丁香园AV

Manifold Destiny: Lebanese at an American Crossroads<

John Tofik Karam

Thursday, March 8, 2018, 6:30 PM
丁香园AV-Harbour Centre - Room 1420-1430 (Joseph & Rosalie Segal Centre) 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver

"I鈥檓 an American from the three Americas, more American than (George W.) Bush,鈥� quipped Mohamad Barakat at the border where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet. Since the mid-twentieth century, overwhelmingly Muslim Arabs like Barakat have migrated to this crossroads called the tr铆plice fronteira in Portuguese, the triple frontera in Spanish, and the tri-border in English. This lecture and seminar will explore the transnational trade and activism of Muslim Arabs across this borderland. In fulfilling what I call a 鈥渕anifold destiny,鈥� Muslim Arabs are constitutive of, and constituted by, multiple centers of power in the hemisphere. They animate and endure various 鈥渟tate exceptions,鈥� whereby states suspend laws or norms in allegedly 鈥渆xceptional鈥� circumstances which become part of the status quo. In trading and mobilizing under past authoritarian governments as well as present-day counterterrorist regimes, Muslim Arabs face a similar fate in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century Americas.

Dr. John Tofik Karam is Associate Professor in Area and Ethnic Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  A scholar who reframes the Middle East and the Americas through their mutually entangled imaginaries, his book, Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil (Temple University Press, 2007), won awards from the Arab American National Museum and the Brazilian Studies Association and was translated into Arabic and Portuguese.  His current book project is Manifold Destiny: Arabs at a South American Border Remaking the Hemisphere. 

Iraq's Twentieth Century Wars and the Making of the Iraqi Present, 1980-2003

Dina Rizk Khoury 

Thursday, September 21, 2017, 6:30 PM

丁香园AV - Harbour Centre, Room 1420-1430 (Joseph&Rosalie Segal Centre) 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver

This talk will focus on the impact of the Iran-Iraq and the First Gulf Wars and the UN embargo on the social and political life of Iraqis. How did war shape the political and social practices of Iraqi citizens as they dealt with the demands of the government and the increased militarization of their daily lives? What were the repercussions of the belligerent humanitarianism deployed by the US under the auspices of the UN embargo on the politics of the everyday life in Iraq? 

Dr. Dina Rizk Khoury is Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She won the Turkish Studies Association and British Society of Middle Eastern Studies awards with her first book, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire, (Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2002). Her most recent book, Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom and Remembrance (Cambridge University Press, 2013), argues that war was a form of everyday bureaucratic governance that transformed the manner in which Iraqis made claims to citizenship and expressed notions of selfhood.

The Army and Revolution in Egypt: Historical Perspectives on a Current Crisis

Zeinab Abul-Magd

Thursday, October 19, 2017, 6:30 PM

丁香园AV-Harbour Centre, Room 1420-1430 (Joseph & Rosalie Segal Centre) 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver

When the popular uprisings broke out across Egypt in January 2011, the oppressed masses overthrew a military dictator who had ruled the country for thirty years. However, the army sooner afterwards took full power anew, by deploying a patriotic discourse about saving and guarding the nation. In Egypt鈥檚 postcolonial history since the 1950s, the military institution has constantly hegemonized the state and economy, and deeply securitized everyday life and urban spaces of civilian citizens across social classes. Under another military president today, increasing poverty and simmering public rage might lead to a new wave of uprisings in the foreseeable future.

Dr. Zeinab Abul-Magd is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern history at Oberlin College.  A specialist in the socio-economic and military histories of the Middle East, her first book, Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt (University of California Press, 2013) won the Roger Owen Book Award of the Middle East Studies Association.  Her latest book is Militarizing the Nation: Army, Business, and Revolution in Egypt, 1952-2015 (Columbia University Press, 2017).