REINHARD BERNBECK
(Anthropology Department) is a new faculty member in the
Anthropology Department with interests in the archaeology of the
Ancient Near East. His interest in this area of the world is not new: he grew
up partly in Kabul/Afghanistan, worked just before the Iranian revolution for
one year in a home for blind people in Isfahan/Iran and joined the
International Committee of the Red Cross in 1991 as an interpreter in relief
work in what was then an armed conflict between Mudjahedin and the communist
Afghan government. Reinhard’s research interests concern mainly prehistoric
and early historic societies of the Near East, with a focus on economic
systems and ideological superstructure. Reinhard’s field research has
centered in the more westerly part of the Near East, i.e. Syria, Jordan and
southeastern Turkey, due mostly to political reasons. He co-directed and
published a survey in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border and an excavation of
a fourth millennium B.C. site in Jordan just southeast of its capital, Amman.
Publication of the latter research is in progress. At present, Reinhard
co-directs (with Susan Pollock) the excavation of a small 6th
millennium B.C. village in the province of Sanliurfa, southeastern Turkey.
This research aims at identifying households, defined as economic units in
which a specific set of activities is carried out. Traditionally, an
architectural unit (a “house”) has been considered to be also a household.
However, in their research case, the extremely small size of houses makes this
unlikely. Household identification at such sites is crucial for any
investigation of the economic organization of such early communities. The
excavation site is an area that will be flooded in one or maximally two years
by a dam built for irrigation purposes.
KEVIN LACEY (Classics
& Near Eastern Studies Department) just returned from giving a lecture on “Connecting
Foreign Languages and Cross-Cultural Understanding: the Needs, the Challenges
and Some Suggested Leading Initiatives for Students, Faculty and Staff” at
Buffalo State College on April 29, 1999.
This lecture, sponsored by the Women’s Studies Interdisciplinary Unit
and Foreign Language Department, was followed by a discussion.
About fifty people attended. Dr. Lacey is in the final stages of
finishing up the publication of a forthcoming book on North Africa.
ALI MAZRUI (Institute
for Global Cultural Studies) has been unanimously elected to the Board of
Trustees of the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies, England. He has also been
elected to the Academic Board of the Center for Christian-Muslim
Understanding, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He also serves on the
Board of Directors of the American Muslim Council, Washington, D.C.
In January 1999, Mazrui was a keynote speaker at a conference at UNESCO
Headquarters in Paris on the theme “Towards a Constructive Pluralism”. The
conference was ceremonially opened by the Director-General of UNESCO and the
Secretary-General of the Commonwealth (Marlborough House, London). In March
1999, Mazrui was a keynote speaker at the Ninth Annual Conference of the
Association for Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism based at the London School
of Economics and Political Science. The theme of the conference was
“Nationalism and War”, against the background of the war in Kosovo. During
his visit to London Ali Mazrui also met Queen Elizabeth II. In November 1998,
Ali Mazrui opened a conference on globalization at the Eastern Mediterranean
University in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Mazrui and a few other
select guests were entertained for lunch by President Rauf Danktas, who was so
struck by Mazrui’s African attire, that the president got his camera and
photographed Mazrui. Mazrui quipped: “This is the first time I have been
photographed by a President!”
Ali Mazrui’s book, The Power of Babel: Language and
Governance in the African Experience (co-author Alamin M. Mazrui) was
published by Chicago University Press in 1998. The British publisher was James
Currey in Oxford. At the annual meeting of the International Studies
Association in Washington, D.C. in February 1999, Ali Mazrui was honored with
a special panel devoted to a discussion of his work and writings on
development. In March 1999, Mazrui made a presentation at Columbia University,
New York as part of a conference on “Islam in Africa”. At a conference on
a similar theme at Edinburgh University, Scotland, Mazrui has been invited to
be a keynote speaker in May 1999. Mazrui’s lecture to the Emirates Center
for Strategic Studies and Research, Abu Dhabi, is now available in its
original English version - “Islam, Western Democracy, and the Third
Industrial Revolution.” The Arabic translation will be available from the
Emirates Center later in 1999. In either language the lecture may be ordered
from the Emirates Lecture Series, ECSSR, P.O. Box 4567, Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates.
