Announcements

Check here for announcements regarding calls for papers, upcoming conferences, and publication information. 

• External Call for Contributions: Diasporas: Political Participation, Culture and Imaginings

  2025-10-16

  Diasporas: Political Participation, Culture and Imaginings

  One of the central aims of this proposal is to illuminate and analyze the integration and re-integration of diasporic subjects back into the political and cultural milieu of their countries of origin in the twenty-first century. It encourages contributions that consider how, where and when the diaspora is mobilized, and what are the claims, agendas and resources that energize and sustain this.

  Ongoing experimentation and experience with out-of-country voting (OCV) and the extension of citizenship within diasporas are contributing towards novel and innovative attachments (formal and informal) to their countries of origin that are important to consider. They are important for a number of reasons. First, as more of the diaspora participate in legislative elections, their ability to influence parliamentary outcomes and therefore the future of the country increases in a profound and unforeseen ways. Second, participation within such institutional channels may foreseeably invigorate diasporic attachment across generations. Insufficient data at present exists in this matter, and it deserves attention.

  A third reason concerns the nature of diaspora itself. Is it tracking towards the construction of a deterritorialized transnational identity, towards the retention and amplification of territorial affinity, or perhaps in another direction entirely? This question is significant given that a majority of the diaspora are unlikely to resettle permanently in their countries of origin.

  There is a Janus-like dialectic at the heart of diasporic identity formation and transformation within and across generations. As individuals immersed in the processes of identity construction and mobilization concomitantly look both forward and back, they create hybrid identities, associations, attachments and solidarities.

  Contributions are invited to reflect on the following (list not exhaustive):

  • Diasporic Political Participation
  • The influence of the country of residence on diasporic identities and engagement
  • Electoral campaigning in the Diaspora
  • Lobbying from abroad: the potential and limits of diasporic advocacy
  • Comparative approaches between diasporas in the twenty-first century
  • Alternative ways to conceptualize diasporic political belonging and participation
  • Transnational Electoral Constituencies: Extending and Limiting Representation?
  • Promotion by what means? How diasporic organizations promote and sustain cultural pride and affiliation amongst the diasporas

  Workshop: Copenhagen, April 16–17, 2026

  Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to attend a workshop at the University of Copenhagen Denmark in Spring 2026. Authors will be required to submit their first drafts by March 16, 2026. This will ensure:

  1. that timely feedback can be provided to each author; and
  2. that each participant will have time to familiarize themselves with the draft of a colleague, that they will then present as part of the workshop’s format.

  Key Dates

  • Abstracts Due: November 21, 2025
  • Notice of Acceptance: November 25, 2025
  • First drafts due to editors: March 16, 2026
  • Arrival in Copenhagen: April 15, 2026
  • Workshop dates: April 16 and 17, 2026

  Contact Information

  • Dr. Paul Maurice Esber, Københavns Universitet, paul.esber@jur.ku.dk
  • Dr. Ebrahim Afsah, Københavns Universitet, ebrahim.afsah@jur.ku.dk   

• New Graduate Program in Middle East Public History at NC State University

  2025-09-24

  We are excited to share news of a new graduate program in Middle East Public History at North Carolina State University. This program is designed to train the next generation of historians who can move confidently between scholarship, public engagement, and digital innovation.
  
  Applications are now open for Fall 2026, with a deadline of January 15, 2026.
  General Program details are here: go.ncsu.edu/meph

• CFP: "Public History in the Middle East"

  2025-09-08

  Call for Papers: Public History in the Middle East

  Conference Date: October 19–20, 2026
  Organizers: Qatar National Library’s Heritage Library & Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies (NC State University)
  Location: Qatar National Library
  Contact: Dr. Akram Khater and Maryam Al-Mutawa
  Submission Deadline: January 31, 2026

  As a field that began in the US in the 1960s, public history brings to the fore the history of those whose voices and lives have been omitted from colonial and national archives whose contents often relay hegemonic narratives. It opens scholarly space for multivocality and shared authority in driving historical inquiry and study, effectively encouraging new perspectives in how the public views and interprets the past, and challenges the very nature of archives.

  While public history is well-established in many regions, it remains in its relative infancy within Middle Eastern studies. Scholars, practitioners and institutions in the Arab World have been navigating questions of historical memory, public engagement and the politics of representation for a long time. However, the field remains without clear theoretical and structural framing, and these efforts have not fully coalesced into a sub-discipline of Middle Eastern studies. This conference seeks to map the current state of public history in the Middle East and foster dialogue on its challenges, opportunities and intersections with broader social, political and cultural processes.

  This conference invites paper submissions for an interdisciplinary gathering dedicated to exploring the emergence, development and practice of public history in the Middle East. We encourage submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

  • How have public history practices been shaped by the social, political and cultural landscapes of the Middle East?
  • What role do governments, institutions and grassroots movements play in shaping public memory and historical narratives in and about the Middle East?
  • How are colonial histories and their legacies navigated in public history projects?
  • In what ways do digital technologies and social media influence the creation and dissemination of historical knowledge in the region?
  • How do public history initiatives engage with contentious or silenced aspects of Middle Eastern history?
  • What challenges and opportunities exist for collaboration between academic historians and public history practitioners in the Middle East?
  • How is public history preserved in the Gulf Region? How is it affected by political and economic factors (legitimacy and the rentier state). 
  • What are the consequences of marginalizing public history in the Gulf? Does this marginalization link to the contradictions between local memory and official state narratives?

  We welcome contributions from a variety of disciplines, including history, anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, and digital humanities, as well as insights from museum professionals, educators, and independent practitioners. Papers that incorporate innovative methodologies or case studies are especially encouraged.

  Please use this form to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a brief bio (up to 150 words) by January 31, 2026. Selected participants will be notified by the end of March 2026.

• Upcoming Khayrallah Center Webinar: AI and Arabic Manuscripts

  2025-08-19

  Please join the Khayrallah Center on August 28, 2025, at noon EDT for a first look at the Center's ground-breaking AI model for Arabic manuscripts. Led by Dr. Akram Khater, this webinar will give you a exclusive sneak peek at this revolutionary translation tool and explain how this tool will aid researchers and the community in terms of unprecedented access to history and historical archives.

  Advance registration required.

  Questions? Email lebanesestudies@ncsu.edu. 

   

• External CFP: “Towards a Poetics of Arab Diasporic Literary and Cultural Studies”

  2025-08-08

  Since the late nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century, Arab nationals (mainly from the Levant) have immigrated to Europe, North and South America, and Australia for economic, social, cultural and political reasons, forming, in the process, diverse Arab communities in the diaspora. Being away from their homelands, Arab writers in the diaspora have used literary texts to narrate their ordeals and experiences away from home, and by doing so, they have produced a distinctive body of literature that came to be called Arab diasporic literature. Over the past two decades, the number of literary works produced by Arab diasporic writers about the diasporic experiences of Arabs has substantially increased and led to the emergence of a new generation of novelists, poets and playwrights who have transformed Arab diasporic literature into a dynamic space for negotiating identity, memory, and belonging across transnational contexts. From forced exile and migration to challenges arising from assimilation and racial profiling, Arab diasporic writers continue to represent the home- land, against the backdrop of colonialism, displacement and political upheavals, as well as opportunity.

  The emergence of Arab-Anglophone literature as a distinctive literary genre has been accompanied by a surge in research conducted in the field. Researchers from various disciplines have explored diverse aspects of Arab diasporic literature, raising questions related to displacement, identity, aging, trauma, mobility, the representation of weather, socio-cultural spaces, the symbolism of trees, clothes, food and windows, among other aspects. By engaging with a wide range of topics related to contemporary Arab diasporic literary and cultural studies, scholars have not only enriched criticism in the field, but have contributed to debates on migration, identity, and transnationalism, among others.

  To advance research in the field, a two-day conference entitled “Towards a Poetics of Arab Diasporic Literary and Cultural Studies” will be held on November 22 and 23, 2025, at the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) institute in Al-Weibdeh, Amman, Jordan. The conference is organized jointly by Contemporary Arab Diasporic Literary Studies (CALDS), an international research group based at the University of Jordan, and CBRL. The conference committee invites scholars, researchers and post-graduate students to submit research papers which explore various aspects related to contemporary Arab diasporic literature including, but not limited to, identity, migration, displacement and assimilation. Interdisciplinary approaches to Arab diasporic literary and cultural studies are welcomed, particularly those engaging with literature, film, digital culture, and other modes of cultural expression.

  Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Diaspora, ethnicity and migration studies
  • Identity, belonging and hybridity
  • Adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare by Arab writers in diaspora
  • Post-9/11 Islamophobia and racialization
  • Transnationalism and border studies
  • Language, code-switching in Arab diasporic literature
  • Arab diasporic media and film productions
  • Trauma studies in Arab diasporic studies
  • Space and identity in Arab diasporic studies
  • Ecocritical approaches to Arab diasporic studies

  Submission Guidelines:

  Abstracts of 150–200 words should be submitted to Prof. Yousef Abu Amrieh at y.awad@ju.edu.jo and Dr. Eman Mukattash at e.mukattash@ju.edu.jo by September 6, 2025 along with a short biography.

  Important Dates:

  Abstract Deadline: September 6, 2025

  Notification of Acceptance: September 20, 2025

  Conference Date: November 22 and 23, 2025

• 2025 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies Now Accepting Submissions

  2025-06-30

  Named after Dr. Alixa Naff, a pioneer of Arab American history, the  Alixa Naff Migration Studies Prize recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of Middle East and North African migrations and diasporas. Two awards will be given. The first prize, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to an established scholar. The second prize, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to a graduate student.

  1. Established Scholars: Articles or books published between June 1, 2024, and May 30, 2025, are eligible for consideration for the 2025 prize and may be submitted by the author or the publisher. A committee of migration scholars representing diverse disciplines will select the winning article or book.
  2. Graduate Students: Papers authored between June 1, 2024, and May 30, 2025, are eligible for consideration for the 2024 prize and may be submitted by the author. A committee of migration scholars representing diverse disciplines will select the winning paper. The paper will subsequently be published in Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies.

  Send a PDF copy of the article/essay, or book to: akhater@ncsu.edu. 

  Applicants must verify the date of actual publication for eligibility. ONE entry per scholar or publisher is allowed annually. Essays written in part or in whole in a language other than English must be accompanied by English translations. 

  Submissions are now open through September 26, 2025.

  https://lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/explore/awards/alixa-naff-prize/

• Job Posting: The Akram Khater Distinguished Professorship in Arab Migration Studies, North Carolina State University

  2025-05-27

  The Department of History and the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University invite applications to fill the Akram Khater Distinguished Professorship in Arab Migration Studies. We invite applicants for a tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor in the history of Arab Migration, Mobility and Diaspora, beginning August 2026.
  
