Month: January 2013

Call for Submissions: 2013 MES Student Paper Award

MES Student Paper Award

The Middle East Section requests submissions for our Student Paper Award.  Both undergraduate and graduate students are eligible. The winner will receive a prize of $500, plus a chance to summarize the award winning paper in AN and at the 2014 AAA meeting in Chicago. Student paper prize submissions should be emailed to Ilana Feldman (ifeldman@gwu.edu) – and the subject line must say “MES Student Prize.”  The paper should include a cover page with the name of the professor and class for which the paper was written and email addresses for both the student and professor. The deadline is June 15, 2013.

Call for Nominations for 2013 MES Distinguished Scholar Award

MES Distinguished Scholar Award

The Middle East Section requests nominations for an award for a senior scholar in Middle Eastern anthropology who is an outstanding academic in terms of scholarly publications and service to Middle Eastern anthropology, including mentorship and interventions in public debates. An award of $500 will be offered to the winner. Please send names and a brief letter explaining your nomination to the chair of the award committee, Farha Ghannam (fghanna1@swarthmore.edu), by April 15, 2013. Note that MES includes members specializing in cultural, linguistic and biological anthropology and archaeology, and that nominees from diverse subdisciplines are welcome. The winners will be announced in AN and honored at the 2013 AAA meeting in Chicago.

Statement on Gaza

In a full section membership vote, the Middle East Section of the AAA endorsed the following Statement on Gaza on November 26, 2012:

The membership of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association condemns the Israeli military assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza that escalated on Nov 11, 2012. As anthropologists working in the region, we call the attention of our colleagues to the overwhelmingly unequal military and political power in this context, to the fact that Israel is an occupying power responsible for protecting the civilian population in Gaza, to the ever-growing number of Palestinian civilian casualties, and to the lack of attention in the US media to those civilian casualties. We also express our concern for the Palestinian cultural heritage of Gaza, which is directly endangered during this military assault, in violation of the 1954 Hague convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict. Anthropologists have traditionally taken a stand when communities with which we work are under assault. This situation demands the same attention and response. We call on our colleagues who work in other regions to join us in condemning the attack on Gaza.

UPDATE: This statement has also been endorsed by the AAA’s Committee for Human Rights and the AAA’s Culture and Agriculture Section.