Past Events

 

Spaceship in the Desert

Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi with author Gokce Gunel and discussant Deen Sharp

Thursday, 9/24/2020, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

In Spaceship in the Desert Gökçe Günel examines the development and construction of Masdar City's renewable energy and clean technology infrastructures, providing an illuminating portrait of an international group of engineers, designers, and students who attempted to build a post-oil future in Abu Dhabi.

Sinews of War and Trade

Sinews of War and Trade; a Conversation with Author Laleh Khalili (QMUL) and Pascal Menoret (Brandeis)

Wednesday, 7/15/2020, 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Sinews of War and Trade is the story of what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructures has meant not only for the Arabian Peninsula itself, but for the region and the world beyond. The book is the account of how maritime transportation is not simply an enabling adjunct of trade, but central to the very fabric of global capitalism.

City of Black and Gold

City of Black Gold Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk with Arbella Bet-Shlimon and Sara Pursley

Tuesday, 5/19/2020, 3:30pm - 5:00pm

Arbella Bet-Shlimon reconstructs the twentieth-century history of Kirkuk to question the assumptions about the past underpinning today's ethnic divisions.

Student-centered activities workshop

Student-Centered Activities in the Arabic Classroom

Saturday, 5/16/2020, 1:00pm - 3:00pm

In this hands-on workshop, the presenter will model novice and intermediate-level activities that place students front and center.

Governance at the Intersections

Governance at the Intersections: Religious Conversion, Sovereignty, and Political Difference in Lebanon with Maya Mikdashi

Thursday, 4/2/2020, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

In this lecture Maya Mikdashi employs ethnographic and archival research to frame religious conversion as a site through which to better understand this governance at the intersections of political difference, and what it may teach us about sovereignty, secularism, and state power.

Abstract art

Asserting Identity in Children and Youth Literature

Thursday, 4/2/2020, 10:00am - 3:30pm

DC Arabic Teachers' Workshop

Art and Film Making in Saudi Arabia with Hisham Fageeh

Wednesday, 4/1/2020, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Fageeh uses comedy to highlight social issues, by turning them on their head. Using comedic tools, Fageeh questions cultural norms, even the most ubiquitous ones. 

The Levant Express

The Levant Express: The Arab Uprisings, Human Rights, and the Future of the Middle East with Micheline Ishay

Thursday, 2/27/2020, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Challenging the widely shared pessimism among regional experts, Ishay charts bold and realistic pathways for human rights in a region beset by political repression, economic distress, sectarian conflict, a refugee crisis, and violence against women.

Project-based Learning Workshop

Project-Based Learning: A Workshop for Arabic Educators

Saturday, 2/15/2020, 10:00am - 1:30pm

DC Arabic Teachers' Council Workshop

Film Screening & Discussion: Naila and the Uprising

Thursday, 2/6/2020, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a young woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family, and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time.

Iran Reframed

Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic with Narges Bajoghli

Thursday, 1/23/2020, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

An inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic.

Interpersonal Communication workshop

Interpersonal Communication: A Workshop for Arabic Instructors

Saturday, 1/18/2020, 10:00am - 1:30pm

DC Arabic Teachers' Council Workshop

Book Launch: Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in 21st Century Palestine

Thursday, 12/5/2019, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins will offer an analysis unusual in the study of Palestine: it begins with the environmental, infrastructural, and aesthetic context in which Palestinians forge their lives, naming that context a “waste siege.” She argues that to speak of waste siege is to describe a series of conditions, from smelling wastes to negotiating military infrastructures, from biopolitical forms of colonial rule to experiences of governmental abandonment, from obvious targets of resistance to confusion over responsibility for the burdensome objects of daily life.

Iran and the World

Iran and the World: What You Need to Know

Saturday, 11/9/2019, 9:00am - 3:30pm

IMES Outreach Events

Female Religious Scholars of Classical Islam: Between Creativity and Copying with Asma Sayeed

Thursday, 10/24/2019, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Asma Sayeed will explore the history of women as religious scholars from the first decades of Islam through the early Ottoman period. Focusing on women’s engagement with hadīth, she analyzes dramatic chronological patterns in women’s hadīth participation in terms of developments in Muslim social, intellectual and legal history, challenging two opposing views.

I am the Night Sky workshop

Muslim American Youth Voices: “I Am the Night Sky” Book Workshop for Educators

Thursday, 10/24/2019, 5:00pm - 7:00pm

IMES Outreach Event

Book Launch: Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State w/ David Stenner

Friday, 10/4/2019, 12:30pm - 2:00pm

The end of World War II heralded a new global order. Decolonization swept the world and the United Nations, founded in 1945, came to embody the hopes of the world's colonized people as an instrument of freedom. North Africa became a particularly contested region and events there reverberated around the world. In Morocco, the emerging nationalist movement developed social networks that spanned three continents and engaged supporters from CIA agents, British journalists, and Asian diplomats to a Coca-Cola manager and a former First Lady.

Region-Making, Partitioned Sovereignty and Territorial Expressions: the Persian Gulf in the Twentieth Century with Arang Keshavarzian

Thursday, 10/3/2019, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Since the late nineteenth century the Persian Gulf has been transformed from a social world facilitating movement and interdependence to a fault-line needing to be secured.

Book Launch: Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora with Stacy Fahrenthold

Thursday, 9/12/2019, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Since 2011 over 5.6 million Syrians have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and beyond, and another 6.6 million are internally displaced. The contemporary flight of Syrian refugees comes one century after the region's formative experience with massive upheaval, displacement, and geopolitical intervention: the First World War.

ATC Inaugral Meeting attendees

DC Arabic Teachers’ Council Inaugural Meeting

Saturday, 9/7/2019, 9:00am - 12:00pm

DC Arabic Teachers' Council Workshop