Category: Uncategorized

Distinguished Service Prize, Zeina Zaatari

We award the 2024 MES Distinguished Service prize to Zeina Zaatari, Director of the Arab American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago for her extraordinarily generous and visionary service to the field of Middle East Anthropology: her institution-building at a time of emergency, her teaching and training of scholars over many years including through workshop organizing and public events programming, her caring mentoring of students at UIC and beyond, and her brave and pathbreaking scholarship on multifaceted women’s activism in Southern Lebanon. She is a founding and leading member of the Arab Families Working Group. She is President-Elect of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS). Perhaps most importantly in this moment, she has built the ARABAMCC into an exemplary campus cultural center in the United States. Not only does it serve the needs of Arab and Muslim American students, but also it educates faculty, staff, students, and other local groups about the Middle East and its diasporas—a massive contribution that goes beyond the usual responsibilities of university cultural centers. It serves as a model for this urgent work for universities across the country. At a critical time for Arab American and Muslim students, Dr. Zaatari has been a life-changing mentor whose work addresses and embraces the tremendous diversity within our Arab and Muslim American communities. She is an “utterly committed” teacher, as one letter-writer remarked. In the last year, she has served as a kind of “first responder similar to COVID-19 medical first responders.” As another letter-writer said, “Zeina has worked non-stop to support our students and community, and to create a safe, welcoming, and comfortable place for Arabs, Muslims, and others to talk, process, and grieve.” We are proud to recognize Dr. Zaatari’s incredible work.

2024 MES Student Paper Award, Thayer Hastings 

We award the MES student paper prize to Thayer Hastings for “The Inheritances of Non-Citizenship: Immobility and the Family in the Bir Ona Borderland.” Drawing from a broader doctoral project, Hastings investigates the entrenched issue of non-citizenship among Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. The chapter vividly traces how this precarious status of exclusion and disenfranchisement is inherited across generations, leaving Palestinian families in a perpetual quest for the “center of life” criteria imposed by governing Israeli authorities. Bringing together political and legal anthropology with historical analysis, Hasting’s ethnography is attentive to the nuanced distinctions of non-citizenship, highlighting the specific repercussions of ‘statuslessness’ of Palestinians for whom this lack of personal status constitutes an immanent and everyday condition of statelessness, restricting access to healthcare, education, employment, and freedom of movement. Arriving at a critical time when the lethal consequences of non-citizenship for Palestinians are in full display worldwide, Hastings advances our understanding of statelessness, particularly Palestinian statelessness, as a global phenomenon. 

2024 MES Student Paper Award Honorable Mention, Leen Alfatafta

Our honorable mention goes to Leen Alfatafta for “Motherly Affects: Coming Together with Iman Mersal’s How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts.” Leen Alfatafta offers a well-crafted, theoretically sophisticated, and persuasively argued paper that examines the ways mothering/hood emerges as a “relationally dispossessive” practice in Iman Mersal’s How to Mend, challenging traditional binaries that limits prevailing understandings of what it means to be a mother. Informed by feminist studies, terrorism studies, and theories of embodiment and affect, Alfatafta reads Mersal’s work as an “archive of affect” deftly illustrating how the meaning of mothering/hood is not contained but is co-produced through the speculative, affective act of reading. While tracing this speculative exchange between the reader and the text, this paper also locates it within broader sociocultural histories and power structures such as capitalism, patriarchy, and racism. Ultimately, Alfatafta aims to shift the scholarly discussions from what mothering/hood is to what it might be(come). 

2024 MES Photography Prize, jointly to Shonara Awad, Oklahoma State University, and Hanan Awad

Our 2024 MES Photography Prize is awarded to Shonara Awad and Hanan Awad. We Shonara Awad and Hanan Awad’s photography captures the militarization of Palestinian life on an everyday basis in Israeli-occupied Hebron, and the tensions and fears that this creates for Palestinians of all ages. Nevertheless, Palestinians insist on praying, going to school, and moving through their own city. They also show us the complex visual textures of Hebron, including Palestinian vernacular architecture—old, new, and patched together—as well as the infrastructures of occupation as materially contested and critiqued through anti-apartheid graffiti.

Photographs should speak broadly to the idea of “Praxis,” the theme of the 2024 AAA conference.

