MESA 2008 Volunteer Panel Chairs

The MESA Secretariat invites members to volunteer their services as chairs of put-together panels (the panels that were assembled from individual paper submissions). If you are interested in participating as a panel chair, complete review the list of available panels and submit the form below.

Current MESA membership and annual meeting pre-registration are required to participate in the annual meeting and be listed in the program. Only persons meeting those requirements will be assigned chair positions.

Once assigned a chair position, you will receive via email a formal letter of invitation along with the abstracts of the papers that comprise the panel. A little closer to the meeting, we will contact the panelists on your panel to introduce you as chair and to ask them to send you a courtesy copy of their paper.

Positions are available on a first-come, first-served basis, although we do give priority to persons not already appearing on the program elsewhere.

Chair responsibilities: The chair is responsible for introducing each of the panelists, monitoring the time for their presentations, and insuring that the panel ends promptly at the scheduled time. The chair is asked to facilitate the discussion session, not by providing commentary about the papers, but rather by opening the floor to questions for the panelists. Each presenter will be expected to give a 15-20 minute presentation (depending upon how many papers there are on a panel), and each session will last for a maximum of two hours. Because "put-together" panels sometimes include papers on disparate topics that would be difficult to synthesize, MESA does not assign discussants to them.

Requirements for program participation:  Please remember, participation in the MESA annual meeting is restricted to MESA members. Current MESA membership and annual meeting pre-registration are required to participate.

Please volunteer only if you are certain that you will be able to participate. It is difficult to reassign chair positions as the meeting approaches, and it is a disservice to panelists when a chair cancels at the last minute.

Please direct panel chair questions to Mark Lowder at mlowder@u.arizona.edu. MESA greatly appreciates the services of volunteer chairs!

Session V
Sunday, November 23
4:30pm-6:30pm

(NP04) New Perspectives on the Early Modern

Ali Bakr Hassan, Brown U–A Turning Point in Bridging Intellectual Gaps Between the West and Middle East in Early Modern Europe
Emire Cihan Muslu, U of Texas at Dallas–The Road to Peace: Ottoman-Mamluk Treaty in 1491
Nabil I. Matar, Florida Inst of Technology–The Maritime Decline of the Maghrib in the Early Modern Period
Stephen C. Cory, Cleveland State U–Recovering Al-Andalus: A Sixteenth Century Plan for a Joint English-Moroccan Invasion of Spain

Session VII
Monday, November 24
11:00am-1:00pm

(NP26) Narratives of Incarceration and Escape

Marco Boggero–Omar al-Mukhtar and the Construction of a Martyrdom Narrative: Shakib Arslan and the World Islamic Congress
Nima Naghibi, Ryerson U–The Politics of Compassion: Iranian Women’s Prison Narratives in English
Nadine Sinno, U of Arkansas–Prison, Madness, and Women’s Space in Two Contemporary Arabic Novels
Amalia Skarlatou Levi, U of Maryland–Memory Keepers, Identity Shapers: Tracing Sepharic Women in American Archives
Zjaleh Hajibashi, U of Virginia–Iranian Cinema: Behind the Bars

Session XI
Tuesday, November 25
11:00am-1:00pm

(NP16) Religious Authority Contested (II)

Timothy J. Fitzgerald, Harvard U–To Kill a Judge: The Struggle to Make Mamluk Justice Ottoman in 16th-Century Aleppo
Onder Kucukural, Sabanci U–Religion a la Turca: A Dynamic Approach to Religion in Turkey
Rachel M. Scott, Virginia Tech–What Would the Islamists Do with Al-Azhar?: Religious Authority in an Islamic State
Zack Heern, U of Utah–Laying Foundations for Orthodoxy: The Transformation of Shi’i Islam during the Time of Vahid Buhbihani (1704-1791)
Maryam Moazzen, U of Toronto–Dissemination of Knowledge as Religious Duty: Modes of Transmission of Relgious Knowledge in Safavid Educational Institutions