GRADUATE
STUDENT NEWS
MALEK
ABISSAB (History
Department) is teaching “The Modern History of the Middle East since
1830," Department of History, the University of Akron. He is
organizer of a panel entitled: Women’s History and Socio-economic
Transformation (Chair: Professor Donald Quataert, Discussant Professor Beth
Baron). He will also give a paper on this panel entitled: “Protesting with
Warda Butrus Ibrahim, 1946: Tobacco Women Workers, Labor Law and the Lebanese
State,” MESA, Washington, D.C. in December 1999. A lecture entitled “Women
Tobacco Workers and the Lebanese nation-state,” was also given on March 23,
1999 at Princeton University. His current book review is: Dilip Hiro,
Dictionary of the Middle East (New York, 1996) MESA Bulletin, Summer 1999.
Malek’s research is in Middle East and Islamic philanthropy in the United
States. He wrote about and annotated a number of books and articles and also
identified philanthropic practices among Muslim/Arab, Armenian, Sephardic and
other Middle Eastern organizations in the United States. In collaboration with
other scholars, the conclusion of this work will appear in a book, published
by the Center of the Study of Philanthropy, Graduate School and University
Center of the City University of New York as part of the series: Philanthropy
and Voluntarism in the United States. He is currently writing the last chapter
of his dissertation.
CECELIA
HITTE (Anthropology Department) has joined the Anthropology department as a first
semester graduate student this past fall. Before coming to Binghamton, she was
active in administration and assessment of projects associated with USAID,
Peace Corps and USIS in Central and Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the
Middle East. Most recently , Cecilia was Chief of Party of a USAID-funded
project supporting girls’ education in rural Moroccan primary schools. Her
interests include development, economics, gender, and theoretical concepts of
time and space. She has a knowledge of Arabic, Spanish and French, and
anticipates doing research on female entrepreneurs in the north and south of
Yemen.
JOYCE
MATTHEWS (History
Department) reports that in
Istanbul it is a particularly exciting time to be in the former capital of the
Ottoman empire. Nineteen ninety-nine is a year of prime significance in the
field of Ottoman studies. Every week, announcements are made of new events
planned in celebration of the founding of the Ottoman state seven hundred
years ago. In a very recent local televised interview, Ottoman Historian
Professor Cemal Kafadar of Harvard University broke the news that the premiére
performance of a work dedicated by a contemporary French composer to the
Ottoman prince in European exile. Djem Sultan (1459-95), the younger son of
Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople-will be presented here in July.
Yet, as the following example illustrates, interpretation of the essence of
this anniversary may be subject to variation. The largest publisher in Turkey
devoted the entirety of not only the first issue of 1999 of its monthly book
review, but also that of its two quarterly periodicals on, respectively, art
and scholarly topics to Byzantines.
TAMARA
TAMIMI (Anthropology
Department) will be completing her MA degree in Anthropology over the summer
based upon her fieldwork among Palestinian Americans who have returned to
Palestine. She will be spending
the next several months in Palestine undertaking reconnaissance for fieldwork
in preparation for writing her doctoral dissertation. The subject of the dissertation is “The Changing Identities
of Palestinian Americans in Palestine and the USA.”
MELTEM
TOKSOZ (History Department)
is teaching at Bogazici University in Istanbul. He will finish the writing of
his dissertation by July 1999. Meltem published the review of the Turkish
version of a book by Faruk Tabak and Caglar Keyder, eds. “Landholding and
Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East,” SUNY Press, 1991. The Turkish
version came out at the end of 1998 from the Tarih Vakfi, there in Istanbul.