Each submission can include 1-5 photos each with a caption (50-100 words) that explains the date, location, context, and the process through which the photograph was taken. Photos may be submitted as stand-alone images or a short image series meant to be viewed together (please specify). Submissions should be in jpg or tiff.

We encourage submissions from anthropologists and anthropologists-in-the-making, especially from the MENA region. Each person is limited to one submission of five photographs. We ask that those submitting be members of the Middle East Section, except for students, non-tenure track faculty or scholars in the Global South if membership imposes a significant hardship.

The winners will each receive a modest cash prize ($100). Their photos will be used on the MES AAA website and social media and will be credited each time they are used.

Please make your submission here by our final extended deadline of Monday, September 16, 2024: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeipr9eqs8iIk_tpReMMhgihm_-b9LQXhwdbzTobLoO3rljA/viewform?usp=pp_url.

The undersigned sections of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the largest professional association of anthropologists in the world, condemn Israel’s ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinian people, most visible in its unprecedented bombardment of Gaza since October 7, 2023. The International Court of Justice describes Israeli actions in Gaza as “capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention”. We join ever-growing calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. We feel a special obligation to stand with our sister organization, Insaniyyat, the Society of Palestinian Anthropologists, which is committed to “work[ing] against ongoing and various besiegements of occupation, corruption, and statelessness, to take a measure of responsibility for knowledge produced and disseminated about and in Palestine.” We stand with academics of Gaza, who call upon us to help them rebuild their universities and to resist scholasticide.

As of June 2024, the United Nations confirmed that Israel had killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, a number that keeps rising. About 10,000 more people are assumed dead under the rubble. The Israeli Army generates targets for killing, including by AI, without regard for civilian death. Wanton use of imprecise and massive munitions in densely populated areas, including 2000-pound bombs and chemical weapons, has led to the destruction of more than 70,000 homes. Recent horrors include bombing and setting fire to tents of Palestinians taking refuge in supposed “safe zones.” 1.7 million Palestinians out of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.2 million people – the vast majority of whom are refugees who lost their homes in the 1948 Nakba and their descendants – have been internally displaced.

These horrors demand response from all educators. United Nations experts, building on the work of legal scholar Karma Nabulsi, have defined scholasticide as the “systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.” Israel has destroyed all major universities in Gaza and devastated over 500 primary and secondary schools. Israel has killed more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors. It has wounded at least 7819 students and 765 teachers. All kinds of knowledge infrastructure are under attack. More than 100 journalists, frontline knowledge producers upon whom the world relies, have been killed.

As noted by the Brookings Institution, there is no safe place in Gaza. Endless siege, active destruction of aid, and intense military campaigns are matched by an escalating situation of “manufactured famine” at levels unseen “since the second world war.” Catastrophic levels of hunger now face more than one million Palestinians in Gaza. Meanwhile, 45% of Gaza’s agricultural land has been destroyed, making the restoration of food security difficult or even impossible. At the same time, Gaza’s health infrastructure has been destroyed: every hospital in Gaza has been impacted and close to 500 health workers have been killed by Israel.

Impacts of this war on Palestine extend far beyond Gaza. The forced displacement of Palestinians, especially in rural communities, has drastically accelerated since October 2023. This displacement is carried out through banal bureaucratic measures and coordinated settler/ military violence alike, in areas ranging from the West Bank to the Naqab/Negev. Carceral violence has intensified, stealing lives and destroying community safety. Queer people in Palestine struggle to be recognized and remembered in the context of annihilation, and women face massive reproductive violence. Palestinian scholars and students in Israel who are critical of the genocide have faced expulsion, censorship, and arrest. In all areas of historic Palestine, institutions of learning and scholarship, social infrastructure, and life itself are under attack.

With this statement, we join calls of the Middle East Studies Association (in November and March), the National Women’s Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the American Sociological Association for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. As subsections of an association of largely US-based anthropologists, we have a special responsibility to speak out. This aggression would be impossible without US diplomatic, economic, and military support. As subsections of an association of largely US-based American anthropologists, we condemn the funding and sanction of this genocide by the United States government.