  We seek to identify a candidate who has strong promise as a scholar and teacher and whose research engages with a period from the 19th century to the present on topics related to Arab mobilities and diasporas. The geographies of the research can be located anywhere between the Middle East and North Africa and their diasporas in the world. Candidates who can contribute to ongoing conversations about topics of contemporary historical concern are particularly encouraged to apply. Native or near native fluency in Arabic is strongly desired.
  
  This will be a joint appointment position with 51% of the FTE within History, and the other 49% at the Khayrallah Center. The successful candidate will work with the director of the Khayrallah Center on various projects and outreach efforts. They will also teach introductory survey courses and upper-level courses in their areas of expertise and share in the teaching of core courses in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum within the Department of History. The successful candidate may supervise undergraduate honors theses and MA theses in the history of modern Middle East and its diasporas; work with MA and PhD students in the department’s Public History program; and/or contribute to innovative digital work that is one of the department’s strengths.
  
  The successful candidate will join a History Department whose faculty share a deep commitment not only to outstanding scholarship but also to rigorous, innovative classroom instruction and public-facing projects. All faculty engage in teaching, research, and service. The successful candidate will also work at an internationally prominent center dedicated to the preservation and sharing of the history of Arab immigrants and their diasporas. They will work on various public history projects including documentaries, digital humanities, and exhibits.
  
  Interested applicants can apply here: https://jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/218338

• Transformative Gift Endows Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Archive

  2025-04-21

  The North Carolina State University College of Humanities and Social Sciences has received a $2 million gift to expand the resources of the Khayrallah Center archive, deepening its global impact on scholarship and community engagement. This gift strengthens the Khayrallah Center and its pioneering mission to document and preserve the history of Lebanese immigrants worldwide and creatively share their stories through innovative technologies and award-winning projects.

  In a heartfelt display of generosity, Jimmy Nassour and Dina Tebcherany, MD, donated the gift to endow the archive and name it as the Hoda Z. Nassour and Herbert R. Nassour Jr., MD, Archive of Lebanese Diaspora, in honor of Nassour’s late parents.

  Read the full article on the NCSU Humanities and Social Sciences News.

• Establishment of the Akram Khater Distinguished Professorship in Arab Migration Studies

  2025-01-31

  The College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS) at North Carolina State University recently received a generous gift from an anonymous donor to establish the Akram Khater Distinguished Professorship in Arab Migration Studies. It will support the work of a professor of any rank in Arab migration studies within the Department of History who will also serve in the college’s Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, which is dedicated to researching Lebanese immigrants and sharing that knowledge with the scholarly community.

  Read the full announcement via the link: https://chass.ncsu.edu/news/2025/01/30/gift-establishes-akram-khater-distinguished-professorship-in-arab-migration-studies/

• External CFP: Druze in the Levant and the Diaspora - Discourses of Tradition and Modernity

  2025-01-13

  With its rich historical heritage and unique religious identity, the Druze community has maintained a distinct presence in the Levant and across various diaspora communities. As the world rapidly 'transforms', the Druze have navigated the delicate balance between preserving traditional values and embracing change. This conference seeks to explore the diverse experiences of the Druze in both the Levant and the diaspora, focusing on the interplay between tradition and (late) modernity.

  For this purpose, the Druze Studies Journal (https://journals.ku.edu/druze) and the Druze Studies Project at the University of Kansas (https://druze.ku.edu/) will be holding a hybrid bi-lingual event: “2025 Interdisciplinary Conference: Druze in the Levant and the Diaspora - Discourses of Tradition and Modernity,” on 16-17 October 2025. The conference will include online and in-person panels of original research on the Druze. It will also feature roundtables of experts in the Druze Studies. Arab Art and cultural offerings will be available in person (more details will be announced later).

  Active participants and the audience will be invited to attend in person in Lawrence (USA), Kansas, or over the conference Zoom webinar.

  We invite scholars from various disciplines to submit original and unpublished papers that focus on the Druze as a whole, a specific Druze community or communities, or a comparison between the Druze and others. Presentations can be from a discipline-specific approach or those who employ an interdisciplinary approach.

  Papers will explore various topics, including but not limited to the following topics:

  • Druze History and Historiography: Studies that delve into landmark events, developments, and figures in Druze history and interpret Druze history in various periods and regions, analyzing how historiographical methods have influenced our understanding of their past.
  • Historical Evolution and Identity: Examine the Druze community's historical development in the Levant, uncovering change and continuity in defining and practicing their identity and focusing on how their unique history has shaped their identity in their homeland and the diaspora.
  • Society and Ethos: An exploration of Druze customs, collective behaviors, and social norms, including religious practices that define the community's ethos.
  • Cultural Adaptation in the Diaspora: Research on how Arab Druze communities adapt to new environments while maintaining their cultural and religious identity, both in their home countries and abroad.
  • Education and Knowledge Transmission: Insights into the coexistence of traditional knowledge systems within the family and modern education within Druze communities, highlighting the ways in which knowledge is preserved and passed on to future generations.
  • Political Participation and Integration: Analyses of the political engagement and integration of Druze communities in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and the diaspora, exploring their roles in various political systems, international relations, geopolitics, and impact on broader societal dynamics.
  • Comparative Studies: Comparative analyses of the Druze experience across different countries or regions, examining similarities and differences in cultural, social, and political contexts.
  • Literature, Art, and Performing Arts: Investigations into how literature, visual arts, or performing arts reflect and shape Arab Druze cultural identity, emphasizing the community's creative expressions.
  • Family, Social Change, and Intergenerational Dynamics: Studies exploring the tensions and synergies within Druze families, the impact of social change, and the relationships between older and younger generations in preserving traditions in a modern context.

  Submission Guidelines:

  • Abstract Submission: Interested participants should submit an abstract of no more than 350 words by 28 February 2025. The abstract should clearly outline the research question, methodology, and anticipated findings.
  • Papers must be original and unpublished (recently published articles in 2025 will be accepted)
  • We encourage submissions from established scholars in the field, with institutional affiliation or independent scholars, and emerging scholars (including doctoral students). An exceptional master’s thesis can be considered with a letter of recommendation from the student’s advisor.
  • Panels and papers can be in English or Arabic. Live interpretation will be provided for some panels: English to Arabic / Arabic to English.
  • Full Paper Submission: Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a complete draft by 31 August 2025.
  • Presentation Format: Accepted papers will be presented in panel sessions, followed by a Q&A discussion. Each presentation should not exceed 20 minutes.

  Important Dates:

  • Abstract Submission Deadline: 28 February 2025
  • Notification of Acceptance: 30 April 2025
  • Full Paper Submission Deadline: 31 August 2025
  • Conference Date: 16-17 October 2025

  Submission Process:

  • Please submit your abstracts here https://kusurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6r0AWPSBvezCSkS .
  • Organized panels can be submitted here https://kusurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_26lZARvgQieHnQG . They must include 3 or 4 presenters.
  • For any inquiries regarding the conference, please get in touch with Prof. Rami Zeedan at rzeedan@ku.edu or the DSJ editorial office at druzestudies@ku.edu

• External CFP: "Global Shi’ism: Migrations, Diasporas and the Islamic Revival in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries"

  2024-10-28

  Call for Papers: Global Shi’ism: Migrations, Diasporas and the Islamic Revival in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

  A Workshop

  Dates: Thursday 3 to Friday 4 April 2025

  Location: University of Oxford

  Convenor: Dr. Christopher Cooper-Davies, Faculty of History, University of Oxford

  Call for Papers Deadline: 31 October 2024 (Please send a 400-word abstract and CV to movingstories@history.ox.ac.uk)

  This workshop explores Shi’ism and Muslim confessionalization from a global historical perspective, with a special focus on migrations and connections across borders and continents. Its main objective is to flip the central dichotomy at the heart of work on global trends in Islam to date: rather than asking how Shi’i communities globally have been influenced and shaped by religious, political and intellectual developments occurring in the Shi’i heartlands of Iran and southern Iraq, it seeks to understand how processes of Shi’i sect-formation and modern trends in Shi’ism – intellectual, cultural, political and theological – have been shaped by the reality and perception of a global Shi’i public, stretching across the Middle East, Iran and South Asia, but also in Africa, Europe, North America and South America.

  The early modern transnational connections which enabled the formation and coherence of the Shi’i world stretch from India, through Iran and on to southern Iraq, Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula. The scholars, merchants and pilgrims sustaining these connections were highly mobile, multi-lingual trans-national actors. But from at least the beginning of the twentieth century, these well-established trans-regional connections were complemented by new migratory pathways, across and between colonial empires and into the new worlds of North and South America.

  Migration to Europe, the Americas and East and West Africa posed challenges and opportunities for Muslim migrants from the Middle East and South Asia, as they struggled to assert their Islamic identity in majority Christian societies. While intra-Islamic confessional identity was often tempered by the homogenizing experience of migration, it was not long before transnational Shi’i identities, institutions and networks crystallized, undergirding what might be called global Shi’ism today. The central concern of this workshop is to interrogate this transformation.

  Organized under the umbrella of the ERC-funded Moving Stories project at the University of Oxford, the workshop will sit at the intersection of histories of movement, migration, religious-political thought and sect-formation. It will situate stories of diaspora, displacement and integration within the broader history of mid-twentieth century Shi’i revivalism and reform.

  Modern trends in Shi’ism are conceived as processes of communal identity formation, mass conversion, politicisation and institutionalisation. Often denoted with the controversial epithets ‘sectarianism’ or ‘sectarianisation’, these interlinked phenomena provide a framework for differentiating Shi’i religious cultures of the pre-modern era from those emerging since the nineteenth century. Yet while a rich literature exists on the tomes and journals which propagated modern Shi’i intellectual production, such work is generally siloed from the parallel historical phenomenon of mass migration in the global Middle East.

  With these issues in mind, the workshop seeks to answer the following broad questions: what human, cultural and intellectual connections were sustained between the diverse localities to which Muslims migrated in the nineteenth and twentieth century and the Shi’i heartlands of Lebanon, Southern Iraq and Iran? What similarities and differences can we discern about the historical development of Shi’ism and intra-Islamic relations in each context? What methodological difficulties do we confront as historians trying to piece together the patchwork of global Shi’ism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? To what extent can we frame Shi’i modernist thought as a global discourse? How does this approach help us to understand processes of politicization and the development of Shi’i Islamist politics? Where does Shi’ism fit in within the emergent unruly discipline of global intellectual history?

  We welcome 400-word abstracts on the following broad topics:

  - The history of Shi’i diasporas, communities and traditions in North America, South America, Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and beyond.
  - Global approaches to the study of Shi’i intellectual and political thought.
  - Micro-histories of mobile Shi’is in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
  - Shi’ism and geopolitics before 1979.
  - Shi’i institution building between the Middle East and the Mahjar.
  - Comparative Approaches to Shi’i and non-Shi’i sect-formation and sectarianism in global perspectives.
  - Methodological work on the challenges of writing a global history of Shi’ism in the mid-twentieth century.

