MEMEAC Family Achievements 202o-2021

Faculty

Ervand Abrahamian’s book Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’Etat was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

Beth Baron alongside Mandana Limbert received a grant for $225,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to convene a Sawyer Seminar on “Race and the Middle East/North Africa” at the Graduate Center. Her essay, “Of Fistulas, Sutures, and Silences,” came out in a Roundtable on De-Centering Egyptian History in theInternational Journal of Middle East Studies 53:1 (February 2021).

Habiba Boumlik co-organized the the 6^th edition of the New York Forum of Amazigh Film. Her article “Memory of War and the Historical Memory of Vichy Work Camps in Tunisia through Albert Memmi’s The Pillar of Salt” was published in Totalitarian and 20^th Century Studies 4:4 (2020). She received the fellowship Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship for her research project Amazigh Cinema in North Africa and the Diaspora: Finding A Newfound Voice for a Pan-Amazigh Identity ($40,000.00)

Lale Can’s volume The Subjects of Ottoman International Law, co-edited with M. Christopher Low, Robert Zens, and Kent Schull, was published by Indiana University Press in 2020. This volume is the result of a workshop hosted by MEMEAC in 2015. Her article “On Empire and Exception: Genealogies of Sovereignty in the Ottoman World”with Aimee M. Genell appeared in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 40:3 (2020). Professor Can was also awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship for her new project Empire of Exile: Treason and Banishment in Late Ottoman History and ANAMED, Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Koç University, Senior Fellowship (deferred to 2021 due to COVID).

Dina Dahbany-Miraglia will publish “The Anthropology of Song: Some Hows, Whens, Wheres, Whys and Whos” in Muwashshah, Zajal, and the Early European Lyric. 

Alex Elinson’s translation of Yassin Adnan’s Hot Maroc: A Novel was released in 2021 with Syracuse University Press. A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me: a novel by Youssef Fadel (with a critical foreword by the translator) (Cairo & New York: Hoopoe Books, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

Lamees Fadl's chapter “'Third Space'” Pedagogy With Employability in Arabic Language Classes Through Virtual Exchange: A Survey of Arab-American Communities Across the US" was published in Developments in Virtual Learning Environments and the Global Workplace

Erik Freas’ book review of Afshin Marashi’s Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran came out in Mashriq and Mahjar 8:2 (2021).

Elhum Haghighat’s article “Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran” is forthcoming in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Her article “The Iranian Diaspora: Its Formation & Transformation” came out in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 20:3 (2020).

Andrea Khalil became co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of North African Studies. She was also awarded a fellowship for spring 2022 at the IMeRA (Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Research), part of the French Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Aix-Marseille, Germaine Tillion Chair, to work on a project about the racialization of Islam in contemporary French society.

Marnia Lazreg's new bookIslamic feminism and the Discourse of Post-Liberation:  The Cultural Turn in Algeria was published by Routledge in January 2021.

Mandana Limbert alongside Beth Baron received a grant for $225,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to convene a Sawyer Seminar on “Race and the Middle East/North Africa” at the Graduate Center.

Halil Ege Ozen had three articles published: “‘War of Others’: National Cleavages and Attitudes towards External Conflicts,” in International Interactions 46:6 (2020); “Cultural and political demands of the ‘Kurdish street,’” in Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics by Rowan and Littlefield (2020); and “Turkish Public Opinion and Cultural and Political Demands of the “Kurdish Street,” in Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East by I.B. Tauris (2021).

Stanley Thangaraj co-edited Leisure, Racism, and National Populism, which was published by Routledge (2021). His articles,“Racing the Muslim: Strategies for Teaching Race and Ethnic Studies in the Education Curriculum,” came out in Urban Education (2021) and “‘I was raised Buddhist’: Tiger Woods, Race, and Asian-ness,” was published in Sociology of Sport Journal 37:3 (2020)

Bilge Yesil had two book chapters and an article published: “Exploiting Subalternity in the Name of Counter-Hegemonic Communication” in Rethinking Media Research for Changing Societies (Eds. Matthew Powers and Adrienne Russell), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; “Social Media Manipulation in Turkey: Actors, Tactics, Targets” in The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism; and “Performing Nationalist Populism: An Exploration of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Political Style” in Celebrity Studies, Special Issue: National Populists: Right-wing Celebrity Politicians in Contemporary Europe. She is co-editing the forthcoming volume The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East. She joined the editorial board for the journal Communication, Culture and Critique.

Ph.D. Students

Ola Galal was awarded an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women.

Nicholas Glastonbury’s translation of Sema Kaygusuz’s Every Fire You Tend won the 2020 TA First Translation Prize from the Society of Authors.

Hratch Kestenian was awarded a dissertation fellowship for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Race and the Middle East North Africa.”

Zehra Husain was awarded a dissertation fellowship for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Race and the Middle East North Africa”

Tamara Maatouk received the Pre-Dissertation Research Award, Early Research Initiative (ERI) and The Paul Naish Memorial Travel and Research Award in 2021.

China Sajadian received the ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion grant. Jadaliyya also published her article “The Agrarian Question in Lebanon Today: A View from a Camp in the Bekaa Valley.”

Cihan Tekay was awarded the ERI Catalyst Grant for remote dissertation research from the Provost’s Office.