His review appeared in December 31, 1998 in the CUMHURIYET KITAP, a weekly
Book Journal of a major newspaper. He also co-authored with Emre Yalcin in an
article entitled, “The Making Of Modern Adana: A History Of
Ottoman/Turkish Urbanization” for the upcoming book by Cigdem
Kafescioglu, Lucien Thys-Senocak and Gunham Danisman, eds. in honor of
Aptullah Kuran. The book is to be published there in Turkey by the Yapi Kredi
Press, in September of this year. Meltem will give a seminar on the subject of
his dissertation, namely “The Cukurova: From Nomadic Life to Capitalist
Agriculture, 1800-1914” at the Republican History Institute of his
university there at Bogazici University, next month.
MICHAEL
TOLER (Comparative
Literature Department) presented a paper, “Conquest, Colonization and the
Origins of a People: Driss Chraïbi’s Naissance a l’aube and La Mère du
Printemps,” at the annual Romance Languages and Literature conference in
march, and another “Straightening the Circle: North African Literature in
English Translation” as part of the Translation Panels of the annual PIC
Conference at Binghamton University in April.
He will be presenting a paper with the title “Towards an Ethics of
Translation: The North African Novel in English” at the 1999 MESA Conference
in Washington, DC.
ANDREW
WOLFE (Anthropology
Department) reports his twelve months of fieldwork in the oasis of Degache in
the northern Sahara (south Tunisia) was a very rewarding experience, both
professionally and personally. The
research concentrated upon irrigation
and voluntary associations, but several months were devoted to the necessary
task of making contacts, gaining the trust and respect of the community, and
learning the local dialect, south-western or Jeridian Arabic. Much to Andrew’s initial dismay, colloquial Arabic in the
south of Tunisia is quite distinct from that spoken in the capital Tunis. They
even use different greetings and a special future tense in Degache.
For instance, upon meeting a friend, the Degachi normally inquires, wishi
haalik or sahet? Through Andrew’s contacts he was able to access
documents and statistics normally difficult to obtain, being quick, however,
to reciprocate whenever appropriate, sharing his maps and reference books.
Andrew worked with a Tunisian assistant for a few months, during the
arduous task of conducting 315 interviews consisting of around 50 questions
each. They rode mountain bikes throughout the several contiguous
villages and the large oasis, becoming a very common, and frequently, strange
sight. Their request for an
interview was only turned down on three occasions.
Andrew and his wife made it a practice to visit their many friends once
or twice every week. By December
this was more like every day, as Ramadan began during their last month in
Tunisia. By fasting in Degache,
they were able to share in the nightly ritual of feasting, staying up very
late, and trying to stay warm, in fellowship with their friends.
(Without heat in December the homes become very cold in Degache.)
Currently Andrew is writing his dissertation based upon this fieldwork.
In April he presented the results at the annual meetings for the
Society for Applied Anthropology in Tucson, Arizona.
MENA
STUDENTS COMPLETING Ph.D.
ROBERT
LATOWSKY (Anthropology Department) successfully defended his Ph.D. Dissertation on
“Community Experiences of Rural Transformations in Egypt 1960-1980" on
May 5, 1999. Bob carried out
research in the Nag al-Hammadi
area of Upper Egypt and focused on the diverse impact of industrialization (an
aluminum factory), transnational migration, agricultural modernization and
education on 53 villages in the area. The
MENA Program played an important role in Bob’s graduate training which
prepared him for fieldwork in Egypt. He
gained literacy and fluency in Arabic under Professor Semaan’s tutelage and
participated in the MENA interdisciplinary seminar.
Bob deserves special congratulations for finishing his dissertation
since he interrupted a successful career in applied anthropology in Egypt
where he had been doing consulting work for the Agency of International
Development, the World Bank, and Save the Children Fund.
Bob is returning to Egypt with his wife, Marianne, early this summer.
He has just established his own firm there and will continue his
consulting activities in an expanded framework.
SPYROS
SPYROU (Anthropology
Department) in March presented a paper entitled “Constructing Identities in
the Classroom: Agency in Greek Cypriot” in the conference on “Identity,
Ethnicity, Origins,” organized at Binghamton University.
