MESA Presidential Panel: Middle East Studies and the Academy in the Time of Covid-19

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MESA Presidential Panel: Middle East Studies and the Academy in the Time of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique set of challenges for scholars and students of the Middle East and North Africa as it has for labor in the academy. This panel ings together scholars and activists to discuss the impact of the pandemic on the field and options for organizing available to faculty and students in a rapidly changing environment in the academy.

Organized by Dina Rizk Khoury, George Washington University 

Panelists include: 

Zachary Lockman has taught modern Middle Eastern history at New York University since 1995. His books include Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (2016); Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004); Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996); and (with Joel Beinin) Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (1987). He is a former president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), chairs the wing of MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom that deals with North America, and is a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

Seteney Shami has been founding director of the Arab Council of Social Science since January 2010. She is an anthropologist from Jordan who obtained her B.A. from the American University of Beirut and her M.A. and PhD from University of California, Berkeley. After teaching and setting up a graduate dept. of anthropology at Yarmouk University, Jordan, she moved in 1996 to the regional office of the Population Council in Cairo as director of the Middle East Awards in Population and the Social Sciences (MEAwards). In July 1999, she joined the Social Science Research Council in New York as program director for the program on the Middle East and North Africa and also the program on Eurasia (until 2010). She has been a visiting Professor at U.C. Berkeley, Georgetown University, University of Chicago, Stockholm University and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Uppsala).

Anthony Alessandrini is Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is also a member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. He is the author of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics; the editor of Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives; and the co-editor of "Resistance Everywhere": The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey. He has also published a poetry chapbook, Children Imitating Cormorants. He is on the faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, is a co-organizer of the International Solidarity Research Action Network (ISARN), and is a Co-Editor of Jadaliyya E-Zine. His book Decolonize Multiculturalism is forthcoming in 2021.

Yulia Gilich is a media artist, theorist, and community organizer. They received their MFA in Media Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. They are currently a PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. In their dissertation, they theorize geographies of settler innocence in Israel-Palestine. Their work is interdisciplinary and sits at the nexus of media studies, cultural geography, and critical race theory.  

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