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State of the Art: Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa

Day two of a two day conference organized by Sherine Hafez, University of California, Riverside and Susan Slyomovics, University of California, Los Angeles

Friday, April 02, 2010
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Kerckhoff Grand Salon
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA United States

The link between the ideology of power and knowledge production about the Middle East/North Africa is a potent, generative and creative one. Our conference aim is to tap the most recent contributions to the field of the anthropology of the region and to highlight collaborative research that recognizes the potential of ethnographic methodologies as a powerful catalyst for theoretical debate. We will examine a wide range of theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches that emerge at the intersection of scholarship and a larger discourse of power analytics.

The conference will be open to the public.

Panel IV: The Anthropology of Religion, Secularism in the Middle East (Part I)
Chair: Aamir Mufti, UCLA
9:30 AM – 11:30 AM
• Susanne Dahlgren, Academy of Finland Research Fellow, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
What Sharia? The Neocolonial Field of Muslim Justices in and out of Middle Eastern Anthropology
• Sherine Hafez, UCR
Will the Rational Religious Subject Please Stand Up? Islamic Women Activists in Cairo and the Epistemology of Rationality
• Christine Hegel-Cantarella, University of California, Irvine
Modalities of Surety and Moral Personhood in Contemporary Egypt

Break
10:20 AM – 10:40 AM

Panel V: The Anthropology of Religion, Secularism in the Middle East (Part II)
Chair: Aamir Mufti, UCLA
10:40 AM - 1:00 PM
• Kim Shively, Kutztown University
Defining (and Enforcing) Islam in Secular Turkey
• Dunya Deniz Cakir, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Generation of Qur'an, Empire of Democracy: Contesting Democratic Theory in Contemporary Turkey

Lunch Break
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

Panel VI: The State of the State and Anthropology of MENA
Chair: Susan Slyomovics, UCLA
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
• Suad Joseph, UC Davis
Anthropology of the Future: Arab Youth, Cross Hairs of War, Violence, Migration, State(less), Globalization.
• Selim H. Shahine, UC Irvine
Egypt, the Mohamed Aly Family, and their Affective States: Warmth and Authoritarianism in a Post-Harem Society
• Dawn Chatty, University of Oxford
Rejecting Authenticity in Modern Nation-States: Development Processes in the Jiddat-il-Harasiis, Oman

Panel VII: The Virtual Middle East
Chair: Saloni Mathur, UCLA
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
• Babak Rahim, UC San Diego
Narratives of an Uprising: Media, Representation and the Ethnography of the 2009 Iranian Presidential Elections
• Emilio Spadola, Colgate University
The Technologized Call and Moroccan Mass Politics: Beyond the “Public Sphere”
• Sebastian Maisel, Grand Valley State University
The Construction of Virtual Communities: on-line Tribalism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond
• Charlotte Karagueuzian, Raoul-Dandurand Chair - UQAM (Montreal, Canada); EHESS (Paris, France) & Pamela Chrabieh Badine, CRCIPG - Université de Montréal (Montreal, Canada)
Youth, Peace and New Media in the Middle East

 

Cost: Free

For more information please contact

Mona Ramezani, Center for Near Eastern Studies
Tel: (310) 825-1181
cnes@international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/cnes