On April 20th , Spyros successfully defended his Ph.D.
dissertation entitled “Small Ethnic Worlds: Identity, Ambiguity, and
Imagination in Greek Cypriot Children’s
Daily Lives.” His
dissertation is based upon a full year of field work in both rural and urban
communities in Cyprus. He studied
how primary school students learned their ethnic identities at home from
parents, in school from teachers, and out of school from peers and influential
others. He is currently looking
for jobs both in the United States and Cyprus.
His future plans include revising the dissertation for publication as
well as continuing his research with children and identity.
STUDENT
ORGANIZATION NEWS
MIDDLE
EAST AND NORTH AFRICA STUDIES GROUP (MENASG)
The
Middle East and North Africa Studies Group (MENASG) at Binghamton University
hosted the Maghrebi Arts Festival on April 16th, 1999.
This year’s festival, a version of the two week long series of events
held last April, highlighted music from North Africa, particularly from
Algeria. Headlining the evening
was a live concert by Fatah Kaci’s band, Tamazgha. Kaci, who was a big
success when he performed solo at last year’s festival. He returned with
five instrumentalists, currently from the San Francisco Bay Area, who capture
the traditional North African rhythms and combine them with contemporary
arrangements. In translation, “Tamazgha” refers to the area encompassing
virtually all of North Africa, from Mali and Morocco in the west to Egypt in
the east. Lead singer, guitarist and front man, Fatah Kaci, is from a small
village outside of Algiers and provides the spiritual guidance, culture, and
the unique style of Amazigh (Berber) music to the other band members.
The band consisted of keyboardist Ken Cheetham from West Virginia,
flutist Marguerite Johnston from California, drummer Victoriano Puebla from
Sonora, Mexico, and bassist “Ras Markus” Schuerman from Cincinnati, Ohio.
The concert was sponsored, in part, by the Amazigh Cultural Association in
America (ACAA) and was held on the Binghamton University Campus in Fine Arts
Rm. 212 at 8:00 pm on April 16th. “One Hundred Percent Arabica,”
a feature film about Raï music from Algeria, was shown at 5:00 pm in Lecture
Hall 10 also on April 16th.
Michael
Toler and Rachid Aadnani have set up a web site on the music of Morocco,
Algeria and Tunisia. CD’s are
for sale through the site, with proceeds going to the maintenance of the site
and sponsorship of activities of the cultural activities organized here at
Binghamton University by the Maghrebi Studies Group. The URL is http://www.maroc.net/maghreb_literature
ALUMNI
NEWS
SAMAR
ATTAR ‘73 sends her
greeting from the University of Sydney, Australia where she is Head, of
the Department of Semitic Studies.
She is a Binghamton graduate in Comparative Literature. Her MENA
connection is that she was born in Damascus, Syria, and she is teaching Arabic
language, literature and culture, albeit on a different continent. Samar has
been appointed as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University from September 1999 to June
2000. This is the second time she
has been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard. She was in Cambridge
during the academic year 1994-1995. Samar
will be working on a project, tentatively entitled “The Influence of Arabic
on Modern European Thought.”
MARY
HEGLAND ‘86 of Santa
Clara University has recently published several articles based on field
research in Peshawar, Pakistan including: “The Power Paradox in Muslim
Women’s Majales: North-West Pakistani Mourning Rituals as Sites of
Contestation over Religious Politics, Ethnicity, and Gender,” SIGNS,
Journal of Women in Culture and Society 23(2):391-428, 1998 and
“Flagellation and Fundamentalism: (Trans)forming Meaning, Identity, and
Gender through Pakistani Women’s Rituals of Mourning,” American
Ethnologist 25(2):240-266, 1998. During the last couple of years, Mary has
concentrated on fieldwork among Iranian immigrants in Northern California.