  The workshop will take place over two days on Thursday and Friday 3 and 4 April 2025 and will include 15-minute presentations from all the participants, followed by a 45-minute discussion. Participants will be required to submit a c. 5,000–8,000-word paper by 28 February 2025 for circulation among the participants. The bulk of the session will be dedicated to discussion of the pre-circulated papers, which means all participants will have to attend having read all the papers. It is our ambition to collate these contributions into a special journal issue or edited volume.

  We will be able to provide a contribution to travel costs to and from Oxford for the participants, as well as accommodation for two or three nights. Those participants with access to funding from their home institutions will be asked to contribute towards their travel costs in order to enable the participation of early career researchers.

  If you would be interested in participating, please send a single PDF file containing a 400-word abstract and CV to movingstories@history.ox.ac.uk by 31 October 2024.

  Please direct any questions to the workshop convenor, Dr. Christopher Cooper-Davies, at christopher.cooper-davies@history.ox.ac.uk

• CFP: "Marriage and Migrations: Emerging Perspectives on Conjugal Relationships in the Middle East and North Africa"

  2024-09-16

  Call For Papers:
  Marriage and Migrations: Emerging Perspectives on Conjugal Relationships in the Middle East and North Africa

  Migration has long been a prominent feature of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, characterized by a wide range of mobilities. Historically, this phenomenon includes trade migrations such as those along the cross-Sahara trade routes and the Silk Road, as well as movements related to Ottoman expansion, European colonialism, and decolonization. In more recent times, other events and circumstances have driven significant migration in the region including the creation of the state of Israel in 1948; irregular cross-Sahara migration; student migration to diverse MENA countries; labor migration to the Gulf countries; and substantial forced migrations propelled by conflicts within the MENA region in the twenty-first century—such as those in Syria, Libya, and Yemen—as well as in neighboring regions like the Horn of Africa and South Asia.

  Different types of migration bring significant challenges across various levels—socio-economic, political, and cultural. While it is believed that migration impacts existing family structures and gender roles defined by the religious and cultural norms of both the newcomers and their host societies, the full extent of these effects is not yet well understood.

  This special issue seeks to examine how different forms of mobility shape understandings of family structures and relationships within historical and contemporary religious and socio-economic contexts. Different to other studies on marriage and (forced) migration, this themed issue will: a) link two currently distinct MENA research areas together: women in Islam and migration studies; and b) consider issues such as family, sexuality, love, law, and citizenship through new perspectives beyond religious and gender essentialism and neo-orientalist stereotypes.

  Although there is a growing body of research on gender, marriage, and sexuality in the MENA region that covers both historical and contemporary perspectives as well legislative and judicial approaches to Islamic family law, most studies have focused predominantly on the experiences of female Muslim citizens. As a result, the perspectives of males, non-Muslims, and non-citizens remain underexplored, leaving a gap in understanding how significant migratory flows contribute to the emergence of new norms and practices regarding conjugal relationships in a region where religion plays an important role in the formal and informal regulation of marriage. Similarly, in migration studies, the focus has largely centered on outgoing MENA migration, with less attention paid to incoming and intra-MENA migration. Additionally, existing research tends to focus on irregular migration, consequently overlooking other significant forms of migration, such as student, marriage, and labor migration.

  This themed issue aims to examine possible changes in marriage and other related questions within the following interlinked levels:

  1. as defined and renegotiated within Muslim legal traditions and cultural norms and values which have been the sources of authority in regard to determining gender rights, duties, and relations;
  2. as laid out through legal and political frameworks with their local, transnational, and historical particularities;
  3. as described and practiced by people themselves through memories, oral narratives, and representations of their lived experiences, with a focus on people from both the Global North and Global South.

  We invite article proposals from various academic disciplines and fields (such as Anthropology, Law, Sociology, Religious Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies, Gender Studies, Management and Organizational Studies etc.) with diverse theoretical perspectives. We intend to bring together researchers whose work is grounded in solid empirical research in relation to broader societal developments. We are, however, also interested in conceptual and methodological discussions on marriage and migration within the MENA region. We, therefore, welcome submissions discussing a variety of research approaches and unconventional research methods in gender and migration studies such as art, film, theatre, music, and new technologies.

  We invite consideration of questions which may include some of the following:

  • What are the national legal and religious provisions regulating marriage and divorce practices of migrants? How are they dealing with lived realities of migrants, such as lack of documentations, non-presence and non-response of spouses, and the challenges in operating transnationally with the legal and political systems in the migrants’ home countries?
  • How are migrants, through their marriage and other family practices, negotiating, challenging, or redefining the socio-religious and legal frameworks governing marital affairs in their countries of residence?
  • What is the role of (national and transnational) religious institutions and/or new religious actors in changing the public perception of normative marriage practices within and among host and migrant communities?
  • What roles do local, national and international humanitarian aid agencies play in changing migrants’ and host societies’ understandings of matrimonial norms, including interpretations of spousal rights and roles and the notion of guardianship?
  • How have religious, state and human rights actors alike sought to approach and resolve problems arising from unregistered (religious) marriages, including marriages with minors, stipulations of divorce, and issues of custody and inheritance?

  Submission

  To be considered for this special issue, interested authors should submit a 300-word abstract via Mashriq & Mahjar’s submission portal. Authors may wish to consult the journal’s guidelines for writing effective abstracts. Abstract submissions are due November 22, 2024.

  Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit papers of 8,000–10,000 words, excluding endnotes, by March 15, 2025. Please note that our journal uses Turabian citation style.

  Questions may be directed to the journal’s managing editor at mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

  This special issue is part of:

  1. The British Academy funded project: Negotiating Relationships and Redefining Traditions: Syrian and Iraqi Women Refugees in Jordan which was based at the University of Birmingham (UK). For further information on the project, contact Yafa Shanneik (PI), email: yafa.shanneik@ctr.lu.se
  2. The Dutch Research Council funded project: Living on the Other Side: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Migration and Family Law in Morocco based at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society, Leiden University (the Netherlands). For further information on the project, contact Nadia Sonneveld (PI), email: n.sonneveld@law.leidenuniv.nl

• External: Research Associate: “Religion, Identity and Migration in the Global Middle East, 1850-1940” (The Moving Stories Project)

  2024-07-15

  We are pleased to share the announcement for the posting of Research Associate: “Religion, Identity and Migration in the Global Middle East, 1850-1940” (The Moving Stories Project) at the University of Oxford

  The Role

  Middle Eastern migration was a phenomenon with global horizons, but it was also a reality that was experienced locally in different ways at the level of individual lives. This role provides early career researchers with an opportunity to conduct and publish groundbreaking research as part of a larger research team based at Oxford.

  The responsibilities of the Research Associate fall under three main areas: 

  • In consultation with the PI, the Research Associate will devise a feasible, specific project that will lead to the publication of a set of articles and/or a monograph related to the general objectives of the Moving Stories Project.
  • The Research Associate will contribute to the team’s collective work of preparation and publication of the project Sourcebook.  This will involve the preparation of specific entries on sources as well as the chance to contribute an individually-authored essay to the book’s introduction.
  • The Research Associate will collaborate with other members of the team, particularly in the review and analysis of Arabic sources, for inclusion in project publications. 

  About you

  You will hold a relevant PhD/DPhil, or evidence that a doctorate is close to completion, together with relevant experience, and will possess sufficient specialist and linguistic knowledge in the discipline to contribute research to the main questions of the project, in particular written Arabic. You will have sufficient historical and disciplinary knowledge to contribute relevant individually-authored publications in line with the project objectives and excellent communication skills

  Application process

  For an informal discussion about this opportunity or if you have any questions, please contact Professor John-Paul Ghobrial at john-paul.ghobrial@history.ox.ac.uk. All practical and procedural queries should be sent to our recruitments team: recruitments@history.ox.ac.uk. All enquiries will be treated in strict confidence; they will not form part of the selection decision.

  As part of the online application process, you should provide a supporting statement setting out how you meet the selection criteria, a curriculum vitae and a statement of proposed research, with the names and contact details of two referees. Please see the How to apply section of the job description for more details.

  Only applications submitted online and received before noon Monday 29^th July 2024 will be considered.

  Apply via the link: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DIO548/research-associate-religion-identity-and-migration-in-the-global-middle-east-1850-1940-the-moving-stories-project

• External CFP: "Diaspora as a (Re)Source: Interactions and Interdependencies between Arab Diaspora Communities in Latin America and their Communities/Countries of Origin"

  2024-07-08

  This workshop sets out to explore interactions and interdependencies between Arab diasporas in Latin America and Middle Eastern communities on the personal, political, social, economic, and cultural level, with a focus on the time period from the 1940s to the 2020s. We are especially interested in investigating how these various kinds of entanglements have been influencing and shaping Middle Eastern communities and countries and how diaspora communities function as a catalyst or as (re)sources for political, socioeconomic, and cultural transformations in the Arab world.

  Diaspora as a (Re)Source. Interactions and Interdependencies between Arab Diaspora Communities in Latin America and their Communities/Countries of Origin

  Context
  Latin American countries and especially the Arab diaspora communities in these countries are an important political, socioeconomic, and cultural resource for Arab communities in the Levant and the wider Middle East. In recent months, the world has been reminded of this by the numerous Latin American expressions of solidarity with Gaza. Similarly, during the past few years, Arab diaspora communities have rallied to support Syrian refugees and economically drained Lebanese communities. These acts of solidarity are not singular in nature, but are part and parcel of long-lasting and deep-rooted ties between Middle Eastern and Latin American communities.

  The ties between these two world regions go back to the late nineteenth century, the era of worldwide labor migration to the Americas. Impoverished Arabs, predominantly Christians but also Druze, Alawis, and Sunni Muslims from the Levant, migrated to the Americas, especially drawn to Latin America. During the 1920s and 1930s, they were joined by a second wave of migrants dominated by intellectuals fleeing from oppression and censorship. Today, particularly Argentina and Brazil, as well as some smaller Latin American countries, are home to huge Levantine Arab communities who have great influence on political, socioeconomic, and cultural developments in both their “new” and “old” home countries.

  The ways diaspora communities have influenced and continue to influence their Arab communities or countries of origin are varied and manifold. For instance, politicians try to rally diaspora communities to affect election outcomes at home or international politics pertaining to developments in the Middle East, while Arab intellectuals in the diaspora frequently make decisive contributions to discourses in the region. The economic solidarity of diaspora communities has often played a significant role in softening the hardship of economic crises for specific communities and villages, and mahǧar (diaspora) literature and diaspora film productions have profoundly influenced the Arab cultural scene. Furthermore, sociocultural practices like St. Mary’s shrines, Salsa music, and first and foremost Mate tea consumption enjoy immense popularity in Arab countries, especially the Levant.

