19th Middle East History and Theory Conference Tentative Panel List

I. State and Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1808-1909:

Moderator: James Tallon

Emine Evered (University of Arizona) 

    Financing Modernity: Public Schools during the Reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909)

Mustafa Gocek (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

    Rethinking Mahmud II: Personification of Power, Modernization, and Secularization

Sabri Ates (New York University)

   Revisiting Sectarian Violence in Ottoman Borderlands of 1880's

 

II. Historiography of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic

Moderator: Ebru Turan

Suleyman Demirci (Erciyes University)

    Demography and History: the Value of the Avarizhane Registers for Demographic Research: a Case Study of the Ottoman Sub-provinces of Konya, Kayseri, Sivas and Bozok, 1620s-1700

Ismail Gundogdu (Middle East Technical University) 

    Reasoning in History in the Ottoman Historiography:  a Special Case of the Tarih-i Gilmani

Aikaterini Dimitradou-Shuster (Brooklyn College, CUNY)

   An Author and his Chronicle: Idris Bidlisi’s Hesht Bihisht

III. Cultivating Democracy in the Middle East

Ghada Talhami (Lake Forest College)

    The Islamic Version of Checks and Balances in Society

Jerome Braun

    - Ethics in an Impersonal Age

    - Character, Civil Society, and Prospects for Democracy

    - Religion and Family Values, with Relevance for Civil Society in the Middle East

Public discussion, including America's attempt to produce a democratic society in Iraq

 

IV. Inter-Communal Relations in the Late Ottoman Empire

Moderator: Kaya Sahin

Roger Deal (University of Utah)

    Interpersonal Violence and Interethnic Relations In Fin-De-Siecle Istanbul

Suleyman Demirci (Erciyes University)

    Living Together: Muslim and Non-Muslim in the Kadi's Court in Settling Disputes in the Ottoman Society: a Case Study of Kayseri c. 1750-1904

 

V. Gender in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republic

Moderator: Murat Arsel

Carolyn Goffman (De Paul University)

    Proselytizing Democracy: American Missionary Educators and the Gendered Response to the Young Turk Revolution

Hale Yilmaz (University of Utah)

    Dressing the Nation's Citizens:  Men's Clothing Reforms in Early Republican Turkey

Metin Yuksel (University of Chicago)

    Women's Movement in the Ottoman Empire

Susanne Barsoum (University of Chicago)

    A Critique of the Literature on the Early Feminist Movement in Egypt

 

VI. Anthropological Perspectives on Contemporary Turkish Politics

Moderator: Martin Stokes

Kelda Jamison (University of Chicago)

    GAP and the Dam-that-Isn't-Yet: Controversy Surrounding the Ilisu Dam in the Southeastern Anatolian Development Project

Genevra F. Murray (University of Chicago)

    From Number to Nation: State and Fertility Practices in Turkey

Jeremy F. Walton (University of Chicago)

    Contradictions and Convergences in Coexistence: Islam, Secularism, Political Ideology and Public Practice in Contemporary Turkey

Kabir Tambar (University of Chicago)

    Symptoms of the Secular: on the Limits of a Genre of Political Criticism in Turkey

 

VII. The State and the Public Sphere from the Late Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey

Moderator: A. Holly Shissler

Eylem Akdeniz (Bilkent University)

    Intellectual and the Transformation of 'The Political': an Analysis of the Metamorphosis of Turkish Intellectual in the Last Two Decades

Etga Ugur (University of Utah)

    Political Context and Public Sphere: "Kamusal Alan" Debate in Turkey

 

VIII. Development, its Conception and Representation in Contemporary Turkey

Moderator: Alidost Numan

Murat Arsel (University of Chicago)

   German Espionage or ANZAC Revenge. Environmental Nationalism and Risk Politics in Turkey

Gokhan Ersan (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

   Secularism, Islamism and Emblemata: the Visual Discourse of Development in Turkey 1946-2003

 

IX. Minority Nationalisms

Moderator: Selim Yaqub

Christina Abraham (University of Chicago)

   A Critique of Assyrian Nationalism

Alexander Dawoody (Western Michigan University)

   The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Iraq and its Implications

Scott Morrison (Columbia University)

   In the Path of the Resurrection: Michel ‘Aflaq’s Arab Nationalism

as Precursor to Islamism in Syria (to be read by Vanessa Degiffis)

 

X. Identities, Their Formation and Politics in Turkey

Moderator: A. Holly Shissler

Zeynep Guler (University of Istanbul)

