Public Events

AzIP Water Symposium
Israeli and Palestinian Water Management and Policy: Challenges Facing Water Managers and Potential Solutions

Opening Remarks:
Dr. Robert Shelton, President, The University of Arizona

Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Shaddad Attili, Chairman, The Palestinian Water Authority
Professor Uri Shani, Director General, The Israeli Water Authority

Westward Look Resort, 7.30pm

Download program flyer here.

7.00pm, ILC 130

W. Ben Adams, PhD candidate, Near Eastern Studies/Anthropology
The Anwa' Fetish and the Islamic Purification of Ancient Arabian Folk Astronomy

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

The anwa' is a collection of significant stars known to the Arab tribes since antiquity and equated since then with the lunar zodiac, the 28 so-called "lunar stations" of Indian origin. Upon examination of the poetry and cosmology of the Arabs before and shortly after the advent of Islam, it is clear that the identification of the anwa' as the lunar zodiac does not fit quite right. Drawing from Webb Keane's work on purification, this talk presents the anwa' as a pre-Islamic system for rain invocation that was fetishized in the early days of Islam for its assumption of divine agency and later purified and redistributed to the masses as reconstructed cultural history.

Shahin Vaezi, public talk
Metacognitive Reading Strategies used by Iranian Adults and Young Learners in Reading English and Persian Texts

Shahin Vaezi is a professor in the ELT Department of the Iran University of Science and Technology. She is also an educational advisor at the Iran Language Institute. Dr. Vaezi has coauthored English textbooks for young learners. Shahin Vaezi mastered English as a second language as a primary school student in the States, later on she studied Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Tehran, Iran and received her Ph.D. in 2000 from Allameh Tabatabi' University.

She is the founder and manager of “Zaban Amooz” Language School . Zaban Amooz is a language school that provides English instruction mainly to young learners and also adults.

Recently she has become interested in Teaching Persian as a Foreign Langauge. She is engaged in a project (with the Iran language Institute) that aims at launching a Persian language and Persian culture teaching program to the kids of immigrant families residing out of Iran .

Farzin Vejdani, Assistant Professor, UA Department of History
The Place of Islam in Interwar Iranian Nationalist Historiography

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

William O. Beeman, Public Lecture
Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota

Ta'ziyeh and the Dynamics of Social Protest in Iran
Iran is undergoing a “social drama” as described by anthropologist Victor Turner as a result of controversy over the elections of July, 2009. This current crisis and its public face draw upon performative symbolism that is reflected in more formal performance forms such as Iranian ta'ziyeh, most often used to depict another ancient social drama, the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. In this talk the parallels between ta'ziyeh performance conventions and the current public drama will be explored, with an explanation of how symbolic forms borrowed from traditional performance render public demonstrations more effective.

Footsteps of Water
Opening Reception for the 2009-2010 CMES Photography Exhibit

Roots of Literacy in the Ancient Near East Lecture Series
Ancient Mesopotamian Cuneiform Tablet Archives, Scribes, and the Development of Libraries , Anne Kilmer, Professor Emeritus of Assyriology, University of California, Berkeley, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter

Sponsored by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

Roots of Literacy in the Ancient Near East Lecture Series
Reception and Panel Lectures

• From Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Arizona: The First Writing, Indiana Jones, and the Arizona State Museum Basement's Mystery, Ewa Wasilewska, Associate Professor/Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and the Middle East Center, University of Utah.
• The Origins of the Alphabet: From Proto-Sinaitic to Greek, Ronald S. Hendel, The Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
• Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Writing with Pictures and Painting with Words by Richard H. Wilkinson, Regents' Professor of Egyptian Archaeology, School of Anthropology, Department of Classics and Department of Near Eastern Studies, The University of Arizona.

Sponsored by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Leila Hudson, Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies
Noise and Signal: Sex, Lies, and Middle East Policy

Serious dissent about Middle East policy in the United States since 911 is not so much silenced by censorship as it is drowned out by noise – irrelevant, confusing, distracting and misleading information (both spontaneously occurring and politically sponsored) that consumes media time and the public imagination. This talk traces evidence of noise management on Middle Eastern policy issues to Cold War era intelligence analysis that showed that clear signals could be obscured by sufficient levels of chatter and quantities of data, and examines the roles of corporate journalism and entertainment in constricting discourse about Middle East policy through a proliferation of cheap talk.

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

Turkey-US: Challenging Relationship in a Difficult Time, public talk
Ross Wilson, former US Ambassador to Turkey

Ross Wilson recently retired from the Foreign Service after a 30-year career. He was U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2005 to 2008 and is in a position to speak authoritatively and candidly about the multi-dimensional U.S. relationship with Turkey .

Immediately before his posting to Turkey , he served as Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff for the Deputy Secretary of State, providing policy and staff support to the Deputy Secretary on the entire range of issues in American foreign policy. Between June 2003 and February 2005, Ambassador Wilson was the US Senior Negotiator for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) at the Office of the US Trade Representative, developing, coordinating and implementing US government negotiating positions and strategies in these trade talks.  Before that, he was the American Ambassador to the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2000-2003.

From 1997 to 2000, Ambassador Wilson was Principal Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large and Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union .  He worked for Secretaries of State Baker, Eagleburger and Christopher in 1992-94 as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State.  He was Special Assistant to Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Counselor of the Department Zoellick in 1990-92.  Earlier in his career, Ambassador Wilson served in the State Department's offices dealing with the Soviet Union and Egypt .  He also served overseas as US Consul General in Melbourne, Australia (1995-97), twice at the American Embassy in Moscow (1980-82 and 1987-90), and at the American Embassy in Prague (1985-87).

Born in 1955 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , Ambassador Wilson received a Bachelor's degree magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 1977 and Masters Degrees from Columbia University (1979) and the US National War College (1995).  He is the recipient of the President's Meritorious Service Award (2005), Azerbaijan 's Order of Honor, and numerous State Department awards.  Ambassador Wilson is married to Margo Squire, who is also a career diplomat with the State Department.  They have two sons.

Roots of Literacy in the Ancient Near East Lecture Series
Archaeological Preservation Efforts and Agonies in Northern Iraq, 2006, Jesse Ballenger, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology, The University of Arizona, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter.

Sponsored by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post

The Obibi Era: American-Israel Relations in the Age of Obama and Netanyahu

Herb Keinon, the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, has been at the paper for the last 23 years.

He took over the diplomatic beat in August 2000, just after the failed Camp David summit, and just before the outbreak of  the Palestinian intifada in September of that year.

Keinon is responsible for covering the prime minister and the foreign minister, often traveling with the Prime Minister on his trips abroad.

He has followed Ehud Barak to Paris, Ariel Sharon to Crawford, Texas, Ehud Olmert to Annapolis, and Binyamin Netanyahu to Washington. As such, Keinon has up-close knowledge and an intimate perspective of the country's political, diplomatic and strategic challenges - from Hamas to Hizbullah, Kadima to Likud.

Sponsored by AZ Center for Judaic Studies
Co-sponsored by Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UA Hillel Foundation, the UA School of Journalism, and the Department of Near Eastern Studies

Roots of Literacy in the Ancient Near East Lecture Series
Life and Death on the Estate of a Princess in 21st Century BCE Mesopotamia, David Owen, The Bernard and Jane Schapiro Professor of Ancient Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, and Curator of Tablet Collections, The Jonathan and Jeannette Rosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter.

Sponsored by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series

NES/CMES Fall Colloquium Series