College of Arts & Sciences
Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies

AIS at MESA and ACLA

2020-2021

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (MESA) 5-17 OCT. 2020

The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies is participating in the annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) being held virtually. Faculty members, students, and alumni are panel organizers, presenters, chairs, and discussants.  

Panel: Redefining Proficiency in Arabic Language Instruction
Gergana Atanassova: Chair, Discussant, Organizer
When: Thursday, 10/08/20; 11:00 am

Panel: Tensions in Islamic Legal Reform and Renewal
Rezart Beka: Presenter, Islamic Legal Renewal: The Integration
of the Objectives of the Sharia with the Principles of the Islamic
Legal Methodology in the Writings of Abdallah Bin Bayyah
When: Thursday, 10/08/20; 11:00 am

Panel: Literature in the Age of Mubarak and Post-Arab Spring Egypt
Elliott Colla: Discussant
When: Thursday, 10/08/20; 01:30 pm

Panel: Food, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East
Anny Gaul: Discussant
When: 10/17/20; 01:30 pm
Panel: Cookbooks and Kitchens: Gender and the (Trans)National Politics of Food
Anny Gaul: Presenter, Rabbat al-bayt: The Middle-Class
Housewife between Egypt and Sudan
When: Tuesday, 10/06/20; 11:00 am

Panel: Retrieving Nuance, Contextualizing Agency – Women and/in Afghanistan
Marya Hannun: Chair, Organizer, Presenter, Listening Up:
Locating Women’s Voices in Interwar Afghanistan
When: Tuesday, 10/06/20; 01:30 pm

Panel: Metapoesis in Pre-Modern Arabic Poetry
Jaroslav Stetkevych: Presenter, Ayniyyah of Abu Dhu’ayb al-
Hudhali and the Metapoetics of Structure
When: Tuesday, 10/06/20; 11:00 am

Panel: Metapoesis in Pre-Modern Arabic Poetry
Suzanne Stetkevych: Presenter, Metaphor and Mythopoesis as
Metapoetry in al-Ma’arri’s Saqt al-Zand
When: Tuesday, 10/06/20; 11:00 am

2019-2020

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (MESA) 14-17 NOV. 2019

The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies is participating in the annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) in New Orleans, Louisiana. Faculty members, students, and alumni are panel organizers, presenters, chairs, and discussants.  

Panel: On the Margins of Shi’r: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on the Development of Modern Arabic Poetry (Panel 1)
Hatem Alzahrani: The Poet as Palm-Tree: Muhammad al-Thubayti and the Re-Imagining of Saudi Identity
When: Saturday 11/16/19; 11:00 AM

Panel: The Abbasids: Society and Culture
Rosabel Ansari: Chair
When: Friday, 11/15/19; 8:00 AM

Panel: Generating Precarity in the Middle East
Elliott Colla: Chair and Discussant
When: Friday, 11/15/19; 5:00 PM

Panel: Colonialism, Islamic Law, and Gender
Marya Hannun: Chair
When: Sunday, 11/17/19; 8:30 AM

Panel: Transitions in the 7th-9th Century Iraq and Syria: Muslims and non-Muslims
Pamela Klasova: The Foundation of Wasit: History and Memory
When: Friday, 11/15/19; 2:45 PM

ATTP Roundtable: Teaching Material for Persian Language
Farima Mostowfi: Why using textbook written in Iran?
When: Friday, 11/15/19; 10:15 – 12:15 PM 

Panel: Society and Identity in Kuwait
Katrin Vanpee: Chair
When: Saturday 11/16/19; 5:30 – 7:30 PM

2018-2019

AMERICAN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ASSOCIATION (ACLA) ANNUAL MEETING: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 7-10 MARCH 2019

PhD Candidate Cynthia Brandenburg contributed a Study of Jarīr; “Bāna al-khalītu; Lyrical Performances that Lull and Lance” to a seminar organized by Professor Suzanne Stetkevych, The Arabic Qasida: The Poetics and Politics of Performance

Abstract:

Jarīr ibn ‘Aṭiyyah (c. 33/653-111/729), one of the famous triumvirate of Umayyad poets, is renowned for his satirical images and terrorizing invective but is often neglected in terms of the aesthetic beauty and sonority of his odes despite the oft-quoted epithet “who scoops from the sea”. Jarīr is most often tied to “the bad and the ugly” by contemporary critics and modern-day scholars but less so to the sublime. This paper is one attempt to redress this gap in the study of Jarīr’s poetic production through a detailed analysis of his ode entitled, The Tribe Departed.

In this 73-line1 nasīb-hija’ bi-partite nūniyyah poem composed in the basiṭ meter, Jarīr lulls the audience into a lyric ecstatic trance in the first 57 lines before the short but brutal end. While Jarīr may not always be recognized for his ghazal, we find that the amatory prelude includes exquisite examples of ghazal, a mark of Umayyad poetic excellence. This poetic seduction by Jarīr is so great that some contemporary audiences raise objections as to the gharaḍ of the poem, denying its invective force in favor of its seductive force.

The conversational style, song-like meter, and familiar images of love and betrayal of its nasīb make this ode a crowd-pleaser across the ages. As the unsuspecting audience is drawn into the lyric beauty of this piece, they are not prepared for the visceral shock and humiliation by proxy of the target of the attack that ultimately renders its victim, al-Akhṭal, defeated. While Jarīr could draw on many invective weapons in his arsenal, it is ultimately caliphal power that Jarīr chooses to destroy his Christian rival, al-Akhṭal, court-poet to the caliph, ‘Abd al-Malik, staking his own claim to power and foiling his opponent’s claim.

