower Egyptian villages (6 months), Izmir and Alexandria (6 months) and Memphis, USA (10 weeks). He also took professional training in options, futures and spot cotton markets and traded with international cotton merchants.


March 28, 2006: Dr. Nikhil P. Singh, "Race and Empire in the Logic of US World Power" Dr. Nikhil P. Singh is Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1995. Dr. Singh is the author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2004) and (with Andrew Jones) The Afro-Asian Century (forthcoming, Duke University Press).	Dr. Nikhil Singh
Dr. Singhâ??s recent research focuses on post-World War II fascism and modern U.S. imperialism.



March 20, 2006: Dr. Edward E. Curtis, "African-American Muslims in the Age of the Arab Cold War" Edward Curtis is Millennium Scholar of the Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is author of Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975 (appearing soon from UNC Press), Islam in Black America (SUNY Press, 2002), and editor of	Dr. Edward Curtis
Looking for Islam: Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States (under contract with Columbia University Press). Professor Curtisâ?? scholarship has also appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Religion and American Culture, and Religion. He is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the National Humanities Center, a U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative Grant, and an Andrew Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies. Dr. Curtis is an Arab American whose maternal great-grandparents originally immigrated from Syria and Lebanon to Cairo, Illinois.

March 16, 2006: Dr. Arlene Crewdson, "Contemporary Urban Theatre in the U.S" Dr. Arlene Crewdson has been the executive director of the Pegasus Players Theater in Chicago since 1978. She received her PhD. from Loyola University and has taught for more than thirty years at several universities and colleges. Dr. Crewdson	Dr. Arlene Crewdson
envisioned, managed and developed the Pegasus Players Theatre as an initiative committed to a dual mission of artistic excellence and social outreach. Starting as a small student-faculty project, Dr. Crewdson succeeded in turning the Pegasus Players Theatre into a nationally recognized theatre with a $500,000 annual budget. The theatre has produced 154 plays, including 50 world premiers, and has won numerous awards. Through these efforts, Dr. Crewdson has been able to train, nurture, and mentor new Chicago talent, providing many successful directors, actors and designers their earliest professional experience.
October 20, 2005: Dr. Alan Wolfe, "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States" Alan Wolfe is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. Professor Wolfe earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Pennsylvania in 1967. He served as an advisor to President Clinton in preparation for his 1995 State of the Union address and has lectured widely at American and European universities. Dr. Wolfe is not only a contributing	Dr. Alan Wolfe
editor of The New Republic and The Wilson Quarterly, but he also writes for those publications as well as many others such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. He is the author of numerous books; among them, The Transformation of American Religion: How We actually Practice our Faith, (2003), and most recently, Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What it Needs to Do to Recover It (2005 ).
October 13, 2005: Dr. Joshua Landis & Mrs. Juliet Wurr, "U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East: A Conversation with Juliet Wurr and Joshua Landis" Note : Mr. Walid Maalouf from USAID, who was originally scheduled for this panel, was called away. Juliet Wurr, the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, has kindly agreed to stand in.	Mrs. Juliet Wurr
Juliet Wurr joined United States Information Agency in 1991 after six years of teaching high school in Latin America. She has been posted to New Delhi,Damascus, Alexandria (Egypt) and Beirut. She studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington D.C. and in Tunis. At the Department of State, she served as Staff Assistant for Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns, after which she was asked to travel to Kuwait in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq to coordinate media relations. She joined the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA â?? Garner Group) and went to Erbil in northern Iraq to be the first civilian Public Affairs Officer with ORHA. On her return to the Department of State, she handled Middle Eastern Affairs in the Bureau of International Organization United Nations Political Affairs. Juliet has a BA from University of California Berkeley (English Literature), a Masters of Teaching from Reed College, Portland OR, and a Masters in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York.
Joshua M. Landis is Assistant Professor in History and the School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1997. Dr. Landis is currently a Fulbright scholar living in Damascus. He is the recipient of the M. H. Kerr Dissertation Prize, awarded by the Middle East Studies Association for best dissertation in the social sciences (1997). He is the author of Democracy in Syria (2004). Dr. Landis currently publishes the â??Syria Comment,â? Web Log ( http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-	Dr. Joshua Landis
1/syriablog/index.html ) and is the author of numerous articles in academic journals and newspapers.
October 4, 2005: Dr. Hussein Ibish, "Ten Themes of Islamophobic Discourse in the US" Hussein Ibish currently serves as Vice-Chair of the US-based Progressive Muslim Union (PMU), and Vice-President of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF). He is also a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). From 1998-2004, Dr. Ibish was the Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the nation's largest Arab-American membership	Dr. Hussein Ibish
organization. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times. He has also made over 3,000 radio and television appearances to date. Dr. Ibish is the editor and principal author of 2 reports on Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans 1998-2000 (ADC, 2001) and Sept. 11, 2001- Oct. 11, 2002 (ADC, 2002). He is also the author of several books such as, "At the Constitution's Edge: Arab Americans and Civil Liberties in the United States" in the collection States of Confinement (St. Martin's Press, 2000).
September 28, 2005: Dr. Brian T. Edwards, "Following Casablanca: Disorienting America's Maghreb" Brian Edwards is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University. Professor Edwards earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1998. His research focuses on American studies, transnational cultural studies, North African culture and politics,	Dr. Brian E. Edwards
Middle East studies, comparative literature, film and media, anthropology, and postcolonial studies. He is the author of Morocco Bound: Disorienting Americaâ??s Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech (2005), as well as numerous scholarly articles.