  Existing Research
  The past few decades have seen increased scholarly interest in Middle Eastern migration studies in general and Arab diaspora communities in Latin America in particular. This interest was primarily kindled and stoked by the works by Akram Khater, Reem Bailony, Lily Pearly Ballofet, Stacy D. Fahrenthold, and John Tofik Karam as well as the Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies, which is edited by Fahrenthold and Khater and published by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies. Additionally, individual studies, for example by Ottmar Ette and Frederike Pannewick, have highlighted literary entanglements between the Americas and the Middle East. Most of the existing studies, however, pertain to one of these three areas of research: connections between diaspora communities and their home countries during the first decades of the migration movement (i.e., the late nineteenth and early twentieth century up the 1940s), the significance of diaspora literature for Arab language literature, and diaspora communities within the context of their “new” home countries. Significantly less has been published on the interactions and interdependencies between Arab diaspora communities in Latin America and their communities/countries of origin during later decades of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.

  Workshop Design
  Keynote Speaker: Prof. Dr. Lily Pearl Ballofet (UC Santa Cruz)

  This workshop sets out to explore these interactions and interdependencies on the personal, political, social, economic, and cultural level, with a focus on the time period from the 1940s to the 2020s. We are especially interested in investigating how these various kinds of entanglements have been influencing and shaping Middle Eastern communities and countries and how diaspora communities function as a catalyst or as (re)sources for political, socioeconomic, and cultural transformations in the Arab world.

  Possible research topics and questions include but are not limited to:

  - Latin American Arab diasporas as a resource in times of political and economic crises,
  - Latin American Arab diasporas as advocates of Arab interests within international politics,
  - Economic entanglements and trade connections between Latin America and the Middle East,
  - Intellectual and cultural transfers between Latin America and the Middle East, and
  - Cold War solidarities and Peronism’s influence on Nasserism

  In the course of the workshop, we would also like to discuss the specifics of research on Arab diasporas in Latin America and their entanglements with their respective communities and countries of origin. In how far does this research relate to diaspora studies in general and in how far can it open up new avenues of investigation and/or contribute to existing research on a theoretical and methodological level?
  This workshop is designed as an exploratory workshop and intends to bring together scholars who want to further research on Latin American–Middle Eastern entanglements. The workshop is also designed as a first step in a longer process and therefore primarily serves to set the stage for future empirical and theoretical research by shaping the research parameters and developing methodological approaches appropriate for investigating Latin American–Middle Eastern entanglements.

  Application and Funding
  If you are interested in participating in our workshop, please send a short abstract (250–350 words) and a short biography (max. 100 words) to Katrin.koester@uni-leipzig.de by 1 August 2024. Early career scholars are especially invited to apply.

  Participants are expected to attend the entire workshop (either online or in person) and give a 20-minute presentation on a research topic related to the themes of the workshop. Presentations in English, Arabic, and Spanish are welcome, but we kindly ask you to provide an English abstract.

  Limited funding is available for this workshop. We will organize accommodation at a nearby hotel for the participants for the duration of the workshop and will cover transportation costs as far as possible. Please indicate in your application whether you want to participate online or in person and, in the latter case, from where you will be traveling to Leipzig. This will not have any effect on the selection process but will facilitate the workshop logistics.

  https://www.connections.clio-online.net/event/id/event-144944 

• Dr. Ella Fratantuono Appointed as Co-Editor for Mashriq & Mahjar

  2024-06-13

  Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Ella Fratantuono as the journal’s new co-editor. The appointment is effective immediately.

  Ella Fratantuono is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research and teaching focus on the Ottoman Empire, the Modern Middle East, state-building, migration, and genocide. Her recently published book, Governing Migration in the Late Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), traces the emergence and development of a modern Ottoman migration regime during the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century global era of mass migration. Her work has appeared in venues including the Journal of Genocide Research, Border Criminologies, and History Compass.

  Fratantuono has served as a member of the Mashriq & Mahjar editorial board for many years. Most recently, she co-edited a special issue for the journal, “Children and Youth Migrants in Middle East and North African History,” which began publication in June 2024. Fratantuono has been instrumental in ensuring the journal’s upstanding scholarship and continued growth, and we are privileged to benefit from her continued guidance and expertise. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Fratantuono!

• External CFP: Open Panel for Urban History of Mobility in the MENA Region: Migrations, Ecologies, Spaces, Temporalities

  2024-04-24

  OPEN PANEL: Urban History of Mobility in the MENA Region: Migrations, Ecologies, Spaces, Temporalities (XIX-XXI)

  Gabriele Montalbano and Lucia Carminati have organized this open panel for the Conference of the Italian Society for the Study of the Middle East (SeSaMO), titled "Crossings and contaminations. Practices, languages and politics in transit in the Middle East and North Africa," to be held at the University of Cagliari, October 3–5, 2024. 

  The panel description can be found here: https://www.sesamoitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/8.-Carminati-Montalbano-_-Open-Panel.pdf

  Consider joining & spreading the word! Submission is open until May 7, 2024. 

  Reach out to Gabriele Montalbano at gabriele.montalbano2@unibo.it and lucia.carminati@iakh.uio.no if interested.

• External CFP: "Religion, Race, and Concepts of Difference in the Modern Middle East" Workshop

  2024-03-07

  It has been said that “religion” is to the Middle East what “race” is to North America, and this in at least two senses. On the one hand, religion in the Middle East, some suggest, has less to do with belief—a conception often associated with Protestantism—and more to do with community, family, descent, and the like. It is said to involve, that is, a degree of givenness or immutability that approaches what one might associate more with kinds of ethnic or racial belonging in another context. Others have suggested that religion and race comprise, respectively, the most intransigent units of social differentiation across these two regions, with Ussama Makdisi recently arguing that racism in North America is structurally analogous to sectarianism in the Middle East. These phenomena, on this view, reflect how a formally similar social antagonism has taken particular shapes in historically distinct societies.

  There are yet others who reject the analogy out of hand. To some, the category of race is not merely applicable to the study of Middle Eastern histories and societies but in fact constitutes an urgent analytical framework for it—this in light of the forms of racialized violence that continue to structure the contemporary Middle East and global modernity at large. Race, from this perspective, is not an essentially foreign category relative to the supposedly more indigenous “religion” but rather an equally germane and local category of analysis. To others, the rising popularity of inquiries into race in the Middle East represents an imposition of a category particular to the experience of the Atlantic world onto a region to which that category is foreign—simply the latest instance of the perennial problem of the hegemony of Euro-American terms and frameworks.

  Part of an ERC-funded project on “Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East,” this workshop—to be held in Oxford in June 2024—aims to engage such debates through a collection of papers and discussions on religion, race, and concepts of difference in the late Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East. The intent is not to resolve the associated questions but to consider a central problem that undergirds them: the problem of the terms that scholars bring to bear on questions of belonging, relationality, and difference in the Middle East. What is sometimes missed in this regard is that the issue of categories of difference is not merely a methodological question to be debated within contemporary scholarship but a question internal to the modern history of the Middle East itself. As the late Ottoman Empire transformed under the dual pressures of European imperialism and defensive modernization, the “old Ottoman order” and the classificatory practices correlative to it began to give way to new modes of organizing society and conceiving difference. What had been a stratified imperial society organized under the authority of a divinely sanctioned sovereign was reordered around concepts like “nation,” “ethnicity,” “society,” as well as indeed “race.” These processes carried great consequences for gender, subjectivity, intercommunal relations, and much else in the post-Ottoman Middle East in ways that scholars continue to contemplate.

  The present workshop seeks to continue this work by bringing together a small group of scholars interested in reconsidering the modernist narratives that remain hegemonic in the study of difference in the modern Middle East. Notable in this respect is the idea that the essential mode of belonging in the pre-modern Ottoman Middle East was “religion” before its halting displacement, or reconfiguration, by the racially infused ideas of “nation” and “ethnicity,” in addition of course to “race” itself. This narrative reinforces the idea that religion, as compared to race, is more indigenous to Middle Eastern societies. Yet as inquiries into secularism and the secular over the past two decades have suggested, the concept of “religion” may be as much the product of European colonial modernity as is that of “race,” and hence any straightforward narrative of the former’s displacement by the latter must be met with some degree of skepticism. Could it be that the categories of race and religion, rather than nominating distinct phenomena, are in fact epiphenomenal to some deeper historical process or lifeworld that has reordered the modern Middle East, be that identified as modernity, capitalism, the secular, or otherwise?

  Funded by the European Research Council, this workshop proposes to untangle the foregoing concerns by attending to the problem of religion, race, and concepts of difference in the modern Middle East. What will bring the papers together is not necessarily an interest in “race” and “religion” as such but more so the question of concepts of difference raised by these two essential terms in scholarship on the Middle East. Proposals from across disciplinary perspectives are welcome, but we are especially interested in contributions that engage with the history of concepts of difference across the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman Middle East. Examples of possible topics include but are not at all limited to:

  - The transformation (or persistence) of concepts of difference rooted in terms like the Arabic jins, the Turkish millet, and so forth.
  - The colonial racialization of Islam, Judaism, Eastern Christianity, and other traditions.
  - Theoretical reflections on the relationship between race and religion in Middle Eastern contexts.
  - The relationship between the classificatory practices of the late-Ottoman state, or the nation-states that emerged after its collapse, and the subjectivities of the peoples over whom they have ruled.
  - The historical experience of communities from the Middle East as they encountered new concepts of difference upon migration to regions like North America.
  - Anthropological considerations of modes of belonging in Middle Eastern contexts in relation to the categories of European social science.

  Participants will be expected to pre-circulate papers of approximately 4,000–5,000 words, due by June 1, 2024. Each paper will be the focus of collective, seminar-style discussions over a two-day workshop, which will also bring together a wider set of colleagues working in Oxford. It is intended that these papers will be the basis for the publication of a collection of journal-length articles as part of a special issue on race, religion, and difference in the Middle East. Further details of publication will follow to participants.

  To apply:

  Proposals should include the following:

  1. A brief (one-page max) statement of interest in the subject of the workshop;
  2. A title and abstract of no more than 250 words for the proposed paper; and
  3. A copy of your CV

  Please send all the above as a single PDF file to the following address: movingstories@history.ox.ac.uk

  **The deadline for all proposals is March 7, 2024**

  All proposals will be reviewed by a small committee, and participants will be invited shortly thereafter.

  Travel and accommodation:

  At least two nights’ accommodation in Oxford will be provided for all participants. Travel expenses will be covered up to a limit, with preference given to early career researchers.

