Upcoming Events
To stay abreast of news and developments at UC Santa Cruz related to CMENA, please subscribe to our CMENA Mailing List. If you are interested in events related to the Humanities more broadly, please visit the homepage of The Humanities Institute and scroll down to sign up for their mailing list.
Laila Shereen Sakr (UC Santa Barbara)
April 11th, 2024, Humanities 1, rm. 210, 6-7:30 pm
Laila Shereen Sakr will present her recent book, Arabic Glitch: Technocultures, Data Bodies, and Archives, which explores an alternative origin story of twenty-first century technological innovation in digital politics—one centered on the Middle East and the 2011 Arab uprisings. Developed from an archive of social media data collected over the decades following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, this book interrogates how the logic of programming technology influences and shapes social movements. Engaging revolutionary politics, Arab media, and digital practice in form, method, and content, Laila Shereen Sakr formulates a media theory that advances the concept of the glitch as a disruptive media affordance. Playing with multiple voices that span across the virtual and the real, Sakr argues that there is no longer a divide between the virtual and embodied: both bodies and data are physically, socially, and energetically actual.
Ussama Makdisi (UC Berkeley)
Palestine, Late Colonialism, and the Question of Genocide
Wednesday, May 22nd, 12:15-1:30 pm, co-sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies.
This talk explores the relationship between modern philozionism in the West and the denialism of the Palestinians. The nineteenth-century European Zionist idea of implanting and sustaining an exclusively Jewish nationalist state in multi-religious Palestine was a response to European racial antisemitism. But it was also premised, from the outset, on the erasure of native Palestinian history and the political significance of their centuries-old belonging on their own land.
Workshop – Post-Colonial Arab Thought
April 19th & 20th, 2024, Humanities 1, rm. 210
This workshop will engage new directions in the analysis of intellectual and cultural production and political thought in the post-colonial Arab World. The work of invited participants ranges widely, from analyses of literature and film, to histories of science and medicine. One objective of the workshop is to destabilize the boundaries that have traditionally divided approaches to scholarly, intellectual, political, and cultural production in the region in the quest for new and productive synergies and analytical modes.
Mjriam Abu Samra (UC Davis)
New Horizons in Struggle: The Role of Transnational Palestinian Youth in Decolonial Politics
Wednesday, May 29th, 12:15-1:30 pm, co-sposnsored by the Center for Cultural Studies
It seems we are living and witnessing a historical moment in the politics of “the Palestine Question.” At the popular level, a stronger movement has continued to develop in solidarity with Palestinians, led by Palestinian youth movements transnationally. How has Palestinian youth political engagement been impacted by the current developments in Palestine and in the international system? What are the discourses they are articulating and how are they different from previous rhetoric? What are the strategies of mobilisation that they are using? Is there a rupture or can any continuity be identified with the political engagement of older Palestinian generations in Diaspora? My presentation attempts to answers these questions by analysing current and ongoing practices of political mobilisation of Palestinian youth in the
US, discussing the potential role they can play in the political development of the Palestinian movement.
Upcoming Events Sponsored by CMENA
To stay abreast of news and developments at UC Santa Cruz related to CMENA, please subscribe to our CMENA Mailing List. If you are interested in events related to the Humanities more broadly, please visit the homepage of The Humanities Institute and scroll down to sign up for their mailing list.
Spring Quarter 2024
April 11, 6-7:30 pm, Hum 1 rm. 210: Laila Shereen Sakr, Arabic Glitch
April 19 and 20 (all day/half day): Workshop on Post-Colonial Arab Thought
May 22, 12:15-1:30 pm, Hum 1 rm. 210: Ussama Makdisi, “Palestine, Late Colonialism, and the Question of Genocide”
May 29, 12:15-1:30 pm, Hum 1 rm. 210: Mjriam Abu Samra, “New Horizons in the Struggle: The Role of Transnational Palestinian Youth in Decolonial Politics”
Upcoming Events Featuring CMENA Associates
Stay tuned for news of Spring 2024!
Inaugural Event
Reporting the Middle East and the Future of Investigative Journalism
On February 4th, 2020, the Center for the Middle East and North Africa welcomed veteran journalists Hannah Allam and Leila Fadel to the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in downtown Santa Cruz. CMENA Founding Director Jennifer Derr engaged them in a wide-ranging conversation about their experiences reporting the war in Iraq, the Arab Spring, on issues related to American Muslim communities, and the future of investigative journalism at home and abroad. This event celebrated the launch of CMENA and was part of The Humanities Institute‘s “Questions that Matter” series.
Events, 2022-2024
Vladimir Hamed-Tryansky, "Refugee Migration in the Ottoman Middle East?
March 7th, 2024.
Reza Aslan, "An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville"
January 25th, 2024. Co-sponsored with The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.
Roxanne Euben, "The Power of Humiliation: Rhetoric, Retaliation, Resistance"
May 31st, 2023. Co-sponsored with the Department of Politics.
Alev Çinar, "The Predicament of Islamic Decoloniality in Turkey"
May 2nd, 2023. Sponsored by the Department of the History of Consciousness.
Max Weiss, "Revolutions Aesthetic"
April 17th, 2023. Co-sponsored by the Research Cluster “Vernaculars of Travel in South Asia and the Middle East.”
Eliane Raheb, "Miguel's War" (film showing)
March 8th, 2023. Co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Digital Media.
Liora Halpern, “The Oldest Guard: Landowners, Local Memory, and the Making of Zionist Settler Past"
January 20, 2023. Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies.
Rusha Latif, "Tahrir's Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution"
October 26th, 2022. Co-sponsored by the Department of Politics.
Lisa Hajjar, "Gaza Is a Crime Scene"
February 29th, 2024. Co-sponsored with the Departments of Politics and Sociology.
Mohamed Abdelaziz, "Photogrammetry and Computer Graphics in Archaeology"
February 28th, 2024.
Benoît Challand, "Violence and Representation in the Arab Uprising"
May 25th, 2023. Co-sponsored with the Department of Sociology.
Christopher Silver, "Recording History"
April 26th, 2023. Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for Cultural Studies.
Mohamed Hamed, "Arabic Language Resources in the UC System and Beyond"
March 16th, 2023. Sponsored by the Arabic Colloquium and funded by the UC Humanities Network.
Tarek El-Ariss, "The Fallen Note: A Journey to the Birthplace of the Image"
March 1st, 2023. Co-sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies.
Yoav Di-Capua, “Reconsidering the 60s Generation in the Arab World and Beyond"
November 10th, 2022.
Aslı Bâli, "From Revolution to Devolution? Dilemmas of Federalism and Decentralization in the Middle East"
October 14th, 2022. Co-sponsored with the Legal Studies Program.