Prof. Elliott Colla presented “Contrapuntal Localism: Negm, Internationalism and Movement Poetry of the 1970s” as part of the Seminar: The Possibilities of Contrapuntal Criticism Today: Nations, Natives, and Nativism.

Prof. Suzanne Stetkevych organized the Seminar: The Arabic Qasida: The Poetics and Politics of Performance, to which she contributed:

“Poetic Capital and the Metapoetics of Nostalgia: Yearning for the Homeland In al-Maʿarrī’s Lāmiyyah: (Saqṭ al-Zand 58)

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (MESA) 15-18 NOV. 2018

The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies is participating in the annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) in San Antonio, Texas Faculty members, students, and alumni are panel organizers, presenters, chairs, and discussants.  

Panel: Encounters of falsafa and Sufism in the Persianate world, 1200-1900
      Rosabel Ansari, Tusi, Qunawi and tashkik al-wujud
      When: Friday, 11/16/2018, 4:00 PM

Panel: Re-Opening the 1960s

      Elliott Colla, “Movement Poetry: Activism and Poetry Repertoires in Egypt, 1968-1977”
      When: Sunday, 11/18/18, 1:30 PM

Panel: Roundtable-Food Studies and the Middle East: Past, Present, Future
     Anny Gaul, Food in Middle Eastern literature and culture is a vast field, spanning from classical poetry to modern… 
     When: Friday, 11/16/18, 11:00 AM

Panel: Narrating Transnational Arab and Muslim Womanhood
    Anny Gaul, Early Women’s Movements in Egypt and Morocco: Domestic Concerns, Transnational Currents
      When: Sunday, 11/17/18, 3:00 PM

Panel: Transnational Feminism and Anti-colonialism
     When: Saturday, 11/17/18, 8:30 AM

Panel: Narrating Transnational Arab and Muslim Womanhood
      Marya Hannun, From Cairo to Kabul and Back Again: Exploring Early 20th Century Women’s Movements through the Movement of Women
      When: Saturday, 11/17/18, 3:00 PM

Panel: Poetics & Poet Biographies
      Suzanne Stetkevych, The Art of Self-Defense: The Poetics of the Boast (fakhr) in al-Ma’arri’s Saqt al-Zand # 16
      When: Saturday, 11/17/18, 11:00 AM 

2017-2018

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (MESA) 18-21 NOV. 2017

The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies is participating in the annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) in Washington D.C. Faculty members, students and alumni are panel organizers, presenters, chairs, and discussants.  

Panel:​ Anxieties, Resistances, and the Clergy in Egyptian and Iranian Film
​​    Heba Arafa, Maslaha: a Film Sanctioning Apparatus or a Covert Censorship?
    When: Saturday, 11/18/17 at 5:30 PM

Panel: Between Continuity and Change: Conceptualizing Slavery, Tyranny, Gender, and Tolerance in Islamic Thought and the Middle East.
   Mohammed El – Sayed Bushra, Conceptual change through transformation of linguistic norms: Tyranny in the Arab Muslim context
When: Monday, 11/20/17 at 10:30 AM

Panel: The Exegetical Tradition of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine
    Emma Gannagé: The Classification of Medicine in Some Commentaries on Avicenna’s Canon
    When: Sunday, 11/19/17 at 1:00 PM

Roundtable: Conducting Archival Research in MENA: Current Challenges, Creative Solutions.
    Anny Gaul, About the current research landscape in both Egypt and Morocco …
    When: Monday, 11/20/17 at 8:00 AM

Panel: Colonialism and Culinary Cultures in the Middle East and North Africa
    Anny Gaul, Mother sauces, civilizing process: reading cuisine in Egypt and Morocco
    When: Tuesday 11/21/17 at 1:00 PM

Panel: Apology Accepted? Combatting Islamophobia without Sacrificing Critical Perspective in the Academy
    Judd King, How combating Islamophobia while maintaining a critical perspective …
​​    When: Sunday, 11/19/17 at 3:30 PM  

Panel: Literary Genealogy in Medieval and Modern Iberia and North Africa
    Enass Khansa, How an Anthology Curated a Caliphate: On al-‘Iqd (The Necklace) and the Umayyads of al-Andalus.
     When: Tuesday, 11/21/18 at 8:00 AM

​​Panel:​ The Occult in Islamicate Society: The Cases of Magic and Alchemy
    Pamela Klasova, Magical and inspired speech in Early Islam
    When: Sunday 11/19/17 at 3:30 PM

Panel: Form and Language in Arabic Poetics
     Suzanne Stetkevych, Al-Ittijah al-Mu`akis: Al-Ma`arri’s Luzumiyyat and the Poetics of Constriction
     When: Sunday, 11/19/17 at 8:00 AM

Panel: Between Continuity and Change: Conceptualizing Slavery, Tyranny, Gender, and Tolerance in Islamic Thought and the Middle East.
    Amine Tais, Constructing Gender Egalitarianism in Islamic Feminist Discourses.
When: Monday, 11/20/17 at 10:30 AM

Panel: Poetics of the Political
    Katrien Vanpee, Poetic bay’a: Allegiance performance and patronage dynamics in the televised poetry competition Sha’ir al-Milyun
When: Monday, 11/20/17 at 10:30 AM

2016-2017

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (MESA) 17-20 NOV. 2016

The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies is participating in the annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) in Boston. Faculty members, students, and alumni are panel organizers, presenters, chairs, and discussants.  

https://mesana.org/pdf/MESA_2016_Program.pdf