  Please direct questions to:

  Dr. Henry Clements
  Research Associate, “Moving Stories: Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East” ERC-funded project
  Junior Research Fellow, Jesus College
  Faculty of History, Oxford University
  (henry.clements@history.ox.ac.uk)

• 2023 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies Recipients

  2024-02-13

  The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

  The annual prize recognizes outstanding scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on Middle East migrations, refugees, and diasporas. From a strong group of applicants, this year the selection committee awarded one prize and one honorable mention.

  The 2023 Alixa Naff Book Prize is awarded to Dr. Melissa Gatter for her book, Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp. Dr. Melissa Gatter is a Lecturer in Anthropology and International Development at the University of Sussex.

  The selection committee awarded Honorable Mention to Dr. Osman Balkan for his book, Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe. Dr. Osman Balkan is Associate Director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business at the University of Pennsylvania. 

  Read the full announcement on the Khayrallah Center website.

• Call For Papers: "Locating Palestine in the Arab Americas"

  2024-01-08

  Call for Papers: "Locating Palestine in the Arab Americas" Workshop
  September 13–16, 2024
  Khayrallah Center, North Carolina State University

  Palestinians have long conceived their liberation struggle as a transnational, anti-colonial movement that must necessarily build alliances with other marginalized and displaced peoples. The Americas – North, South and Central – constitute one of the key sites of this struggle, not least due to the existence of large Arab communities across the region. Despite this, we are still in the early stages of understanding how the Arab communities of the Americas have engaged with the Palestinian struggle and how, in turn, Palestinians have related to these communities. This workshop brings these interactions to the center stage, inviting participants to consider the various meanings Palestine has held for the Arab Americas.

  There are tens of millions of people across the Americas who identify in some way as Arab, forming important and varied voices in the region’s social and political landscape, from New York to Santiago de Chile. Historically, the Palestinian cause has mobilized and galvanized these populations in myriad ways, often serving as a unifying, community-building issue, while at other times creating cleavages and tensions. Within these communities, Palestinians themselves have played important roles as organizers, activists, artists, and political leaders.

  This workshop seeks to expand on existing conversations and open new ones on the importance of Palestine in the wider American mahjar (land of migration), inviting contributions from scholars, writers, and activists. We particularly encourage applications from those working in Spanish and Portuguese language contexts with the aim of placing Latin America and the Caribbean into closer dialogue with Anglophone North America.

  We welcome proposals that address the following broad questions:

  • How has the Palestinian struggle sought to build participation and alliances among the Arab communities of the Americas?
  • What meanings have the Arab communities of the Americas attributed to Palestine?
  • In what ways have Arab communities in the Americas related to the concepts of Palestine and Palestinian liberation, and how does this connect to other political and social struggles?
  • How has the Palestinian cause among Arab Americans intersected with gender, class and race?
  • How have movements of Palestinian solidarity sought to connect across national and regional borders in the Americas? What new strategies are emerging in the Americas for combatting anti-Palestinian repression and legislation?
  • What kinds of sources exist (historical and contemporary) to examine the importance of Palestine to Arab communities in the Americas? How and where should these sources be documented and recorded?

  This workshop is co-organized by The Middle East and North Africa Centre at the University of Sussex, the Centro de Estudios Árabes at the University of Chile, and the Khayrallah Center at North Carolina State University.

  The workshop will be held September 13–16, 2024, at the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. The organizers will cover the costs of housing and meals for participants during the conference and will be able to provide some support toward travel.

  Selected papers will be solicited for a special issue of the Khayrallah Center’s journal, Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North Africa Migration Studies. All fields of discussion will be considered, including (but not limited to): History, literature, visual arts, film, politics, anthropology, sociology, and geography. Likewise, works that explore interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives are welcome. A PDF of this announcement is available via this link.

  Click here to read this announcement in Arabic.

  Click here to read this announcement in Portuguese. 

  Click here to read this announcement in Spanish.

  Submission

  To be considered for this workshop and subsequent volume, we ask that interested authors submit a 300-word abstract via Mashriq & Mahjar’s submission portal. Authors may wish to consult the journal’s guidelines for writing effective abstracts. Abstract submissions are due April 1, 2024.

  Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit papers of 5,000–6,000 words by August 15, 2024.

  Abstract submissions, full-length papers and conference presentations will be accepted in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and English.

  Questions may be directed to the journal’s managing editor at mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

• EXTENDED ABSTRACT DEADLINE: "Middle East Migration Studies: Taking Stock, Plotting New Paths" Workshop

  2023-10-10

  In light of recent horrifying events, we have extended our workshop's abstract submission deadline to November 15, 2023. Thank you for your interest, and thank you for the work that you do.

  Original post included below.

  --------------

  Call for Papers: "Middle East Migration Studies: Taking Stock, Plotting New Paths" Workshop
  May 16–18, 2024
  Khayrallah Center, North Carolina State University

  Ten years ago, Mashriq & Mahjar’s first editorial began with a provocation to rethink the “markedly staid notions of space and place” that predominated in Middle East studies. Our field, the editorial argued, remained hamstrung by “a vision of the world as an aggregate of discrete bundles of land and people, hermetic units sealed off from one another and defined by their particularities” that echoed the geographic commitments of colonial and nationalist discourses. Such a vision foreclosed full consideration of the Middle East’s moving people—migrants, but also displaced persons, refugees, and nomads—whose histories remained hidden, obscured by a lack of scholarly interest in “migration and the worlds that migrants make.”

  A decade on, migration, borderlands, and refugee studies now represent mainstays of Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) studies, radically reshaping the field’s contours. If some scholars are driven by a desire to make sense of the complex effects of contemporary forced displacements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, others seek to understand past moments of mass movement that reshaped the demographics, political economy, and cultural history of the Levant, North Africa, and the Gulf. And as the field of MENA migration studies grows, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars in literary and cultural studies have striven to shed old tropes and ask new questions. Critiques of push/pull functionalism, respectability stereotypes, and the hazards of state-centrism represent just a few of the new plot points of this emerging theoretical terrain.

  This workshop seeks to take stock of these exciting developments and to consider their potential for the larger, interdisciplinary field of MENA studies, but also to begin to clear paths as yet untaken. We seek papers that offer critical reflection on the core debates and methodologies of MENA migration studies, that sketch out new agendas, and that open up new avenues for research.

  We welcome proposals that engage the field through one or more of the following themes:

  • Critical perspectives on race and migration
  • Critical perspectives on gender and migration
  • Migrant labor and its histories and presents: class, capitalism, and political economy
  • Migrants, refugees, and the state: law, policy, and border controls
  • Critical cartographies and mapping of movement
  • Borderlands and migration in the MENA and beyond
  • Queering migration studies
  • Interior lives, emotions and migration
  • Subaltern archives, informal archives, archival absences, and counter-archival politics

  The workshop will be held May 16–18, 2024 at the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. The organizers will cover all the costs of housing and meals for participants during the conference, and provide some support toward travel. Selected papers will be solicited for a multi-author collection that will offer a critical introduction to MENA migration studies of relevance not just to scholars but also to those engaged in study of mobility, forced displacement, borderlands, and transnational and global connections. We welcome applications from scholars at all stages of their career in history, anthropology, sociology, geography, literary studies, and other disciplines. We particularly welcome proposals from early-career applicants and scholars working in the Global South. 

  Submission

  To be considered for this workshop and subsequent volume, we ask that interested authors submit a 300-word abstract via Mashriq & Mahjar’s submission portal. Authors may wish to consult the journal’s guidelines for writing effective abstracts. Abstract submissions are due October 15, 2023.

  Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit papers of 5,000-6,000 words by March 31, 2024.

  Questions may be directed to the journal’s managing editor at mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

• The Arab American Labor Movement: A Digital Exhibit

  2023-09-05

  The Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is thrilled to announce the release of a six-part series on the Arab American Labor movement in the early 20th century. The digital exhibit reclaims these hidden stories by outlining their struggle to support their families through racial animosity, economic turmoil, and a quickly evolving industrial landscape.

   

  Developed by a team of NC State Graduate Students and Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies Director, Dr. Akram Khater, the project aims to disrupt mainstream American labor histories by highlighting the position of Arab American workers in United States history.

   

  The Arab American Labor Project is available as a free resource distributed by the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies (lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu). The digital exhibit will be released over the course of six-weeks beginning on September 4, 2023. The project is an evolving asset and will continue to grow. Educators, history enthusiasts, and anyone interested in the intersection of Lebanese migration and United States labor history are encouraged to download and utilize these materials.

• Call for Papers: "Middle East Migration Studies: Taking Stock, Plotting New Paths" Workshop

  2023-08-15

  Call for Papers: "Middle East Migration Studies: Taking Stock, Plotting New Paths" Workshop
  May 16–18, 2024
  Khayrallah Center, North Carolina State University

  Ten years ago, Mashriq & Mahjar’s first editorial began with a provocation to rethink the “markedly staid notions of space and place” that predominated in Middle East studies. Our field, the editorial argued, remained hamstrung by “a vision of the world as an aggregate of discrete bundles of land and people, hermetic units sealed off from one another and defined by their particularities” that echoed the geographic commitments of colonial and nationalist discourses. Such a vision foreclosed full consideration of the Middle East’s moving people—migrants, but also displaced persons, refugees, and nomads—whose histories remained hidden, obscured by a lack of scholarly interest in “migration and the worlds that migrants make.”

  A decade on, migration, borderlands, and refugee studies now represent mainstays of Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) studies, radically reshaping the field’s contours. If some scholars are driven by a desire to make sense of the complex effects of contemporary forced displacements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, others seek to understand past moments of mass movement that reshaped the demographics, political economy, and cultural history of the Levant, North Africa, and the Gulf. And as the field of MENA migration studies grows, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars in literary and cultural studies have striven to shed old tropes and ask new questions. Critiques of push/pull functionalism, respectability stereotypes, and the hazards of state-centrism represent just a few of the new plot points of this emerging theoretical terrain.

  This workshop seeks to take stock of these exciting developments and to consider their potential for the larger, interdisciplinary field of MENA studies, but also to begin to clear paths as yet untaken. We seek papers that offer critical reflection on the core debates and methodologies of MENA migration studies, that sketch out new agendas, and that open up new avenues for research.

  We welcome proposals that engage the field through one or more of the following themes:

  • Critical perspectives on race and migration
  • Critical perspectives on gender and migration
  • Migrant labor and its histories and presents: class, capitalism, and political economy
  • Migrants, refugees, and the state: law, policy, and border controls
  • Critical cartographies and mapping of movement
  • Borderlands and migration in the MENA and beyond
  • Queering migration studies
  • Interior lives, emotions and migration
  • Subaltern archives, informal archives, archival absences, and counter-archival politics

  The workshop will be held May 16–18, 2024 at the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. The organizers will cover all the costs of housing and meals for participants during the conference, and provide some support toward travel. Selected papers will be solicited for a multi-author collection that will offer a critical introduction to MENA migration studies of relevance not just to scholars but also to those engaged in study of mobility, forced displacement, borderlands, and transnational and global connections. We welcome applications from scholars at all stages of their career in history, anthropology, sociology, geography, literary studies, and other disciplines. We particularly welcome proposals from early-career applicants and scholars working in the Global South. 