She and her students have conducted research with Iranian women who
came to the United States for an education in the 1970's; Iranian-American
“sandwich generation” women who are situated between older, more Iranian
parents and younger, more Americanized teenagers twenty-something children;
and elderly Iranians who came to the United States to be with children who are
working and living here. Hegland teaches an English class for the Iranian Senior
Citizens’ Association in the Bay Area and works closely with the
association. Most elderly
Iranians are lonely, isolated, and rather depressed, as it is difficult for
them to adjust to a new language, culture, and living situation in older age.
Hegland and her students are investigating how the more successful
older Iranians draw on aspects of Iranian culture and social organization to
help them construct meaningful, active, and contributing lives on foreign
soil.
MARJORIE
KELLY ‘79 had four
articles published in 1998: two dealt with the research she conducted in
Jordan on a USIA grant in 1996. One,
focusing on obstacles to establishing a tourist industry in Jordan, appeared
in the Annals of Tourism Research. “Tourism not Terrorism” dealt
with the portrayal of Jordanian society in the tourist literature, and was
published in Visual Anthropology.
A third article described Kelly’s televised anthropology course for
the 80,000 members of the National Education Association, and the last was an
exhibition review of Native Hawaiian photography for Museum Anthropology.
After almost nine years in the islands, Dr. Kelly will be
leaving Hawaii and academia to become the first Director of Education for the
Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the
preservation of historic architecture.
TAYSIR
NASHIF ‘74 Dr. Nashif
presented a paper, entitled “Social Background Characteristics as
Determinants of Political Behavior: The Case of the Arab Political Leadership
in Palestine Under the British Mandate,” at the 25th Annual Third
World Conference. The conference, with “third World and Global Development:
Reconstruction and Redefinition” as its theme, was held March 17-20, 1999 in
Chicago.
ELIZABETH
PLANTZ ‘84, following
graduation from the University of Chicago in 1987 with a joint MA in Middle
East Studies and Library Science, went to work for Kuwait University Libraries
for two years as a consultant. She
returned to the United States in 1989 shortly before the Iraqi invasion and
Gulf War. Elizabeth then worked
at Boston University as an Africana cataloger before moving to the Chicago
area in February 1992. Since
relocating, she works at the Northwestern University Library also as an
Africana cataloger. She is very
active in the Africana Librarians Council of the African Studies Association
and is currently Chair of the Cataloging Committee.
Elizabeth is also head of an Africana Subject Funnel project working
with the Library of Congress to develop appropriate subject headings in that
field of studies. In October 1998, Elizabeth published a collection
development article on Islam. It emphasizes materials on Islam and Muslims in
the United States for public and other smaller libraries: “Bridging the Gap:
Islam in America,” Library Journal. October 1, 1998. Vol. 123, no.
16. She is now working on writing biographical entries on Arab Americans for a
future publication to be entitled “Making it in America: A Biographical
Source book of Eminent Ethnic Americans,” Elliot Barkan, editor. While
Elizabeth was living in Kuwait, she met and married an Iraqi, Mohammad Taha.
They now have a son named Kareem who just turned three in February.
DANIEL
PRICE ‘96, earned his
Ph.D. degree in Political Science in 1996.
Dr. Price’s book
entitled, Islamic Political Culture, Democracy, and Human Rights: A
Comparative is being published by Praeger this June.
It is based on the doctoral dissertation that he wrote at Binghamton
University. He is an
assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies at Kent State
University-Trumbull Campus.
JAMES
TOTH ‘87, most recent
publication is Rural Labor Movements in Egypt and Their Impact on the State
1961-1992, Gainesville: University Press of Florida. March, 1999.
Analyzing the role of rural workers in Egypt’s economy, James
provides a bottom-up account of the country’s recent history, including the
1961 agricultural crisis that undermined Nasser’s Arab socialism, the
1965-66 recession that doomed Egypt’s performance in the Six-Day War, the
rural roots of the 1977 Cairo bread riots, and the Islamic movement of the
1980's and 1990's. Professor
Toth’s work is grounded in a richly detailed ethnographic study of migrant (tarahil)
labor and of the everyday lives of the workers who perform it.
