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Faculty News: Fall 2008
Published in 2009
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Rochelle Davis spent the summer in the Arab world finishing research among Palestinian refugee communities about how they remember life before 1948 for her book manuscript on the subject. The research was funded by a grant from the Georgetown University Graduate School. As a board member of the Palestinian American Research Center, Dr. Davis co-organized a panel for the 2008 MESA annual meeting that honors the work of economist Yusif Sayigh and anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh, who will be attending MESA and speaking on her most recent work. Dr. Davis also recently co-authored two articles with MAAS students based on her other research project, about U.S. military conceptions of culture in the war in Iraq. The first, written with Elizabeth (Forster) Grasmeder (MAAS '09), has been submitted for publication in a scholarly journal and is entitled "Nationalist Sentiments and Military Occupation: U.S. Military Personnel and their Experiences with Iraqis (2003-2007)." The second article, entitled "Iraqi Culture and the U.S. Military: Understanding Training, Experiences, and Attitudes," was co-authored with Dahlia Elzein and Dena Takruri (MAAS '08), and is to be published in Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency (edited by John Kelley, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press). This research has been funded by faculty research grants from the Center's Oman Program Endowment, GU's School of Foreign Service, and the Georgetown Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Dr. Davis is pleased to have Omar Shakir (MAAS '10) as her research assistant this year on this ongoing project.
Laurie King-Irani is teaching a Mass Media, Pop Culture, and Youth Culture class. She will also give a presentation at MESA as part of a plenary panel on academic freedom, organized by the Association for Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS). The panel, consisting of six speakers selected to represent a variety of experiences combining scholarship and activism in the U.S. and abroad, will focus on women in the Middle East (broadly defined) and North Africa. The aim is to reveal some of the links between scholarship and activism in our field, as experienced and engaged in by AMEWS members and allies.
Gregory Orfalea's essay, "Obama and the Middle East" appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of the Antioch Review. It is available for download on his GU Explore page: http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/gmo4. Mr. Orfalea's collection of essays, Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family, Place, and Politics, will be published in the spring of 2009 by the University of Arizona Press. The eminent Latino-American essayist Richard Rodriguez recently commented: "These essays, recollecting Gregory Orfalea's American life, are delightful and wise. I don't think Los Angeles has ever received such lovely valentines from a native son." Mr. Orfalea's first short story collection, The Man Who Guarded the Bomb, will appear in the fall of 2009 through Syracuse University Press. Mr. Orfalea also addressed the Arab American Book Awards ceremony at the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Michigan, on November 1. He served as a judge, with two others, for the second annual Arab American Fiction Award. Finally, Mr. Orfalea will offer "Arab American Literature" for the second time in the spring of 2009. Georgetown Magazine has interviewed him for a possible piece on this groundbreaking course.
Jean-François Seznec delivered a number of public lectures in the past months. In May, he was on a panel on oil in the Gulf at the Brookings Institution. In June, he delivered two lectures: "The Growing Middle East-Asia Energy Relationship and Capital Flow" at the World Bank, and "Monarchy vs. Democratization in Saudi Arabia" at the Center for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In July, he presented on the business and economic dimension of Iran-Iraq relations at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., and he also delivered remarks there on the political economy of the Gulf for the ROTC program. Dr. Seznec published the article, "Market Economy Without Democracy in the Gulf," on the website America.gov in June. He also served as an analyst focusing on the Gulf states for the study group on Reform and Security in the Muslim World at the United States Institute of Peace. In August, he engaged in a conversation with the Saudi-U.S. Relations Information Service on the role of King Abdullah. Dr. Seznec appeared in the media numerous times, including making numerous contributions on oil and Persian Gulf issues to Télé Argent, a Bloomberg affiliate in Montréal, and Radio Canada. He was also interviewed by Forbes, Newsweek International, the National of Abu Dhabi, Bloomberg News, the Transatlantic Institute, Voice of America, the Associated Press, and Business Intelligence Middle East.
Barbara Stowasser was on sabbatical leave during the 2008 spring semester. She spent the months of January and February completing a lengthy research project entitled "Women and Politics in Late Jahili and Early Islamic Arabia: Reading Behind Patriarchal History" for the Gulf Women Project of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned of Qatar. The project will result in a publication entitled Retracing Footprints: Writing the History of Gulf Women, to be edited by Dr. Amira Sonbol. During March and April, Dr. Stowasser resumed work on her long-standing book project on Islam and time, now entitled The Day Begins at Sunset: Calendars, Globalizations, and the Islamic Blueprint. During the month of May, Dr. Stowasser was Scholar in Residence at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany. She delivered a formal lecture at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften on Yusuf al-Qaradawi on law and gender, and a seminar and lecture at the Zentrum Moderner Orient on women, tafsir, and gender. From Berlin she traveled to Denmark to deliver lectures at Arhus University and to present the keynote lecture on "Mary in the Qur'an" in Copenhagen at a day-long symposium organized in celebration of the translation of her book, Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation, into Danish (translated by Dorthe Bramsen and published by Forlaget Vandkunsten in their "modern classics series" under the title Kvinder I Koranen: Helligtekst, Tradition og Fortolkning [Carsten Niebuhr Biblioteket, Copenhagen: Forlaget Vandkunsten, 2008]). This symposium was widely covered in the press, and included an interview with Martin Ejlertsun in Kristeligt Dagblad. During the month of June, Dr. Stowasser participated in a meeting of the editorial board of the Gulf Women Project and a two-day workshop of all contributors to the project in Doha, Qatar.
Judith Tucker's new book, Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law, was published by Cambridge University Press in November.
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