  Submission

  To be considered for this workshop and subsequent volume, we ask that interested authors submit a 300-word abstract via Mashriq & Mahjar’s submission portal. Authors may wish to consult the journal’s guidelines for writing effective abstracts. Abstract submissions are due October 15, 2023.

  Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit papers of 5,000-6,000 words by March 31, 2024.

  Questions may be directed to the journal’s managing editor at mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

• Call for Submissions: Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies

  2023-05-30

  The Moise Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is accepting submissions for the 2023 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

  Named after Dr. Alixa Naff, a pioneer of Arab American history, the Alixa Naff Migration Studies Prize recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of Middle East and North African migrations and diasporas. Two awards will be given. The first prize, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to an established scholar. The second prize, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to a graduate student. Deadline for submission is September 29, 2023.

  For further details and information on how to apply, please visit https://lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/awards/scholarly.php.

• Call for Papers for Edited Collection

  2023-04-03

  Call for Papers for Edited Collection: Centering the Margins: Reimagining the field of Arab American Studies
  
  Description
  The field of Arab American Studies has produced cutting-edge research on various aspects of Arab American lives and experiences, yielding important insights into their intersections with nation, race, gender, sex, and generations. However, the stories and experiences of Arab Americans hailing from the Levant have been at the center of much scholarly attention in this field, with immigration to the United States from Greater Syria from the 1880s to the 1920s often standing in as its historical point of origin. What happens when voices and experiences that have occupied the margins of Arab American studies move to the center of intellectual conversation and research focus? What happens when we draw on multiple origins that converge and differ among many historical and cultural vectors?

  This edited collection proposes an answer by centering communities and experiences from the periphery in relationship to Arab American studies as a field. It further seeks to enhance connections with other fields beyond ethnic studies, including religious studies, gender studies, settler colonial, Indigenous studies, migration studies, and Black, Pacific, Asian, and Latinx studies. The collection’s objective to foreground underrepresented research in Arab American Studies does not only aim to counterbalance the over-emphasis on certain regions and topics in Arab American Studies but also to forge inroads between these sites.

  Here are a few possible inquiries for illustrative purposes: What changes about the narrative of Arab American studies if we begin with settler colonialism, and with the Middle Passage, and the lives of enslaved Muslim and Afro-Arab people? How do Arab American scholars decenter the US history and challenge US nationalism while recognizing the significance of Black, Arab, and Muslim American histories and connections? How does focusing on such underrepresented communities as Yemeni Americans or Somali Americans, among others, complicate narratives and meanings of struggle, advocacy, and solidarity?

  We hereby seek contributions within the humanities and social sciences to an edited volume addressing the marginalization of scholarship and communities in Arab American studies. As such, the volume invites essays that focus on under-represented communities such as Algerian, Djiboutian, Egyptian, Khaliji, Libyan, Iraqi, Mauritanian, Moroccan, Somali, Sudanese, Tunisian, and Yemeni Americans. We also welcome essays that reimagine the field of Arab American Studies in terms of relationalities, both to other communities and other areas of study. How does Arabness relate to Indian ocean cultures across Asia and Africa, engage with Latinx and indigenous communities, and/or intersect with religion? Works that draw on perspectives from critical race, feminist, diasporic, disability, post-colonial, queer, and transnational studies, among other perspectives, are welcome.

  By including marginalized perspectives to bear on Arab American studies, this volume does not aim to discredit scholarship at the center of the field or necessarily render it to the margins. This is rather an intellectual exercise with the hope of forging a space for fresh insights into the field and charting new pathways for further research and collaboration. This pursuit aspires to open the door for new ways of thinking, pursuing, and even positioning meanings of Arab America in multi-layered and varied analyses.

  Submission
  To be considered for this volume, we kindly request you to submit a 300–400-word abstract that describes your project’s scope, argument, and methodology, along with your CV, no later than April 15, 2023. Please send your abstract and CV, or any inquiries you may have, to the volume’s co-editors, Dr. Waleed F. Mahdi (wfm@ou.edu) and Dr. Danielle Haque (danielle.haque@mnsu.edu). Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to contribute their essays later. The volume will be published in a university press.

• 2022 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies Recipients

  2022-12-05

  The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is delighted to announce the winners of the 2022 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

  The Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies recognizes outstanding scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on Middle East migrations, refugees, and diasporas. From a strong group of applicants, this year the selection committee awarded one prize and one honorable mention.

  The 2022 Alixa Naff Prize is awarded to Dr. Mari Toivanen for her book The Kobane Generation: Kurdish Diaspora Mobilising in France. Dr. Mari Toivanen works as Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland (2020–2025).

  The selection committee awarded Honorable Mention to Dr. Céline Regnard's book, En transit. Les Syriens à Beyrouth, Marseille, Le Havre, New York, 1880-1914. Dr. Regnard works in the TELEMMe research unit at the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l'Homme, the University of Aix-Marseille. You can watch an interview with Dr. Regnard here.

  Read the full announcement on the Khayrallah Center website.

• EXTENDED DEADLINE: Call for Papers: Children and Youth Migrants in Middle East and North African History

  2022-10-18

  Who are child and youth migrants? Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy classify migration as “any change of residence…that takes place outside of the space of a given community…whether it is temporary or permanent.”[1] This definition encompasses internal and international migration, family migration, labor migration, adoption, displacement, enslavement, trafficking, “child rescuing,” and participation in educational programs, philanthropic trips, or international competitions. Despite the range of migrations in which young people participate, a simple internet search for “children, migration, and Middle East” yields results almost exclusively associated with forced displacement. Certainly, children are represented disproportionately in displaced populations. Individuals under the age of 18 comprise nearly forty percent of the global refugee population, and one in three children living outside their country of birth are refugees.[2] Nevertheless, children have participated in migration within and outside MENA for a number of reasons and in a variety of conditions. Exclusive focus on displacement flattens the diversity of young migrants’ experiences, casts young MENA migrants primarily as victims, and contributes to the racialization of families and children in the history of their  journeys within and outside the MENA region.

  This special issue (with guest editors Dr. Ella Fratantuono and Dr. Lucia Carminati) thus seeks to juxtapose varied experiences of and perspectives on young people’s migration in the history of the Middle East and North Africa. We welcome contributions including, but not limited to, scholarly articles as well as works of visual and/or audio art and literature. Contributions may consider child and youth migration in regards to themes such as:

  • Changing meanings of “childhood” and “youth”
  • Intra-regional mobility
  • Kinship and the family
  • Migrant racialization
  • Border control and state-building
  • Child and youth activism
  • Methodologies in migration studies
  • The making of social categories (e.g. citizen, migrant, refugee)
  • Perspectives on agency, coercion, decision-making, and mobility
  • Effects of migration for children and youth
  • The creation and maintenance of global, regional, and local systems of inequality
  • NGO or humanitarian work centered on children and youth
  • The circulation of children’s and youth’s belongings and objects
  • Regional and global circulation of pedagogical ideas

  Abstracts (~500 words) for scholarly articles and descriptions of other materials should be submitted in MS word format. All contributions should be submitted to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu by January 15, 2023. Please direct any inquiries about the special issue to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

  _________

  [1] Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy, “Child Migration in Africa: Key Issues and New Perspectives,” in Children on the Move in Africa: Past and Present Experiences of Migration, Rodet and Razy, eds. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2016), 2.

  [2] https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-migration-and-displacement/displacement/ Last update: June 2022.

• Converstaion with Dr. Céline Regnard

  2022-09-19

  Interview with Dr. Céline Regnard (Aix-Marseille Université) about her latest book En Transit: Les Syriens à Beyrouth, Marseille, Le Havre, New York (1880-1914). 

• 2021 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies Recipients

  2022-01-27

  The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

  The Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies recognizes outstanding scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on Middle East migration, refugees and diasporas. This year the selection committee awarded three different prizes: one for a book by a scholar, one for a paper by a scholar, and one for the best graduate student paper.

  The 2021 Alixa Naff Book Prize is awarded to Dr. Devi Mays for her book Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora. Dr. Mays is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Michigan.

  This year the Khayrallah Center selection committee awarded the best paper prize to Dr. Amy Malek for her paper Clickbait orientalism and vintage Iranian snapshots (International Journal of Cultural Studies). Dr. Malek is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the College of Charleston.

  The 2021 Graduate Paper prize was awarded to China Sajadian, for her paper, The Drowned and the Displaced: Afterlives of Agrarian Developmentalism in Eastern Syria. Sajadian is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center and currently a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow. 

  Read the full announcement on the Khayrallah Center website.

• CFP for University of Oxford’s Migration and Mobility Network and Nuffield College's "Measuring Migration" Conference

  2022-01-17

  Mashriq & Mahjar is pleased to share the following Call for Papers for the "Measuring Migration" conference.

  The University of Oxford’s Migration and Mobility Network and Nuffield College invite academics, researchers, policy experts, activists, artists, practitioners, and other stakeholders to present original research during the conference “Measuring Migration” which will take place in person and online (hybrid model) on June 9–10, 2022 at Nuffield College (University of Oxford).

  This conference seeks to explore the idea of “measuring” migration, to the extent that is possible, using a variety of methods from interdisciplinary perspectives. The conference aims to explore the ethics and implications of what it means to track migratory flows, and discuss when this might be appropriate and why these data are helpful/harmful.

  Submissions are due by Feb. 15, 2022. Detailed information can be found on the MigrationOxford's event page.

• Conversation with Author Anna Reumert

  2021-09-28

  Mashriq & Mahjar has launched a series of conversations with authors published in the journal. The purpose of these conversations is to provide a more expansive look at the research that led to the publication, and the larger questions pursued by the author.
  
  Our first interview was with Anna Reumert, whose article, "Good Guys, Mad City: Etiquettes of Migration Among Sudanese Men in Beirut," was published in 2020. In this interview one of our co-editors, Akram Khater, spoke with Anna about her larger project about the intersection of race, gender and migration in the lives of Sudanese immigrants to Lebanon, and explored how her researsch is reshaping the way she is thinking about migration as part of the human experience. You can watch the interview here. Our next conversation will be on November 8 @ noon EST (US), with Benjamin Smith.

