Institute For Middle East Studies

The IMES annual conference is a multidisciplinary event that brings together top scholars and practitioners from across the US. The organizing theme for this year’s meeting is cultural production and critique (broadly conceived) with the aim of examining the political, social and cultural role of art in the midst of repression and violent conflict.

8:45 a.m. – Coffee and Registration

9:00 a.m. – Introductory Remarks
Marc Lynch, George Washington University

9:15 a.m. – Panel I: The Slow Burn – Art and Expression in Occupied Palestine
Ted Swedenburg, University of Arkansas
Rebecca Stein, Duke University
David McDonald, Indiana University

11:00 a.m. – Panel II: Telling Others’ Stories – Collecting, Translating, and Interpreting the Art of the Revolutions
Hisham Aidi, Columbia University
Max Weiss, Princeton University
Donatella Della Ratta, Copenhagen University

12:30 p.m. – Lunch and Keynote: “A Momentary Erasure of Millennia: The Cultural Heritage Crises in Syria & Iraq”
Michael Danti, Boston University

2:00 p.m. – Panel III: War as Backdrop – Iraqi Film and Literature
Oday Rasheed, Writer and Director
Elliott Colla, Georgetown University
Ali Bader, Writer and Director
Kevin Jones, University of Georgia