MEHAT Workshop with Fariba Zarinebaf, Wed. Jan 12, 1-2:30 PM

Hello Mehat attendees,

 
Please join the Middle East History and Theory Workshop on Wednesday, January 12th, from 1:00 to 2:30 PM (Central time) via Zoom for our first workshop of the winter quarter: 
Fariba Zarinebaf (Professor of History, University of California, Riverside) 

Approaches to the Study of Ottoman- Safavid Borderlands: Azerbaijan between Two Empires.

Prof. Holly Shissler (NELC) will serve as the discussant.

You can access the meeting using the invitation link below. I am looking forward to seeing you!

https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/99572531777?pwd=WG9nQ2VZQno5TGFVSnlUa0JlMXRLUT09

Best,

Elif 

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MEHAT Workshop Winter 2022 Schedule

Dear all,

 
We are very excited to share the Winter schedule of the Middle East History and Theory Workshop. This quarter, we will have the online option for all of the presentations but we would like to maintain the in-person element as much as possible since we realized how refreshing it was to see fellow grad students and faculty. For the hybrid events, we will meet on Wednesdays in Pick 218 with those who prefer to join us in person. The Zoom link will be sent out for those who would like to join us virtually. As always papers will be sent to the listserv prior to each event. We are looking forward to another lively quarter. 
 
January 12 (online only 1-2:30 pm CST)
Fariba Zarinebaf (Professor of History, University of California, Riverside) 
Approaches to the Study of Ottoman- Safavid Borderlands: Azerbaijan between Two Empires.
 
January 26 (online only 1-2:30 pm CST) 
Hayri Gökşin Özkoray (Assistant Professor of Early Modern History, Aix-Marseille University) 
“Plague Epidemics and Mobilization of the Workforce in the Central Provinces of the Ottoman Empire (16th-17th c.).”
 
February 9 (TBD) 
Aamir Bashir (Ph.D. Candidate in NELC, University of Chicago)
“Private Muftis in a Postcolonial State: Pakistani Deobandis on Islamic Banking.”
 
February 23 (TBD) 
Owen Green (Ph.D. Student in NELC, University of Chicago) 
Bound by Tradition: “Civilization,” Medicine, and “Modernity” in the anti-Corset Discourse in Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete.
 
March 9 (TBD) 
Kara A. Perrucio (Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and History, University of Maine)
The Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Conversation on Job Market during COVID-19 Pandemic.
 
Best,
Elif 
MEHAT Workshop Coordinator 
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Call for Papers Winter 2022

Dear MEHAT attendees,

We had a great Fall schedule of workshops that hosted graduate students from the Chicago area and visiting faculty on topics as wide as Egyptian Libraries, Mughal Architecture, and charity in modern Lebanon. Thank you for your contribution to a successful Fall quarter.  We hope to continue this momentum in Winter.

We already have a few scheduled speakers but we need a few more workshops to continue providing a space for graduate students and faculty to present work, receive feedback, and generate discussion. Drafts of dissertation proposals, chapters, and master’s thesis are especially welcome along with other works in progress. Papers are circulated a week prior to the workshop listserv to encourage attendance and foster informed discussion.

The MEHAT Workshop invites graduate students and faculty from all relevant departments. We are eager to hear from historians, literary scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, musicologists, art historians, scholars of religion whose work engages with the Middle East, defined broadly to include the Mediterranean, North and West Africa, South and Central Asia over a span of time extending from Late Antiquity and the advent of Islam to the present.

Please email abstracts of no more than 300 words to ebozgan@uchicago.edu by January 3.

Elif Bozgan

2021-2022 MEHAT Workshop Coordinator

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MEHAT Book Talk with Nada Moumtaz

Dear Mehat attendees,

The Middle East History and Theory Workshop is very excited to host Nada Moumtaz, Assistant Prof. in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Toronto, who will present her new book, God’s Property: Islam, Charity and the Modern State. Elif Bozgan (Ph.D. Candidate in NELC) and Kyle Wynter-Stoner (Ph.D. Candidate in NELC) will serve as discussants. This event will take place virtually on Wednesday, December 1 from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. (There will be no in-person meeting.) Please register for the event with the link below.

https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtf-2spj8vGtxSdABp3BZTwzmf13b4hHhs

This is the last workshop of the quarter but the MEHAT Workshop is still accepting proposals for Winter and Spring quarters. Please email me at ebozgan@uchicago.edu with abstracts of no more than 300 words. Drafts of dissertation proposals, chapters, and master’s theses are especially welcome, along with other works in progress.

