Call for Papers:
Middle East Studies in an Age of Post-Colonial Hegemony
The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) will hold its next conference, as usual at the Keystone Marriot just over the river from Georgetown DC, this coming year on November 13-15. Hopefully it will be live.Â
ASMEA was created in 2007 as a counter to MESA’s (Middle East Studies Association) increasing politicization . To ASMEA’s chagrin, MESA’s politicized scholarship has dominated the area-studies to this day (certainly as measured in control of research resources and access to the public), as well as fed the culture wars on campus and beyond in the form of “Apartheid Weeks” and BDS. As such, the anti-Orientalism of post-colonial studies has played an important role in the 21st century response of Western thought leaders to the challenges from the regions involved, not least, to Global Jihad.
Now, more than a decade after the activist takeover of MESA, it seems useful to make MESA itself the topic of study, and assess the impact of post-colonial studies on policy thinking, and thereby on global dynamics. In this meta-MENA, we look at the “studies” themselves as a phenomenon to be studied.
Academia in the period of post-colonial hegemony:Â
How and when it “took,†and what have been the consequences.
This approach could include such topics as:
- Post-colonialism’s impact on area and policy studies
- Advocacy and Narrative Journalism in the Middle East
- Peace Studies and Spoilers: Oslo and After
- Human Rights discourse in Lawfare and other forms of cognitive warfareÂ
- Academic vs. Think-Tank Jihad studies
- Naming the War on Terror: post-colonial disorientations
- Cancel Culture and the Middle-Easternization of Western Academia
- BDS: importing to the West the Arab war on Israel
- Jihadi Cognitive Warfare
- Holocaust Inversion Narratives, Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory
- The New (post 2000) AntisemitismÂ
- Activist Academics contribution to the corpus of knowledge
- Et cetera
The ASMEA Conference 2021 presents an alternative voice to that of MESA with an opportunity to contribute to this field of research. We suggest focusing, at least initially, on some of the more egregious cases of a failure to adequately inform the larger Western culture to which it owed reliable information, about the dynamics of the region that was MESA’s professional topic.
This could be an important contribution to sound thinking in the post-corona era. Please send abstract and a CV to rl.seconddraft@gmail.com.
ASMEA has funds for young scholars.https://www.asmeascholars.org/fourteenth-annual-asmea-conference has info about the travel and research grants.Â
If someone wants to apply, the deadline for the grants is earlier than the call for general proposals (April 30).
Deadline for Submissions, May 15, 2021
Chair, Council of Scholars
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