Our discipline is deeply entangled with colonialism. Given that history, we have ethical and political commitments to amplifying the demands for freedom voiced by the historically disenfranchised peoples we work and live with, learn and come from. This ethical responsibility has long been recognized by the American Anthropological Association and its membership, including in the AAA’s 2020 Statement on Anthropology & Human Rights. It disturbs us that we must still insist that Palestinians include those to whom human rights “should be applied equally.” We agree that anthropologists have a special obligation to “inform the public in matters of human rights via specific guidelines and procedures approved by the Association.” We acknowledge the 2015 Task Force on AAA Engagement on Israel-Palestine’s Report to the Executive Board that reaffirmed “a commitment to human rights” and “a critical awareness of US complicity in the region” (viii). We recognize that on July 24 2023, 71% of those who voted in an AAA election supported an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions because Israel “operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank” and because Israeli academic institutions are complicit in Israel’s oppressive regime. This resolution built on reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Finally, we note that at the November 2023 AAA meetings in Toronto, attendees at the (non-quorum) AAA Business Meeting voted for this resolution calling for the AAA to explicitly support immediate ceasefire.

Across the United States and the world, our students have set up protest encampments to demand that their colleges and universities divest from Israeli companies as well as arms manufacturers who contribute directly and indirectly to the murder of civilians in Palestine. On several campuses, their demands for accountability from their own universities have been met with removal of financial aid, academic suspension, police brutality, and arrest. We note that Palestinian students and scholars in particular have faced surveillance, censorship, threats to employment, and violence. We support our students’ rights to speak up for these ethical demands that are in alignment with the values of our profession. We insist that their safety be ensured and their demands heard. As anthropologists and teachers, we note that a permanent ceasefire is a necessary first step towards a decolonized future that can be vibrant and safe for all.

Anthropologists have long documented the multifaceted violence and racism of settler colonialism in Palestine. As Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory said while presenting a report at the Human Rights Council in March of this year: “the genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians.” Anthropologists have also shown how, over decades of dispossession and across geographies of steadfastness and dispersal, Palestinians support family and community members each day, uphold love and persistence each day, revitalize Palestinian lifeways and traditions each day, all on an unstoppable pathway towards liberation. A permanent ceasefire is a necessary first step towards a decolonized future that can be vibrant and safe for all.

Middle East Section Board

Association for Queer Anthropology Board

Society for Cultural Anthropology Board

Association of Indigenous Anthropologists Executive Board

Archaeology Division Executive Board

Association for the Anthropology of Policy Board

General Anthropology Division Board

Critical Urban Anthropology Association Board

Association of Black Anthropologists Executive Board

Society for the Anthropology of North America Executive Board

Association for Africanist Anthropology Board

Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, Board

Anthropology and Environment Society Board

This statement represents the view of the boards of the Sections listed above and should not be construed as representing the American Anthropological Association (AAA) as a whole. The AAA is a voluntary, non-profit, scholarly association with membership worldwide. It has diverse sections representing specialized interests within the field.

The MES Board has been closely following ongoing discussions about the upcoming AAA Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida.

Building on our March 1 discussion and on consultation with our members, which we undertook out of a commitment to democratic process with our members, the MES Board endorsed the AQA’s call for a nonbinding boycott on March 20, emphasizing the call not to register for the conference. This action reflects our solidarity with AQA and affected communities in Florida as well as our frustration with the AAA leadership in their failure to listen to and address members’ concerns at the fall business meeting and after. We confirm, building on AQA’s statement, that “AQA members feel unsafe going to Florida for a conference,” and that “Florida’s government suppresses academic freedom.” We also emphasize, drawing on the AQA statement, that a boycott sends a political message to Florida, which is “not an exceptional state” but rather a precedent-setting one regarding policies that harm LGBTQ people, immigrants, and people of color.

We also seek to preserve our ability to carry out our section’s responsibility of promoting the vital work of Middle East Anthropology and our activism within the AAA. We recognize the importance of retaining membership to preserve our voting rights in the AAA amidst unprecedented assaults on free speech and academic autonomy. Thus, many of us will maintain our AAA memberships. Along the lines of what AQA is planning, and along with their recognition that some scholars, to quote from the AQA statement, “feel a professional need to attend this year’s meeting, whether in person or online,” MES will still review and program submissions from members choosing to attend the Tampa meeting. We will also plan online activities for our section during the year.

Please bring the following resolution to the floor at your section meeting, and join us at the business meeting on Friday November 17, 6:15-7:30 pm at TMCC (Hall F) to call for the AAA to adopt it.