Warm regards,

Elif Bozgan

2021-2022 MEHAT Workshop Coordinator

 

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2021-2022 MEHAT FALL SCHEDULE

Middle East History and Theory Workshop is excited to share our Fall schedule with you. Workshop meetings will be held from 3:30- 5:00 pm CT on Wednesdays in Pick Hall 218. This fall, we will have a hybrid model including in-person and online presentations as noted below. We will meet in Pick Hall 218 both for in-person and online presentations. Online presenters will join us virtually. We will circulate the papers a week prior to each session. To be added to the email list and to submit proposals for Winter and Spring quarters please email MEHAT coordinator Elif Bozgan (ebozgan@uchicago.edu


After a short break, we are looking forward to seeing you. 


October 6 
Hannah Ridge

(Postdoctoral Scholar, Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago) 
“Israeli Ethnicity, Peace, and Democracy: A Conjoint Analysis” 
 
October 20 
Kyle Wynter-Stoner
(Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
“The Readers of the Maḥmūdīyah, a 15th Century Egyptian Library”
 
October 27 
Çağdaş Acar
(Ph.D. Student, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago)

“Some Considerations on the Uses and the Limitations of “Library” as an Analytical Category in Research on Intellectual History”

November 3 
Guy Burak
(Librarian for Middle Eastern, Islamic and Jewish Studies, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University)
“The Paşa and His Librarian: A Reading in the Inventory of Endowed Books to the Library of Ahmad Paşa al-Jazzar (d. 1804)“

November 17 
Maggie Schuster
(Ph.D. Student, Department of Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago)
“Ephemera and Power in Mughal Architecture”

December 1 
Nada Moumtaz
(Assistant Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto)
Book Talk: God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State 

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MEHAT 2019 – Schedule

Middle Eastern History and Theory Conference, May 3rd-May 5th 2019

Theme: Migration, Diaspora, and Movement of Peoples

Friday, May 3rd

Registration: Begins at 4:00 p.m.

Saieh Hall 146

Round Table Discussion: 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Saieh Hall 146

Contextualizing Migration Studies

-with-

Akram Khater, North Carolina State University

Ilana Feldman, The George Washington University

Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University

Ulrike Präger, Salzburg University

Moderated by Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago

Reception: 6:15 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Hutchinson Commons

Catered by: Nepal House Indian Nepalese Restaurant

Film Screening: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Saieh Hall 146

Havana Habibi looks at the cross cultural exchange and inter-migration between Africa, Cuba, and the USA; what it means to be a Cuban Belly-dancer in Revolutionary Cuba as well as the Diaspora, and travels throughout time, geography and space to tell a human story of healing, transformation, empowerment, liberation and Identity through the sensual metaphor of Bellydance.

This movie screening is free and open to the public.

 

Saturday, May 4th

All panel sessions will be held in Stuart Hall

Registration – Starts at 8:00 a.m.

Stuart Hall Lobby

Coffee and a light breakfast will be provided at registration.

Session I – 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

Stuart 101

Ottoman Studies

Stuart 102

[Im]migration Studies

Stuart 103

Arabic Literature

“Reading the Cultural Migration from Greek Thought to Arabic Culture”,

Abdullah Rıdvan Gökbel, Istanbul University

“Mapping Community and its Implications: A Case Study of Copts in Nashville”

Lydia Yousief, University of Chicago

“Moving from Invisibility to Visibility through Palestinian Literature”

Aarushi Punia, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

“Translation as a Remedy: Juristic Perspective in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Political Writing”

Arif Erbil, Boğaziçi University

“Migration Movements in the Black Sea in the First Half of the 20th Century”

Cafer Sarıkaya, Boğaziçi University

“Vocalization by women who faced violence during partitions of Palestine-Israel and India-Pakistan”

Tanzoom Ahmed, University of Chicago

“Ottoman Travelers’ Search for Europe with the Guidance of Baedeker Editions”

Semra Horuz, TU Wien

“Consequence of arami Trans-oceanic Migrations in Indian Ocean Muslim legacy Formation”

Ashraf PonnChethil, Darul Huda Islamic University

“The Oddities of the Language: Questioning the Authority of the Lexicon in al-Saq ʿala al-Saq”

Aidan Kaplan, University of Chicago

Coffee Break – 10:00 – 10:15 a.m.

Session II – 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.

