FACULTY NEWS
Prof. Heather Sharkey of NELC, and Prof. James De Lorenzi in the History Department are coordinating a two-day conference "Christian Missions and National Identities:
Comparative Studies of Cultural ‘Conversions’ in
the Middle East, Africa, and Asia." Click here for more details about speakers and locations for this conference.
Prof. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet in the History Department, and director of the Middle East Center, has organized a Symposium on Ottoman-Iranian Relations on April 4. Speakers include: Karen Kern, Professor of History, Hunter College; Nader Sohrabi, Professor of History; Fariba Zarinebaf, Northwestern University; Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Professor of History. The moderator is Sukru Hanioglu, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University.Go to the events page for more details.
Prof. Roger Allen has convened an Afternoon Colloquia on Modern Arabic Literature. Presenters include Miriam Cooke of Duke University, Hala Halim of New York University, Muhsin al-Musawi of Columbia University, and William Granara of Harvard University.The colloquia will take place on Tuesday, April 1 at 3 PM. Go to the events page for more details.
Prof. Eve Troutt Powell has just been voted on to the Board of Directors for the Middle East Studies Association.
Prof. Roger Allen's new book Spies, Scandals, and Sultans: Istanbul in the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire has just been released by Rowman and Littlefield. Check back here for more information as reviews come in, and details on the book release party!
There are a total of 10 Penn faculty and students presenting at this year's Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual Conference. Click here for more details!
Center director Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet will be organizing and chairing a panel on disability in the Middle East at the annual conference of the American Historical Association in January 2008. This panel, “The Haves and the Have Nots: An Assessment of Disability in the Middle East”, was first presented at Penn in November 2006.
New Penn Working Group on Israel and the Middle East -In response to Dean Rebecca Bushnell's initiative to encourage interdiscipinary discussions among Penn faculty members, a dozen School of Arts and Sciences professors with interests in the contemporary Middle East have formed an interdisciplinary faculty working group under the general rubric of: "Israel and the Middle East: Past Trajectories, Present Realities, Future Possibilities," with Ian Lustick as convenor.
For two and a half decades most experts have believed that a generously contoured two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians would lay the cornerstone for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world, thereby facilitating peaceful economic development and accelerated movements toward democracy throughout the region while enhancing prospects for America's standing and interests in the region. However, against the background of reinforcing processes of polarization in Israel and in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and in the aftermath of the collapse of the Oslo process, two intifadas, the construction of the security barrier by Israel around Gaza and most of the West Bank, the Lebanon War, and the Iraq War, serious questions are being raised about the persuasiveness or even relevance of this perspective. The Israel and the Middle East working group will seek to evaluate the extent to which this overall assessment remains valid and to explore the implications of what we find for other possible frameworks for interpreting present trends and anticipating future possibilities.
On Thursday, March 1st in the Hall of Flags, Houston Hall, there was a very successful symposium on the crisis in Darfur. Over 125 people heard discussion of how since 2003 over two million people have been driven from their homes and more than 200,000 have died in campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of Sudan. The event was organized by Professor Eve Troutt Powell and brought together scholars from William and Mary College, Harvard University, Brown University, and the Sauti-Yetu Center for African Women, Inc., as well as the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Ian Lustick's book "Trapped in the War on Terror" has been very favorably reviewed. Click on the images to learn more or visit his website. The Center co-sponsored a public lecture and book launch on Thursday, March 15.
Professor Robert Vitalis' book "America's Kingdom" has also been making waves. Read a discussion of the book at Marc Lynch's Qahwa Sada blog. The Center hosted a well-attended event to launch the book in November.
Professor Brian Spooner prepared a report, "Afghanistan and Pakistan: Cultural Heritage and Current Reality" for The International Center for Middle Eastern - Western Dialogue, which includes an atlas of Afghanistan's changing borders from 1747 onward.
Professor Renata Holod has received a Collaborative Research Grant from the Getty Foundation to study the burial of a Qipchak khan in the Pontic steppe of southern Ukraine. For more information on the project, see: www.chingul.org.ua
Professor Brendan O'Leary's co-edited volume "The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq" is now available in paperback from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Look out for "Terror, Insurgency, and the State: Ending Protracted Conflicts" which will be in print shortly, also from Penn press.
