1972 Presidential Address Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Chicago Convention ◽  
The University ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
The City

Five years ago, on the occasion of the first annual meeting of this Association at the University of Chicago, the Presidential address was delivered by our departed and lamented colleague, Gustave von Grunebaum. It was a distinguished occasion, but to tell the truth, it was also a somewhat trying one. For an hour or two before dinner, the cocktails had flowed freely; we were then served an enormous meal, enough to put some of us to sleep on the spot; the room was rather crowded and terribly overheated, and as the dinner plates were pushed away, the air grew thick with cigar smoke. As we struggled to regain our sobriety or at least to stay awake, perspiring and gasping for breath, Professor von Grunebaum arose in our midst and delivered a characteristically learned, intricate, and rather lenghthy discourse on the Islamic concept of sin. It was, of course, a brilliant performance, and it endowed the Middle East Studies Association with the necessary academic credibility to get off to a successful start. Upon reflection, I felt that it was also well suited to the locale of the city of Chicago, and as I pointed out to Gustave afterward, all in all it had been the very model of a Chicago convention: lots of booze before dinner, and lots of sin afterward.

1973 Presidential Address Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Charles Issawi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
Henry Ford ◽  
Middle East Studies

Anything coming after the floor show we have just seen can only be an anticlimax, and my impulse is to tear up my prepared text and just quote two great men: Thomas Carlyle, who described economics as “the dismal science” and Henry Ford, who said “history is bunk” — from which it presumably follows that economic history is dismal bunk. Instead, I should like to take advantage of this captive audience and speak to you in praise of economic history. This is an old Arabic genre : mahasin al-iqtisad. And of course economic history means giving as little history for as much money as possible, so you will not expect a long speech.

Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting (Summary)

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-48
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
The Board Of Directors ◽  
Chicago Circle ◽  
The University ◽  
Middle East Studies

The Board of Directors met for its fourteenth meeting at New York on 16 February 1973. The Board approved the Association’s co-sponsorship of Hamline University’s summer project on the Middle East as an encouragement to small institutions and new programs to undertake the kind of activity proposed by the Image Committee and Center Directors. The Board decided to hold the 1974 annual meeting in Boston under the sponsorship of universities in the area, coordinated by Harvard, and also to look into the possibilities of Madrid and New York City for later meetings. The Board approved a proposal to Be submitted by the University of Michigan to the National Science Foundation for an automated data project on the Middle East, as originally envisaged by the Library Committee. The Board also approved the proposal for a translation project submitted jointly by MESA, the University of Texas and AUC to the Office of Education. In accordance with the current Ford grant, the Board designated visiting scholars and alternates to be invited to attend the 1973 annual meeting and to remain in the country for 3 to 6 weeks travelling and lecturing at American and Canadian institutions. The Board reviewed the matters of federal funding of non-academic markets for graduates in Middle East studies and of the State of the Art Conference. It appointed the following Nominating Committee: Professor John Masson Smith, University of California, Berkeley, Chairman, and Professors Frank Tachau, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, Carolyn Killean, University of Chicago, Michael Lorraine, University of Washington and President Issawi.

scholarly journals The 36th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-166
Author(s):  
Kamran A. Bokhari
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Business Meetings ◽  
Middle East Studies

The 36th annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of NorthAmerica (MESA), was held at the Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC,November 23-26, 2002. This conference, possibly the largest gathering ofscholars and students of the Middle East, took place in an atmosphere saturatedby 9/11 and Washington’s plans for an all-out war against Iraq, aswell as considerable right-wing and pro-Zionist pressure applied by suchmembers of the epistemic community of scholars, journalists, and policyanalysts as Daniel Pipes (the Middle East Forum) and Martin Kramer, aone-time director and currently a senior research fellow at Tel AvivUniversity’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.Both are behind Campus Watch (http://www.campus-watch.org), whichmonitors academic discourse that opposes American foreign policy towardthe Muslim world and its one-sided support for Israel, and which maintainson its website a list of “un-American” academicians and apologists for“militant Islam” and rogue regimes.November 23, the first day, was reserved for the business meetings ofall groups having an institutional affiliation with MESA. The panels, presentedas parallel sessions, began on Sunday at 8:30 a.m. Also featured wasa presidential address by the outgoing president, a plenary session, a bookexhibition, an art gallery, and a film fest. MESA organizers reported that1,900 people attended the 156-panel event, along with 80 exhibitions.The first session featured panels on popular culture and identity in theMaghreb, women and development, issues in contemporary Iran, intellectualsand ideas in the making of the Turkish Republic, history of the Ottomanborderlands, legitimation of authority in early period of Islam, comparativeperceptions of the “other” in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks, comparativeanalysis of political Islam, religious conversion and identity, and the Arabicqasidah. There was also a roundtable discussion on water issues and a thematicconversation on 9/11 and the Muslim public sphere. In the following ...

MESA Presidential Address 2007: Challenges and Responsibilities in a Time of Crisis

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Zachary Lockman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Organization ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
First Time ◽  
Middle East Studies

Our annual meeting this year is distinguished both by its large number of participants and by its intellectual breadth and depth. To me these indicate, as I will be discussing a bit later, that Middle East studies as an academic field, and MESA as the pre-eminent professional organization in that field, are flourishing. But this annual meeting is, I would suggest, also significant because this year, for the first time since 1989, we are meeting outside the United States.

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