Stuart 101

Education

Stuart 102

Jewish Studies

Stuart 103

Egypt

“Medieval Islamic Education Theory and its Implications for Today’s Islamic School Practices”

Derya Doğan, Indiana University Bloomington

“Bedouin Tents and Camel Rides: East-West Dichotomies and Gendered Paradigms on Birthright Israel”

Jacob Beckert, Indiana University

“Dreams Deferred: The Politics of Hope and Exile”

Fernando Revelo La Rotta, University of Chicago

“Systems of Identity: Modes of Citizen Identity and Sociality Experienced by Female Jordanian and Syrian Refugee Students in Amman’s Public Schools”

Patricia Kubow, Indiana University

“The Yiddish-Hebrew Kulturkampf: Historical and Contemporary Implications”

Joey Ayoub, University of Edinburgh

“Whom Should We Shoot: Assigning Blame and Revising History in 70s Egypt”

Hazem Fahmy, University of Texas at Austin

Coffee Break – 11:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Film Screening – 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Stuart Hall 101

a film by Fadi (the fdz) Baki
2017 / 29 minutes
in Arabic with English subtitlesLast Days of the Man of Tomorrow is the award winning film by current Gray Center Mellon Collaborative Fellow Fadi (the fdz) Baki, who is in residence at the University of Chicago this quarter. Plot: A young filmmaker investigates the legend of Manivelle, an automaton gifted to Lebanon in 1945 that still haunts an abandoned mansion in Beirut. After being coaxed back out into the limelight, the people who knew him come forward to speak their mind, and the myth that Manivelle has constructed around himself begins to unravel.The film has been screened at over 50 international film festivals and took home the prize for Best Short Film at the BBC Arabic Film Festival, Boston Underground Film Festival, SciFi Film Festival Australia, Sapporo International Short Film Festival, Arab Film Festival (Malmö), Cinalfama Lisbon International Film Awards, Lebanese Film Festival, Batroun Mediterranean Film Festival, and the International Short Film Week Regensburg.

Lunch – 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Stuart Hall, Cox Lounge (Downstairs)

Session III – 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Stuart 101

Libraries

Stuart 102

 

Stuart 103

At the Margins of the Ottoman Empire

“The Nature of Bayt al-Hikma”

Wihad Al-Tawil, University of Chicago

(W)rapping the Hijab: Hip-hop, Islam, and Femininity”

Aliah Ajamoughli, Indiana University Bloomington

“The 1862 Zēytʻun Affair and the Armenian Press” Aram Ghoogasian, University of Chicago
 

“The Maḥmūdiyya: Preliminary Observations on the Book Contents of a Mamluk Era Library”

Kyle Wynter-Stoner, University of Chicago

Morality or Corruption: Analyzing Two Contradictory Approaches Regarding Iranian Women’s Hijab Based on Foreign Travellers, Memoirists and Historians’ Accounts in King Nasreddin’s Period Tehran (1848-1896)”

Zeinab (Sarah) Eskandari, University of Cincinnati

“Traveling Dervishes: Waves of Bektashi Migration” Xhesika Bardhi, University of Chicago
“Ottomanizing Heritage Conservation and Turkifying the Monumental Past: The Life and Works of Halil Edhem Bey”

Lauren Poulson, University of Chicago

“The reception of Ikhwān al-Safā’s Classification of the Sciences in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī’s (d. 1454) al-Fawāʾiḥ al-miskiyya fī l-fawātiḥ al-Makkiyya

Cem Turkoz, University of Chicago

*note: this paper is out of theme

“Ottomans and Yezidis on the Margins of the Empire”

Bahadin Hawar Kerborani, University of Chicago

Coffee Break – 3:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.

Session IV – 3:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Stuart 101

Confronting Catastrophe: Fitna, Invasion, and Apocalypse

Stuart 102

Politics and Policies in Saudi Arabia

Stuart 103

Political Science

“Rule, dissent, and the spread of information: The first and second fitnas in non-Muslim writings of the first two centuries”

Ameena Yovan, University of Chicago

“Neo–Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia, the Challenges and Future” Abdullah Alrebh, Grand Valley State University “Identity, Transnationalism and Power: Transnational Iraqi Shia Politics pre- and post- the 2003 Iraq War” Oula Kadhum, University of Birmingham
“ ‘Human-Faced Beasts’: Racial Depictions of the Mongols in Armenian Manuscript Colophons”

Armen Abkarian, University of Michigan

“The Moral and Social Effects of Labor Importation in Saudi Arabia” Benjamin Beames, University of Chicago “Hard Forces for Soft Targets: China’s ‘Prudent Power’ and the Legitimization of Its Military Base in Djibouti”

Degang Sun, Shanghai International Studies University

“ ‘Blessed are the strangers’: An Apocalyptic Hadith on the Virtues of Loneliness, Sadness, and Exile”

Youshaa Patel, Lafayette College

“A Peripheral Realist Analysis of Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy” Miras Tolepbergen, Shanghai University “From Colonial divide et impera to the War on Terror: The Racialized Muslim Subject in the Moroccan Hirak al-Rif” Ahmed Mitiche, University of Michigan

Upon the conclusion of Session IV,

please make your way to the Oriental Institute  for the keynote address.