He maintains that, because peasants make up a substantial portion of
the Egyptian working class, their influence has been great, often manifesting
itself in ways unforeseen by thwarting government planners and
government schemes for promoting economic development.
Combining anthropology with political economy, Toth presents a clear
theoretical framework for examining the role of unskilled rural labor in the
developing world. He makes a
strong case for rethinking current notions of socioeconomic change in
developing economies.
This
important book rescues Egypt’s migrant workers, the tarahil, from
their usual neglect. It follows
them from the fields into the urban labor market to argue that, in spite of
the weakness of their position, they played a significant political and
economic role in the turbulent years of the Sadat presidency and beyond.
(Roger Owen, Harvard University).
Toth,
associate professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo, is
the author of articles in Dialectical Anthropology, the International
Journal of Middle East Studies, Critical Sociology, and the British
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
MENA
CERTIFICATES
Ralph
Klotzbaugh received his MENA Certificate and his MA in Arabic Studies and
History Dept. in May.
Kristin
True-Laktais received her MENA Certificate
and her BA in Arabic Studies in May.
LECTURES
AND READINGS
On
Thursday February 25, 1999 more than fifty people attended the lecture by Dr.
Mounira Charrad, “Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Breakthrough or
Stalemate in North Africa.” Dr. Charrad outlined the restrictions on
women’s rights in the modern period and the changes that occurred in Tunisia
to elevate their status. She
discussed the question whether the elevation of women’s rights in Tunisia
was a reflection of women’s rights movements or of state policy.
She concluded it was the latter. An
extended discussion occurred after her lecture involving faculty, students,
and the speaker.
On
Friday, February 26, 1999 Dr. Charrad addressed a brown bag lunch and
gathering of MENA students and faculty on the subject “Class or Tribe?
Theoretical Explorations on North Africa.” She explained why tribal and
extended kin ties have been substantially weakened in Tunisia while they have
continued to be resilient in Algeria and particulary Morocco.
A discussion between Professors Antoun, Horowitz and Charrad on the
meaning of “tribe” and “extended kinship” followed her lecture.
Ann
Mayer, Professor of Legal Studies, The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania, lectured on “Human Rights and Islamic Culture” on
March 25th, 1999 before a large audience in the Reinhardt Room.
Professor Mayer discussed universalist and cultural relatavist
positions on human rights and pointed to the critical role that governments
played in granting/denying human rights not only in the Middle East but also
in the United States and other countries.
A spirited discussion followed the lecture.
On
Friday, March 26, 1999 the MENA Program sponsored a brown bag lunch and
lecture by Professor Mayer. The lecture was entitled, “Islamic Law and
Women’s Rights.” A large number of students and faculty attended Professor
Mayer’s lecture.
CONFERENCE
On
April 9-10, MENA and Middle East Department at New York University again
cooperated in holding a joint conference, after the model established several
years ago. The conference was entitled, “Citizenship in the Ottoman
Empire,” and was an effort to examine the ties that bound this multi-ethnic
state together in the 19th century age of nationalism. Three panels
over two days focused on:
I. The rights of
minorities and foreigners.
II. Political community.
III. Citizenship in comparative perspective.
Speakers
included Aram Arkun on citizenship and the Armenians; Selim Deringil on
conversion to Islam and changing state-subject relationships as well as a
number of papers discussing citizenship in the second German Reich (Warren
Rosenblum), in 19th century Greece (Alexander Kitroeff) and Western
European (Michael Hanagan).
UPCOMING
CONFERENCE
The
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies will sponsor an international
conference on the Crusades, beginning on October 15, 1999.
The conference is being co-ordinated by Khalil Semaan, Professor
Emeritus and former professor of Arabic.
The conference is entitled, “The Crusades: Other Experiences,
Alternative Perspectives,” and will feature interpretations by Muslim and
Jewish as well as Christian scholars and include ten panels and three plenary
sessions.