• Recording Available: Webinar on Publishing in Leading MENA-Focused Journals in the UK and US

  2021-03-18

  Mashriq & Mahjar editors Dr. Andrew Arsan and Dr. Akram Khater joined Dr. Lloyd Ridgeon, editor of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, in a Zoom webinar for an insightful conversation on academic publishing in the UK and US. This talk was hosted by the Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS). 

  A recording of the webinar is available for viewing.

  The webinar took place on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 1 p.m. EST. The event was been organized by Mashriq & Mahjar editorial board member Dr. Feras Alkabani, Co-Director of MENACS (Sussex), who also chaired the webinar. Additional information may be found on the BRISMES website. 

• Upcoming Virtual Event: Publishing in Leading MENA-Focused Journals in the UK and US

  2021-02-18

  Mashriq & Mahjar is delighted to participate in a joint talk hosted by the Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS). Mashriq & Mahjar editor Dr. Andrew Arsan will join Dr. Lloyd Ridgeon, editor of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, in a Zoom webinar for an insightful conversation on academic publishing in the UK and US.

  The webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 12 p.m. EST.

  Dr. Arsan and Dr. Ridgeon will share the history, aims and scopes of their journals, compare peer-reviewed publishing in the US and the UK, provide tips on submitting manuscripts, and take questions from the audience.

  This event would be particularly interesting to doctoral researchers and early-career academics looking to expand their research output.

  The event has been organized by Mashriq & Mahjar editorial board member Dr. Feras Alkabani, Co-Director of MENACS (Sussex), who will also chair the webinar.

  Additional information, including Zoom link, may be found on the BRISMES website. 

• Turath: A Virtual Exhibit 

  2020-11-23

  Turath ~ A Virtual Exhibit 

  The Khayrallah Center is delighted to announce the release of Turath, a path-breaking virtual exhibit that maps the rich mosaic of early Arab American culture through music, literature, poetry, art, performance, and journalism. Coinciding with the centenary of al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyya, the first Arab literary society in the US, Turath offers a broad and momentous collection of material culture, for general interest and specialized researchers alike. 

  Explore fashion icons, like Marie Azeez El-Khoury’s feature on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, the earth-moving performance of Marrie Bayrooty, or the haunting words of Abu Madi’s “The Talkative God.” Turath invokes the power of history through a multimedia platform that is as powerful in the classroom as it is in your home.

  Visit the exhibit here and explore its rich stories.

  In addition to the online exhibit, Turath features a series of webinars with award-winning and diaspora-bending artists, writers, poets, and musicians:

  • Jan. 13: Omar Offendum
  • Feb. 18: Helen Zughaib
  • Mar. 23: Safia Elhillo
  • Apr. 14: Rabih Alameddine
  • May 06: Tarek Yamani

  Space is limited; reserve your spot soon! To RSVP for any of the Turath webinars, please visit our events page.

• 2020 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies Recipients

  2020-11-18

  The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

  The Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies recognizes outstanding scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on Middle East migration, refugees and diasporas. Usually two prizes are given annually. The first prize, in the amount of $750, is awarded to one or more established scholars. The second prize, in the amount of $750, is awarded to one or more graduate students. This year the selection committee awarded four different prizes: one for a book by a scholar, two for papers by scholars, and one for the best graduate student paper.

  The 2020 Alixa Naff Book Prize is awarded to Dr. Sarah M.A. Gualtieri for her book Arab Routes. Dr. Gualtieri is Associate Professor of American Studies, History and Chair of the Middle East Studies Department at the University of Southern California.

  This year the selection committee awarded the best paper prize to two scholars: Dr. Anne Irfan for her paper Educating Palestinian Refugees (Journal of Refugee Studies), and Dr. Samuel Dolbee for his paper, The Desert at the End of the Empire (Past and Present). Dr. Anne Irfan is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the University of Oxford, where she is part of the Refugee Studies Centre. Dr. Samuel Dolbee is a lecturer on History & Literature at Harvard University. 

  The 2020 Graduate Paper prize was awarded to Dr. Mija Sanders, for her paper, Death on the Aegean Borderlands. Dr. Sanders is a recent PhD graduate of the School of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona.

  Read the full announcement on the Khayrallah Center website.

• Call For Papers: MENA Migrants and Diasporas in Twenty-First-Century Media

  2020-11-03

  Guest Editor: Waleed F. Mahdi

  The first two decades of the twenty-first century put the 1990s accounts of globalization, multiculturalism, clash of civilizations, and transnational mobility of peoples and ideas through the rigorous tests of the 9/11 attacks and the global war on terror, the information revolution, the Arab uprisings, the “migration crisis,” and the COVID-19 pandemic. The result has been an array of experiences shaped by an evolving global stress on the securitization of borders, the increasing appeal of populism, and a rising sense of global Islamophobia and xenophobia. These have occurred amidst waves of disruption to identity and community life, forced and voluntary displacement, and the imposition of growing challenges to mobility in a globalized and yet heavily policed world. In this context of change and struggle, how are voluntary and involuntary migrants and diasporas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) been represented in twenty-first-century media? How do representational modes of identity, mobility, and belonging engage these pressing realities? What do these representations reveal about agency and resistance against institutionalized forms of exclusion and violence? And how do migrant and diasporic medias and representations themselves constitute counter-archives and counter-narratives?

  This special issue seeks scholarly contributions that engage such questions through analyses of representations in local, national, or transnational contexts, both in the Global North and South. We welcome topics including but not limited to examinations of otherness, statelessness, self-representation, cultural citizenship, diasporic activism, and aesthetics of representation. Submissions may include critical examinations of discourses of nation, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability among others. For the purposes of this issue, media is broadly defined to include print media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, novels, comics); broadcast media (e.g., radio, television, film), transit media (e.g., billboards, banners, posters); and digital media (e.g., blogs, websites, social media). MENA is also broadly defined to include peoples who originate from, claim lineage to, or identify with the Middle East, the Sahel and West Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We welcome qualitative or quantitative analyses of media, and are open to multi-method manuscripts that further utilize narrative interviews, participant observations, archival and oral history, and/or emerging methods in digital humanities.

  Articles between 7-10,000 words inclusive of endnotes, should be sent in MS Word format to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu by March 15, 2021. Please direct any inquiries about the special issue to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

  Full submission guidelines can be found on our website: https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/about/submissions

• Call for Submissions: Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies

  2020-09-08

  The Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is now accepting submissions for its annual Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies. DEADLINE: September 30, 2020.
  
  The Naff Prize in Migration Studies recognizes outstanding scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on Middle East migration and diasporas. Two prizes are given annually. The first prize, in the amount of $750, is awarded to an established scholar. The second prize, in the amount of $750, is awarded to a graduate student.
  
  For full details of the prize, and instructions on how to apply please go here.

                                                               

• New Mashriq & Mahjar Co-Editor

  2020-08-18

  Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Stacy Fahrenthold as the journal’s new co-editor. The appointment is effective immediately.

  Fahrenthold is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Davis, where she is also affiliated with the UCD Global Migration Center. She received her Ph.D. in History in 2014 from Northeastern University. Fahrenthold’s research blends migration and borderlands approaches to social history, drawing on informal archives to critique the production of place-based histories. Her debut book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente, received the 2019 Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies and the 2019 Syrian Studies Association Book Award. Her work appears in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Global History, Journal of American Ethnic History, and Mashriq & Mahjar.

  Fahrenthold brings to the journal her wide-ranging and highly-regarded scholarship, editorial experience, and innovative ideas. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Fahrenthold to Mashriq & Mahjar!

• Call for Papers: Queering Middle East Migrations

  2020-06-29

  Scholarship on Middle Eastern and North African migrations has yet to fully integrate queer/sexuality studies as a primary lens of analysis.

  While a small number of Middle East migrations scholars have explored the potential of gender as a category of analysis, sexuality has received scant attention. This lacuna is even more glaring in light of the fact that recent works on sexuality and migration, particularly those that document queer sexualities, have emphasized its viability and importance. As Martin Manalansan notes: “these studies have brought into stark relief the constitutive role of sexuality in the formation and definitions of citizenship and nation. Sexuality, specifically as it is understood in queer studies terms not only expands the meaning of migration but also alters our understanding of gender and challenges migration studies’ reliance on heteronormative meanings, institutions, and practices.”^[1]

  In light of this elision, Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies invites contributions to a special issue on “Queering Middle East Migrations.” This issue seeks to bring together scholars working on topics related to migration and sexualities from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and to encourage others to begin to reflect on how sexualities inflect the migratory experience. By “queering” we suggest that sexuality is disciplined by institutions and practices which normalize heterosexuality, making it the dominant paradigm of being, and naturalize its constituent elements such as marriage, family, and reproduction. More specifically, we look to papers that seriously explore sexual desire and pleasure-seeking amongst migrant subjects, and the role these subjectivities play in decisions to migrate, and in their “search for material and social advancement.” We also invite scholars who investigate the intersections between sexualities and other social, economic, religious, and racial identities. Other questions may pertain to how sexuality plays in citizenship and asylum at various historical periods, and how sexualized and gendered images of migrants shape their encounters with borders and the state. Others may examine how Western conceptions of “coming out” have affected scholars’ ability to locate queer ephemera in Middle East and North African archives of migration. These are suggestive rather than exhaustive tropes, and we would welcome other queries and approaches about sexualities and migrations in, to, and from the Middle East and North Africa.

  We invite full articles of 7,000-10,000 words, including endnotes, and shorter thought-pieces of c.3,000 words. Please send contributions to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu by October 1, 2020.

  ^[1]  Martin F. Manalansan IV, “Queer Intersections: Sexuality and Gender in Migration Studies,” International Migration Review, Volume 40 Number 1 (Spring 2006):224–249

• Release of the Khayrallah Center's Arab American Newspapers Project

  2020-05-22

  The Khayrallah Center is delighted to announce the release of the beta version of its fully searchable database of Arab American newspapers. This online database provides full and open access to the general public and researchers to this rich source of the history of Arabs in the Americas, and beyond.

  The Khayrallah Center has been digitizing Arabic language newspapers (rendering print and microfilm into image and PDF files) published in the US between 1894 and 1960. At this point our collection spans 17 newspapers, with nearly 300,000 pages. We continue to add to our collection daily from newspapers around the world, including Arabic language newspapers from the US, Argentina and Brazil. We expect to collect over one million pages over the next three years.

• The Romey Lynchings: Film Premiere

  2020-02-06

  "In the early morning hours of Friday, May 17th, 1929, a Lebanese immigrant was lynched in Lake City, Florida. He was shot multiple times and left to die along a lonely stretch of the road heading south out of Lake City to Fort White.