Keynote Address – 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., May 5th

The Middle East History and Theory Conference proudly presents

Dr. Akram Khater

Professor of History

Khayrallah Distinguished Professor of Lebanese Diaspora Studies

Director, Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies

Editor, International Journal of Middle East Studies

On Forgotten Shores: Migration and Mobility in the Middle East

 

This lecture is free and open to the public

 

Lamb Roast Dinner – 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Ida Noyes Hall

Catered by: Al Bawadi Grill

This meal is made possible by the generous support of the

Middle Eastern Studies Students’ Association (MESSA)

Sunday, May 5th

All panel sessions will be held in Stuart Hall

Breakfast – 9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Stuart Hall

Session V – 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Stuart 101

Migration, Diaspora, and Movement of Peoples in Central Eurasian Contexts

Stuart 102

Diasporic Narratives

Familiar Strangers: A Samarkandi Community in Mongol-Yuan Literature” 

Xinyi Wei, University of Chicago

 

“Choreographies of Diaspora: Reimagining Anatolian Dance in Berlin”

Michael O’Toole, University of Chicago

Huihui Officials in the Embroidered Uniform Guard” Carol Fan, University of Chicago “From Population to Community: Translation of Iranian Immigrant Community in France”

Narciss M. Sohrabi, University of Nanterre la Défense

The Ottoman Throne Between Tent and Metropolis: The Character and Extent of Ottoman Courtly Mobility as Represented in Mehmed Rāşid Efendi’s (d. 1735) Tārīḫ-i Rāşid and Ismaʿīl Asim Küçükçelebizāde’s (1675-1759) Tārīḫ-i Çelebizāde, a Framework Towards a Social History of Monarchy in the Ottoman Empire (c. 1660-1730)”

Arlen Wiesenthal, University of Chicago 

“Culinary Place-Identity: Palestinian Belonging in the Chilean Foodscape” Nicholas Bascuñan-Wiley, Northwestern University
Textbook Imperialism: 16th Century Uzbek History from a 21st Century Perspective”

August Samie, University of Chicago

“A Women’s Movement in Transition: Iranian Counterpublics and Digital Diasporas”

Sean Widlake, Northeastern University


Lunch – 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Stuart Hall

Catered by: UChicago Dining Services, Bon Appetit

The Middle East History and Theory Conference in coordination with the Department of Music at the University of Chicago and EthNoise! proudly present

Dr. Ulrike Präger

Senior Research Scientist/Post-doctoral Fellow

Salzburg University

Music, Migration, Liminality

Please join us for a pre-concert and talk concert sponsored by the Department of Music at the University of Chicago:

Pre-Concert Talk by Dr. Philip V. Bohlman, University of Chicago

2:00 pm

Logan Center Performance Hall

Concert

3:00 pm – Letters from Iraq

Rahim AlHaj, joined by the Kontras Quartet, Christian Dillingham, and Nicholas Baker

Performance Hall, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts

915 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637

Tickets can be purchased at the door or online through: https://chicagopresents.uchicago.edu/events/2018-2019/2019-05-05-200000 [note: we have secured the student price for all of our attendees]

 

 Rahim AlHaj

2015 Recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts

2010 Grammy nomination for Best Traditional World Music Album

2009 United States Artists Fellow Award in Music

2008 Grammy nomination for Best Traditional World Music Album

2003 Winner of the Bravo Award for Excellence in Music

2001 Award from Veterans for Peace for work towards peace

1988 Music Institute Award for Composition

 

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5/2 Workshop with Kara Peruccio

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Spring 2018 MEHAT Workshop Schedule

Dear all, 
 
At last we have finalized the Spring 2018 Middle East History and Theory Workshop (MEHAT) Schedule. Please note that the meeting time for all MEHAT workshops this quarter has changed to Wednesdays, 1:30-3:00 PM at Pick Hall Room 218. The schedule is as follows:
 
April 18th: Samuel Lasman (Comparative Literature): “Dangerous Authenticity: What It Means to be from the Iranian ‘Otherworld.'” Discussant: Samantha Pellegrino (Islamic Studies, Divinity School)
 
May 2nd: Kara Peruccio (NELC)  “Bad Romance: Toxic Masculinity and Problematic Relationships in Italian and Turkish Women’s Novels, 1923-1933.” Discussant Claire Roosien (NELC/History).
 
May 16th: Amir Toft (NELC) “A Gentleman and a Scholar: Profiling an Ottoman Judge in the Late Sixteenth Century” Discussant: Dr. Basil Salem (Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Chicago).
 
May 30th: Kareem Rosshandler (CMES) “Arab-Israelis and the ‘Right to Culture’: Obstacles and Progress” (Discussant to be determined)
 
We will also be mixing up the usual food and beverage options! 
 
Hope to see you all there,
Kyle Wynter-Stoner
2017-2018 MEHAT Workshop Coordinator
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April 4th Workshop with Oğuz Alyanak

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March 7th Workshop with Chad Mowbray

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