Dear Middle East Anthropology Community,
Greetings! Welcome to our new website! As we reinvigorate this site, we also invite Middle East anthropologists to join (or rejoin) our section. While we are relatively small, we believe the space our section holds is crucial for our intellectual growth and scholarly community.
In recent years, we have centered and honored scholarship about the environment and refugees through our AAA panels and awards. We have highlighted struggles in the region for academic freedom through our public events. We have addressed challenges in teaching on Palestine/Israel through workshops. We lead regular mentoring events to support students and junior colleagues facing a variety of challenges related to our field. We have also just in the last year worked behind the scenes to ask the AAA to make statements about restrictions on academic freedom in Turkey, Palestine, and Iran.
We have been AAA leaders and collaborators, as through our 2021 MES Statement on Palestine, which was endorsed by eighteen AAA sections and six affiliated groups.
To join the AAA, start here, and to add the Middle East Section to your existing membership, log in, go here, and click on “add a section.”
Your voice—and your relatively modest membership fee—will keep our section vibrant. We invite you to join us in strengthening this vital field in anthropology today, and we promise to support your scholarship and teaching.
Thank you for your consideration and participation! Please also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
Sincerely,
Amahl Bishara
Middle East Section President
February 15, 2o23