(NP37) Migration and Diaspora across Continents

Carla Nichelle Daughtry, Lawrence U–On Sanctuary and the Illusion of Security: A Refugee Church Community and the Sudanese Mothers Union in Cairo
Isil Acehan, Bilkent U–Between an Old World and the New World: Assessing the Identity Problem of the Early Ottoman Immigrants in the United States (1900-1930)
Vladislav Sobolev, St. Petersburg U–Muslim Education in Russian Megapolises (Moscow and Saint-Petersburg)
Andew K. Arsan, U of Cambridge–The Ties That Bind: The Political Sentiments of Lebanese Shia Migrants in Senegal, 1921-1956
Maria del Mar Logrono Narbona, Florida International U–The Great Syrian Revolt and the Political Radicalization among Syrian and Lebanese Emigrants in Latin America (1925-1927)

(NP69) Program Committee Picks

Anjela Cannarelli Peck, Hamilton Col–Of Angels, Prophets and (Other) Divine Intermediaries: Exploring Christian-Muslim Spaces in Early Modern Spanish Muslim Texts
Veronica Canton, Americans for Informed Democracy–Legal Statement Regarding Adjudication of Violations of International Humanitarian Law by Privatized Military Firms
Sholeh A. Quinn, Ohio U–Religion and Politics under the Safavids and Mughals: the Chronicles of Akbar and ‘Abbas I
Catherine E. DeLong Malloy, Catholic U of America–Shared Roots of Faith: The Lead Books of the Sacromonte

Session XII
Tuesday, November 25
1:30pm-3:30pm

(NP02) Textual Perspectives on Ottoman Imperium

Darin N. Stephanov, UCLA–The Autocrat’s Sacred Aura: Religious Aspects of the Shaping of a Monarchic Persona in the Late Ottoman and Russan Empires
Sinem Eryilmaz, U of Chicago–The Ambitions of an Ottoman Imperial Scroll
Malissa Taylor, UC Berkeley–Imperial Tradition, Islamic Idiom and Peasant Interlocutors
Heather L. Ferguson, UC Berkeley–A Mercantile World and the Ottoman Empire: Defining Authority in an Age of Absolutism

(NP03) Religious Networks and Alterities in Middle Eastern History

Ayshe Polat, U of Chicago–Thinking through the Questions in the Late Ottoman Journal Sirat-i Mustakim
Amit Bein, Clemson U–Authority Contested: Ottoman Ulema in the Early Turkish Republic
F. Betul Yavuz, Rice U–The Sufi Saint and His Female Guides: Women in Anecdotes of Dhu’l-Nun al-Misri
Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, Harvard U–The Wafa’i Order and Its Kizilbash Offshoots in Anatolia
Amina Elbendary, American U in Cairo–Social Networks in late Mamluk Damascus through the Eyes of Ibn Tawq

(NP29) Themes in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

Rose-Louissa Oburra, Cornell U–In Search of a Savior: Walid Mas’ud
Hanadi Al-Samman, U of Virginia–Are We There Yet? Lesbian Identity in Modern Arabic Literature
David DiMeo, US Military Academy–Subversion of Fictional Space in Mahfuz’s Later Novels
Zaki Haidar, U of Pennsylvania–The Cosmopolitan of a Tunisian Writer: ‘Ali Al-Du’aji’s Mediterranean Barhopping

(NP68) Conversion in Turkey: Agents and Identities

Iren N. Ozgur, U of Oxford–Do Religious Schools in Turkey Cultivate Political Sentiments in Their Students?
Zeynep Turkyilmaz, UCLA–Ambiguous Conversions: State, Missionaries and Kizilbas Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire
Kaley M. Carpenter, Princeton Theological Seminary–Perfect Bedfellows?: Missionary Influence on US Foreign Policy in the Near East, 1915-1923
Sevgi Adak, Central European U–Turkish Secularism in the Making: State Influence on Ramadans and the Debate on Conversion in the Early Republic
Lisa DiCarlo, Babson Col–Positioning Turkey’s Newest Christians: “Are You Armenian Now?”