  N’oula Romey was the fourth victim of racial terror that year in Florida, and one of ten people who were lynched by white mobs across the US in 1929 alone. Just hours before, his wife Hasna (Fannie) Rahme was fatally shot by Lake City police in their store. Their tragic murders were the most gruesome and violent attacks on Lebanese immigrants in the US, but this was not an isolated incident. Their killing was a part, and the culmination, of a widespread pattern of racially-motivated hostility, vitriol and physical abuse directed at early Arab immigrants who came to, worked, and lived in America between the 1890s and the 1930s.

  This film tells their story."

  Follow link to Romey Lynchings Website

• CFP: New Perspectives on Middle Eastern Migrations

  2020-01-07

  The Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, in conjunction with the editors of Mashriq & Mahjar: The Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies, invites conference papers that offer new perspectives on the past and present of migration to, from, and through the Middle East. What was once a marginal, passing interest for scholars of the region and its place in the world is now a flourishing and vibrant field, bringing together a host of disciplines, from history, anthropology, geography, and sociology to comparative literature and cultural studies, and from refugee studies to political economy and settler colonial studies.

  With this in mind, we invite contributions that provide original insight, by opening up new paths of inquiry and shedding light on neglected subjects, but also by suggesting methodological innovations and offering perspectives on the field’s development.

  These contributions may reflect existing disciplinary approaches or adopt interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary vantage points. We encourage the inclusion of projects which bring Middle Eastern studies into conversation with South Asian, African, Latin American, and American studies.

  Contributions from early-career researchers, and from scholars working in the global South, are particularly welcome.

  Potential themes may include the following:
  • Race, whiteness, and Middle Eastern migration
  • Gender, femininity, and masculinity
  • Sexuality and migration
  • Queer studies and migration
  • Youth, childhood, generational change and movement
  • Environmental perspectives on movement
  • Law and movement
  • Narratives of migration in literature, cinema, and ego-documents
  • The archives of migration
  • Labor migration and the political economy of movement
  • Mobility/immobility
  • Leaving/Staying
  • Geospatial perspectives on migrant networks

  Please send paper proposals in MS Word or PDF format via email to the organizers at the following address: akhater@ncsu.edu. Proposals should have a title and abstract of no more than 300 words, and should include contact information and institutional affiliation. The deadline for receipt of paper proposals April 3, 2020

  The conference will be held at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina on September 11-13, 2020. It will be hosted by the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University. The organizers will cover all the costs of housing and meals for participants for the duration of the conference, and provide some support toward travel. Some papers will be selected for subsequent publication.

• Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies- 2019

  2019-11-13

  The Moise a. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies has awarded Dr. Stacy Fahrenthold the 2019 Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies for her book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente.

  Stacy D Fahrenthold is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Davis, where she is also affiliated with the UCD Migration Research Cluster. Fahrenthold’s research blends migration and borderlands approaches to social history, drawing on informal archives to critique the production of place-based histories. Between the Ottomans and the Entente is her debut book, and it reveals the repercussions of diasporic activism on Syria and Lebanon in the immediate post-Ottoman moment. Fahrenthold’s work also appears in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Global History, Mashriq & Mahjar, and the Journal of American Ethnic History. 

  In reaching its decision, the award selection committee noted that “Stacy Fahrenthold’s Between the Ottomans and the Entente is a tour-de-force of transnational history. Written in a fluent, clear, humane style, it recounts in gripping, analytically penetrating fashion the shifting responses of Syro-Lebanese migrants living in the Americas to the tumultuous events and rapidly changing circumstances of the early twentieth-century Eastern Mediterranean, from the Ottoman constitutional revolution of July 1908 to the Ottoman entry into the First World War in November 1914 and the declaration of a French mandate over Syria in 1920. Drawing on a wide range of sources in Arabic, French, Spanish and English - from periodicals and private correspondence to criminal investigations and diplomatic exchanges - it moves nimbly between the United States, Latin America and the Middle East, and between social and political history, reconstructing in turn the doings of a group of Syrian and Lebanese migrants who lobbied for an American mandate over their native land and the activities of people smugglers. In short, this is a signal achievement - a piece of painstaking scholarship which offers much fresh insight and food for thought to scholars of the Middle East, migration, Arab diasporas, the First World War, and America in the world.”

• Labors of Need: Lives of African and Asian Workers in the Middle East

  2019-08-20

  Recent years have witnessed growing interest in trans-regional migration from South Asia, South-East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East and North Africa. This is warranted both by the heavy reliance of economies from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on low-wage labour migrants from countries such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and by the Middle East’s continuing importance as one of the nodes of global migration. It is no exaggeration to say that the Middle East’s oil and gas fields, its construction sites, shopping malls and, in many cases, its clerical offices and homes would simply cease to function without the precarious labours of migrant workers. Meanwhile, remittances - a large share of which stem from the Middle East and North Africa - make up just under 10% of the Philippines’ GDP, and over 30% of that of the Indian state of Kerala. 

  Journalists and commentators tend to focus only on the most well-known or controversial of these movements, highlighting, for instance, the employment conditions of the South Asian construction workers building the air-conditioned stadiums of Qatar in readiness for the 2022 World Cup, or the role of the Sudanese men fighting on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen. These headlines, however, hide many stories of struggle and mobilisation, of precarious lives and precious creativity. Many of these workers, from Lebanon to Qatar, have striven to organise against the legal restrictions and racial discourse they must face, assisted in certain places by local activists and campaigners.

  Scholars, for their part, have begun to reconstruct the lifeworlds and everyday lives of migrant workers, their religious and affective dispositions, their place within the political economy of the contemporary Middle East, and the longer histories of movement, connection, and disconnection that have bound together parts of South Asia, South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa to the region. In recent years, a number of exciting, path-breaking, interventions have appeared, building on the scattered work of the 1990s and early 2000s. These recent interventions have helped to set an agenda and constitute a field. Much, however, remains to be done.

  It is in this spirit that Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies invites contributions to a special issue focusing on migration from South Asia, South-East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East and North Africa. Article-length contributions are invited from scholars working in the fields of history, area studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, political economy, political science, religious studies, cultural studies, and other cognate fields. These can consider, but are not limited to, the following questions:

  • Employment, sponsorship, and the legal regimes governing migration
  • The migration process: brokerage, smuggling, sponsorship, and travel
  • Migrants’ working lives in various sectors, from cleaning and domestic work to construction, waste management, and sex work
  • Gender and migration
  • Migrants’ lifeworlds, everyday lives, and leisure
  • Race, representation, and migration
  • Language and migration
  • Regional, religious, and social distinctions among migrants
  • Migrant activism, labour militancy, and interactions with local civil society and organised labour
  • Displacement, remittance, and migrants’ relations with their home regions
  • Longer trajectories of movement between South Asia, South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa

  Articles of between 7-10,000 words inclusive of endnotes, should be sent in ms word format to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu by January 6, 2020

  Full submission guidelines can be found on our website:

  https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/about/submissions

• CFP - Faith on the Move: Middle East Migrations and Religions

  2019-01-17

  The Global Turn has finally arrived in Middle Eastern Studies. An approach that was once the preserve  of a handful of historians and anthropologists--who for the past 20 years have articulated a different vision of the field through their work on migration, mobility and diasporas--has now been embraced by a broad swathe of scholars. This can be seen in various sub-fields, from emerging studies of the local/global Left in the Middle East, to interest in the Nahda’s  transnational resonances. This turn was most widely acknowledged in the recent annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association whose theme was The Global Middle East. Since its 2013  inaugural essay of first issue, Mashriq&Mahjar has become a polestar for this Global Turn as it relates to Middle East and North African Migration Studies.

  Despite the growing grip of the Global Turn on Middle Eastern Studies, there has been a notable lack of scholarly attention to how Middle Eastern religious practices and beliefs were, and are now being, globalized (notwithstanding a few notable exceptions). Overall, relatively little scholarship has hitherto paid sustained attention to how religion inflects the migratory experience, and how migration shapes religion in the diaspora or at “home.” This is all the more remarkable given the intimate nature of faith and religion, and the roles their presence and absence play--whether negatively or positively--in the formation of individual and communal identities and structures.

  In light of these lacunae, Mashriq&Mahjar invites scholars who are working in this field to submit manuscripts to be considered for publication in an upcoming special issue titled Faith on the Move: Middle East Migrations and Religions. We are looking for papers and research notes that engage and shape this field of inquiry along the following lines:

  • Historical accounts of diasporic communities of belief: their formation, challenges, transformations, etc.;
  • Relationships of diasporic religious communities and practices to institutions and clerics in the Mashriq and Maghrib;
  • Intersectionalities of gender, class, and religion;
  • Middle Eastern “sectarianism” and its encounter with Western liberal societies: neo-orientalist anxieties and diasporic responses;
  • Archiving religious experience and community;
  • Religion and cultural production in migrant communities, diasporas
  • Diasporic critiques of Middle Eastern religions

  For your essay to be considered for publication in this special issue please submit your manuscript to mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu.

  Deadline for submission: May 31, 2019

• Seeking Book Reviewers!

  2018-08-14

  Mashriq & Mahjar is currently looking for book reviewers for upcoming issues. We have a number of books ready-to-go in the office on migration history, diaspora studies, and Arab identity. We're also open to suggestions from potential reviewers for new titles. 

  Is there a new title in your field of research you're wanting to read? Was it published in the last three years? Does it relate to migration studies, diaspora, and the Middle East and North African region? Contact the managing editor to find out if the book you want to review is appropriate for Mashriq & Mahjar and whether we can order it for you! Email the managing editor at mashriq_mahjar@ncsu.edu. 

  We're looking for single-title reviewers as well as those interested in writing a review essay that discusses three to four related works collectively. 

  Book reviews must conform to our guidelines and all potential reviewers must have already completed their doctoral degree. 

• Check Out Our Exciting New Content!

  2018-08-07

  Mashriq & Mahjar has been publishing exciting new content every two weeks for the past two months! Make sure to take a moment and look at our new releases ranging from bilingual research notes and review essays to research articles and book reviews. 

  Just like before, our content is open access and free to download. If you like our content, share our website among your colleagues, graduate students, faculty, and on social media. 

  

• First Release in New Format

  2018-06-12

  We're releasing the first article in our new rolling, continuous publication format this week! Stay tuned for new content published every few weeks ranging from articles and book reviews to research notes, conference reports, and multi-title review articles.

  Follow us on Twitter @MashriqMahjar for up-to-date information on our releases.

  Thanks for reading!

• New Publication Format for Mashriq & Mahjar!

  2018-05-15

  As of May 2018, Mashriq & Mahjar will begin operating under a continuous, or rolling, publication format. Starting this summer, we will release single items including book reviews, review articles, research articles, conference reports, and research notes every several weeks. Released content will be archived twice per year to create paginated issues. We hope this move will benefit both our readers and authors and permit us to share cutting-edge and timely scholarship with our readers. 

  Stay tuned for our upcoming publications!