Middle East Studies activities for the 2012-13 academic year included:

Two Mosaics that allowed MEST students and those in other disciplines to study current, critical issues in depth on campus, and through travel to the region and interact with people on the ground.
 
The first Mosaic, Morocco: Jewish and Muslim Religion and Culture was led by Professor Shalom Staub, was an opportunity to explore multiple dimensions of religion and culture in the Middle East/North Africa region, the site of Jewish communities for roughly 2,500 years, with distinctive Muslim practice and belief.  Students had the opportunity to interact with Moroccan scholars, community leaders and members, educators artists, healers, musicians, and university students in Rabat, Marrakech, Casablanca, Fez, Essaouira and rural Berber villages in the Atlas Mountains.

The second Mosaic, Mediterranean Migration Mosaic, was led by Professors Susan Rose and Marcello Borges.  The focus of this Mosaic was migrations between Morocco, France and Spain, and exploring the multiple and interacting identities embodied by individuals, communities, regions, and the nation-state.  The creation of transnational communities, ethnic and religious tensions and cooperation, philosophical orientations to diversity, and social policy was examined.  The Mediterranean has witnessed the circulation of ideas, people, and goods between Northern Africa and Southern Europe across the centuries. 

MEST supported, through the Robert Hindle Fund, the visit of a number of speakers, including:

In October, MEST supported the visit of Gökçenur Çelebioglu from Istanbul for the Semana Poética XI.  Çelebioglu is an impressive young poet who is very active in translation projects, bringing together poets from the Balkans and the Middle East in particular, to collaborate.  He was a huge hit at the festival and he also spoke to MEST classes and met members of the Middle Eastern Club and Middle East Studies majors.

MEST, with the department of Sociology and the Community Studies Center in February co-sponsored two speakers:  Dr. Clayton Childress of the Princeton Center for the Study of Social Organization and Dr. Neda Maghbouleh, Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at Muhlenberg College.  Dr. Childress discussed how publishing houses decide which books to publish, and the shift from "editorial logic" being replaced by "market logic" since the release of BookScan.  Dr. Maghbouleh discussed U.S. racial microaggressions between ROTC and heritage learners based on one year of participant-observational research and interviews with enrolled students in a university "critical language" classroom.

In March MEST, with the departments of History, Africana Studies, and French, supported guest speaker from Senegal Fallou Ngom, an Assistant Professor at Boston University.  Dr. Ngom's spoke about African language texts written in Arabic (Ajami texts).

In April, Dr. Alec G. Hargreaves, Emeritus Winthrop-King Professor of Transcultural French Studies at Florida State University came to campus to discuss the long-term social, economic and political factors about the ethnic relations in France that has been plagued for decades by ill-tempered debates over the nation's immigrant minorities, as well as more recent developments in anti-semitism and Islamophobia.

Middle East Studies is very pleased to announce that Professor Erik Love has joined the Sociology Department and is a regular contributing faculty member of Middle East Studies.  His courses on Middle Eastern Communities in the United States and Islam and the West are enriched by research on civil rights advocacy among Arab, Muslim, Sikh South Asian Americans. Erik recently completed his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where his work won the support of a National Science Foundation grant. Today, Erik is a Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (http://ispu.org/people/Erik-Love) and has contributed to Al Jazeera (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/erik-love.html) and Jadaliyya, an online journal (http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/contributors/4360). He also has contributed to peer-reviewed publications and has presented his work at academic conferences in the United States and abroad. He is currently at work on a book based on his research on Middle Eastern American civil rights advocacy. His training as a sociologist and concentration on Middle Eastern diasporas add new dimensions to our interdisciplinary program.

The Middle East Studies curriculum continues to evolve as faculty and students gain more experience. After discussion with the College's Academic Program and Standards Committee, the program now includes a new element to the capstone experience: Senior research now includes a workshop consisting of three 75-minute meetings in the first weeks of the semester to help MES seniors reflect on different disciplinary approaches to a contemporary issue.

The pilot workshop will be led by Prof. Ed Webb with the theme of water resources in the Middle East & North Africa.

Petra Stienen will discuss recent developments in the Arab world, with a focus on Syria and Egypt. 

She is the author of Dreaming of an Arab Spring: A Dutch Diplomat in the Arab World (in Dutch) and a senior advisor on social development with BMC management consultancy.  Stienen studied Arab and Middle Eastern studies in Leiden, Cairo and London and worked as a diplomat specializing in human rights, development, migration and refugees, including at the Dutch embassies in Egypt and Syria.