   Memories of Canakkale (Dardanelles): Formation of the Collective Memory

Saban Kardas (University of Utah and Middle East Technical University)

   Turkey, the United States and the War on Iraq: the March 2003 Motion Revisited

Celile Eren Argit

   An Approach to Turkish Grammar Books of Ottoman Non-Muslim Instructors

 

XI. Historiography of Iran in the Middle Period

Moderator: John Perry

Jacob Haar (University of Chicago)

   Tarikh-i Qizilbashan and Problems in Safavid History

Mark Luce (University of Chicago)

   Tabari in Translation and Two Persian Tafsirs

Patrick Wing (University of Chicago)

   A Mongol Tribe And The Experience Of Empire: The Jalayir, 1200-1432

 

XIII. Andalusia and North Africa in the Middle Period

Moderator: Heather Felton

Travis Bruce (Western Michigan University; Universite de Poitiers)

   Legitimacy As a Motivating Factor in the Politics of Eleventh-Century Spain

Mustafa Hashmi (University of Chicago)

   Understanding Mamluk Power: a Survey of Political Rule Using Symbolic Interactionism

Marya-Teresa Green-Mercado (University of Chicago)

   Morisco Jofores: Apocalyptic Prophecies and the Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry in Sixteenth-Century Spain

  

XIV. Classical Arabic Scholarship and Literature

Moderator: Tahera Qutbuddin

Asad Ahmad (Princeton University)

   Some Reflections on The Haqiqa-Majaz Dichotomy in Classical and Scholastic Arabic Poetics

Kenneth J. Garden (University of Chicago)

   The Structuring Logic of al-Ghazali's Revival of the Religious Sciences

Raymond K. Farrin (University of California, Berkeley)

   Making the Remembrance Dear: al-Khansa' Elegizes Sakhr

 

XV. Contemporary Islamic Thought and its Evolution

Moderator: Kenneth J. Garden

Laith Al-Saud (University of Chicago)

   Interpretive Methods in Contemporary Muslim Political Thought

Intisar A. Rabb (Princeton University)

   When Did "Rights of God" Become the Rights of Society? the Evolution of "Huquq Allah" in Sunni Juristic Discourse

Sevket Yavuz (Onsekiz Mart University; Visiting Researcher at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin)

   The Deconstruction of the Reproduced Phantasms or "Otherization" Phenomena

 

XVI. Christians in Classical and Middle Period Islamic Lands

Moderator: Frederick Donner

Saud S. Al-Zaid (Georgetown University)

   The Apocalyptic Frontier: Tarsus and the End of the World

Nancy Abdel Khalek (Princeton University)

   Monks’ Towers and the Destruction of the Church of John the Baptist: an Incident in the Topographical History of Byzantine and Early Islamic Damascus

Kurt Werthmuller (University of California, Santa Barbara)

   Accomplishments and Challenges in the Historiography of Medieval Egyptian Christianity

  

XVII. Islamism in a Global Context and Islamic Practice

Moderator: Noha Forster

Shadi Hamid (Georetown University)

   Self-Appointed Censors: Islamists and the Erosion of Free Speech

Ramazan Kilinc and Neslihan Cevik (Arizona State University)

   Engagements Between Islam and the West: Globalization and the Idea of "The West" in Islam

Bek-Myrza Tokotegin (Bogazici University)

   A Rise of Political Islam in Central Asia: the Batken Case in the Light of September 11

 

XVIII. Society and Culture in the Modern Arab World

Moderator: Kaveh Hemmat

Will Hanley (Princeton University)

   American Automobile Accidents in Alexandria, 1914-35

Etty Terem (Harvard University)

   Al-Nawazil al-Jadida al-Kubra of al-Mahdi al-Wazzani: Ahbas Endowments and Family Behavior 

Zareena Grewal (University of Michigan)

   Tradition As a Trans/Formation of Historical Anthropology

Montserrat Rabadan-Carrascossa (University of Chicago)

   Rai Music in the Era of Globalization: New Forms and Meanings

 

XIX. Palestine: Identity and Conflict in Modern Times.

Moderator: Montserrat Rabadan-Carrascosa

Lori Allen (University of Chicago)

   Martyr Funerals in the Palestinian Intifada

Keren Querfurth

    The Search For Identity Within the Bauhaus Architecture of Mandate Palestine

Basel A. Saleh (Kansas State University) and Sean L. Yom (Harvard University)

   Palestinian Violence and the Second Intifada: Explaining Suicidal Attacks