Resolution on Palestine

Whereas the people of Gaza have been subjected to widespread and indiscriminate bombardment and assault since October 7, 2023;

Whereas Israeli government and military leaders have expressed genocidal intent in Gaza and have engaged in direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

Whereas as of November 12, 2023, over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 5,000 children, and over 28,000 have been injured by Israeli attacks, while over 3,000 Palestinians remain missing under the rubble;

Whereas the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has destroyed over 185 educational facilities, including dozens of UNRWA schools and the three major universities in Gaza: the Islamic University, Al Azhar University, and Al-Aqsa University;

Whereas more than 80 Palestinian university faculty and staff and 2000 university students have been killed by the bombardment;

Whereas army and settler violence has also increased against Palestinians in the West Bank, resulting in over 170 deaths, including the deaths of 45 children, and displacement of entire communities;

Whereas academic freedom and personal safety is in dire risk for Palestinian and Jewish Israeli critics, students and faculty alike, in Israeli universities.

Whereas in institutions of higher education across North America there is increasing repression of speech and advocacy on Palestine, and Palestinian, Muslim, Arab and allied students and faculty are under threat;

Whereas the AAA’s resolution for the boycott of complicit Israeli institutions passed by the overwhelming majority of voting members in July 2023;

Whereas the AAA has made a statement calling for an end to violence and acknowledging anthropological literature that has addressed structural and everyday violence imposed by the Israeli government;

We call upon AAA to:

1. Stand in solidarity with Palestinian university students, faculty and staff.

2. Issue a strong statement of condemnation of Israel’s ongoing illegal assault on and siege of Gaza and join the international call for an immediate ceasefire. 

3. Condemn the ongoing violence against and displacement of Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory and within Israel. 

4. Issue a letter to presidents of universities, research centers, and other academic institutions across North America calling on university administrations to provide explicit support and protection of Palestinian students, faculty, and staff and their allies against harassment, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, demonization and silencing in line with the principles of academic freedom. 

5. Issue a strong statement condemning the violation of the academic freedom of Palestinian and critical faculty, students and staff at Israeli universities, currently facing harassment and threats of violence, disciplinary hearings, and termination and expulsion for exercising their academic freedom.

Also posted on AnthroBoycott.

SPECIAL EVENTS:

Middle East Section Business Meeting, Friday, Nov. 17, 8-9:30 pm, Metro Toronto Convention Center 501B, with refreshments ** In addition to usual MES business, we will have an open space for sharing experiences of how reaction to events since Oct. 7 has shaped our campuses and for sharing ideas on responding to this new chapter in Palestinian Nakba.

Two Decades On: Teaching the US Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Middle East Section Teaching Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 18 12:30 PM- 2:00 PM TMCC – 712

PANELS:

2-850 War in Sudan: An Anthropological Perspective
Thursday, Nov. 16, 8:00-9:45 PM TMCC – 801 B

2-730 Art Anthropology: how art shapes anthropologies of space, Time, crisis, economies, ecologies, multispecies relations, the unfinished, becomings, uprisings, and imaginations
Thursday, 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM TMCC – 715 B

3-580 The Boycott of Israeli Institutions, Academic Freedom, and the Question of Palestine
Friday, Nov. 17, 2-3:45 TMCC – 718 B

4-480 Pushing the transitional to reciprocal ends: creating and enlivening reciprocal spaces
Saturday, Nov. 18, 2:00 PM – 3:45 PM TMCC – 718 A

ON PALESTINE:

We are also coordinating actions directly related to Gaza and Palestine at the 2023 AAA Annual Meeting; please find more information on the AnthroBoycott website.

The Middle East Section (MES) is pleased to announce this year’s winners for our Book Award, Student Paper Prize, and Photography Prize!

MES Book Award

Winner: Nomi Stone, Pinelandia: An Anthropology and Field Poetics of War and Empire (University of California Press, 2022)

MES Student Paper Prize

Winner: Hazal Aydın, “Open Body, Theatrical Intimacy and Sexual Harassment: Understanding Gendered Embodiments Through Turkey’s Theatre Industry.”

Honorable mention: Tony J. Chamoun, “Violent Histories in a Diasporic Register: Between Bodily Durabilities, Sacrificial Others, and Racialized Strangers”

MES Photography Prize

Winner: Çağla Ay

Honorable Mentions: Peter Habib, Rita Reis

Congratulations to our winners! Please join us for our business meeting (Friday, November 17, from 8 to 9.30 pm) at the American Anthropological Association conference in Toronto this year, where we will also celebrate the prize winners.