Public Events

Inside Islam: What One Billion Muslims Really Think, Film

Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a new documentary film from Unity Productions Foundation, explores the expertly gathered opinions of Muslims around the globe as revealed in the world ’s first major opinion poll, conducted by Gallup, the preeminent polling organization.

Focused on the issues of Gender Justice, Terrorism, and Democracy – the film presents remarkable data deftly, showing how it challenges the popular notion that Muslims and the West are on a collision course. Like the research, the film highlights a shared relationship that is based on facts – not fear.

Experts Featured in the film: Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, John Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University, Rami Khoury, Editor of the Daily Star (Beirut), and Kenneth Pollack, Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, among others.

Nir Rosen, Freelance Writer, Photographer and Film-Maker, Public Lecture
Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan

Nir Rosen is a writer, journalist, film-maker and Fellow at the Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. He has spent over 36 months working in occupied Iraq, four months in Afghanistan and has also worked in Somalia, the Congo, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon. His work has been published by the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker Magazine, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone Magazine, and similar publications.  His book on Iraq, "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq," was published by Free Press in 2006.  His latest book, “The Triumph of the Martyrs: A Reporter’s Journey into Occupied Iraq, was released in 2008.

12pm, Marshall 490

Persepolis—a series of four comics books by the Iranian émigré Marjane Satrapi (b. 1969)-- appeared in France between 2000 -2003, and won almost immediate international acclaim.  Addressing respectively the events of the revolution of 1979; the Iran-Iraq war; and the issues Iranian émigrés and returnees face in the West and in Iran respectively, Persepolis is a cross-cultural phenomenon which successfully engages Western readers with an “insider’s view” of Iran’s turbulent modern history, and with the problematics of identity and belonging, which exile brings to the fore. The present study has two objectives: It explores some of the creative choices which Satrapi makes in order to overcome the visceral reaction of her intended audience towards the Iranian “other”, which ensues from three decades of political tensions between Iran and the West, and from the imprint of clerical rule on society in her native country. It also examines the utility of Persepolis as an engaging and accessible repository of important “talking points” on Middle Eastern history and civilization, and the nature of the “historical truth,” which the account of Marji-- its child-narrator-- presents.

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series
Presented by the Persian Lecture Series

7pm, ILC 130

Sinan Antoon, Poetry reading

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, translator, and assistant professor at NYU. He was born in Baghdad and studied English literature at Baghdad University before moving to the United States after the 1991 Gulf War.  More >>

8pm, UA Poetry Center

Dr. Saba Mahmood is an associate professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley.  Her research interests include the articulations of secular modernity in postcolonial societies, with particular attention to issues of subject formation, religiosity, embodiment, and gender.  Her recent book, The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, ethnographically examines the relationships between a women’s piety movement and the Islamist movement in Egypt.

Sponsored by the UA Department of Gender and Women's Studies
Co-sponsored by CMES

Esther Fuchs, Professor, Near Eastern Studies and Judaic Studies
Israeli Feminist Theories on War and Peace

Two approaches emerge from Israeli feminist scholarship on military conflict. A liberal approach that has been articulated most recently by Dafna Izraeli and Hannah Herzog highlights the exclusion of women from military symbol systems and security related decision making processes. The post Zionist approach, articulated most recently by Tamar Mayer, Simona Sharoni and Ayala Emmett focuses on a pacifist approach that rejects the use of military force altogether. While the former approach seeks to reform military institutions toward greater egalitarianism and inclusiveness, the latter approach rejects nationalist frameworks altogether, seeking to articulate a utopian feminist space of alliance, solidarity and sisterhood.

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

Serpil Atamaz Hazar, Ph.D candidate, History Department University of Arizona

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

Sabbagh Lecture: "Journalism as Anthropology: Stories from the Middle East"
George Packer, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq and of Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade

George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has covered the Iraq war for the magazine. His book The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq received several prizes and was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by The New York Times Book Review. In 2003, Packer was awarded an Overseas Press Club award for his examination of the difficulties faced during the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. More >>

Asli Gur, University of Michigan, Sociology Dept. Ph.D. candidate
Comparative versus Connective Histories of Transculturation and the Modeling of the 'Other' in the Ottoman Education Reforms

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

Ambassador John Limbert, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in State Department Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs

Public Lecture and Book Signing

Following the lecture, Ambassador Limbert will be signing his new book, “Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History.” 

John W. Limbert was appointed Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at the U.S. Naval Academy in August 2006 after a 33-year career in the United States Foreign Service. He was president of the American Foreign Service Association (2003-05) and ambassador to Mauritania (2000-03). Ambassador Limbert holds the Department of State’s highest award—the Distinguished Service Award—and the Award for Valor, which he received in 1981 after fourteen months as a hostage in Iran. He has a PhD from Harvard University in history and Middle Eastern studies and has taught in Iranian high schools and at the University of Shiraz. He has written numerous articles on Middle Eastern subjects and has authored Iran: At War with History and Shiraz in the Age of Hafez.

Tucson Festival of Books

Saturday:

10-noon: John Limbert, “Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History.” 
1-2.30pm: Laila Halaby, “Once in a Promised Land"

10th Annual Middle East and North Africa Graduate Student Association Conference
"Intercultural Approaches to the Study of the Middle East and North Africa"

For more information, please visit: www.uamena.org

10th Annual Middle East and North Africa Graduate Student Association Conference
"Intercultural Approaches to the Study of the Middle East and North Africa"

For more information, please visit: www.uamena.org

Richard Eaton, Professor, History and Near Eastern Studies Department
Imagining the Metropolis on the Islamic Periphery: Commerce, Scholarship, and Architecture in 15th c. Bidar and Timbuktu

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

Maggy Zanger, Associate Professor of Practice, School of Journalism, University of Arizona
Welcome to Kurdistan: Witnessing a Historic Transition in Iraq

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

Hikmet Kocamaner, Near Eastern Studies/Anthropology, Ph.D Candidate
Wither the Secular Public Sphere?: The Case  of "Islamic" Broadcasting in Turkey

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

Kamran Talattof, Professor, Near Eastern Studies
Sexuality and Cultural Change: The Presentation of Gender and Sex in Iranian Cinema

NES/CMES Spring Colloquium Series

First Wednesday Film Series
Under the Moonlight (Iran)

7pm, ILC 130