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.

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.

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.

Introduction—What is Preservation?

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam Brusius
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Archaeological Excavation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
Two Sides

Tangible “heritage” (artifacts, buildings, and sites) has always played key roles in identity and nation-building in the Middle East. As countries in the Middle East face unprecedented disorder and violence we lack more nuanced answers to what preservation was, is, and what it can be in the future. This roundtable—initiated as a session at the Middle East Studies Association's annual meeting in 2016—offers a much-needed perspective and critical voice in a debate that has become increasingly monolithic. In other words, current notions of what “cultural heritage” is and how it should be preserved are limited and often dismiss the limitations, complexities and ironies of iconoclasm. Objects seen as valuable by some but “idolatrous” to others, for example, have sometimes been destroyed precisely because they were considered worthy of preservation by opposing parties. Further, preservation and destruction were rarely exclusive binaries, but rather connected and identified in crucial ways. They are, in other words, two sides of the same coin: Archaeological excavation has destroyed buildings and deposits in strata above selected layers or artifacts, often removing sites that are meaningful in other ways, such as Islamic shrines.

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