MENA Dialogues Video Series
MENA Dialogues was a video series produced by the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University from January 2017 through June 2018, consisting of interviews with some of our guest speakers, visiting scholars and writers-in-residence.
WENDY PEARLMAN ON HER ORAL HISTORY OF THE SYRIAN CONFLICT
On June 7, 2018, MENA director Brian Edwards interviewed MENA faculty member Wendy Pearlman about her book We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017). Pearlman is the Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern and a core faculty member of the university’s Middle East and North African Studies Program. Her other books include Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (2011) and Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (2003).
MARC LYNCH on arab media, academic blogging & the changing regional order of the middle east
On January 8, 2018, MENA director Brian Edwards interviewed Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), a contributing editor at The Monkey Cage blog, and the author of The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (2016) and Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today (2007).
Trita Parsi: Enmity, Diplomacy & the Fate of the Iran Deal
On December 11, 2017, MENA director Brian Edwards interviewed Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (2007), A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran (2012), and Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy (2017).
Novelist and essayist Porochista Khakpour in conversation with Brian Edwards
On October 9, 2017, as part of our MENA Monday series, MENA director Brian Edwards interviewed novelist and essayist Porochista Khakpour, who was a Visiting Writer-in-Residence with the MENA Program and the Center for the Writing Arts in September and October of 2017. Khakpour is the author of the novels Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007) and The Last Illusion (2014), and the forthcoming memoir Sick. The point of departure for the conversation was Khakpour’s “How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay.”
Is Morocco Exceptional? An Interview with Abdelhay Moudden & Driss Ksikes
On May 15, 2017, MENA director Brian Edwards interviewed two of Morocco’s most prominent intellectual figures: the political scientist Abdelhay Moudden and the playwright and novelist Driss Ksikes. Moudden is Professor of Political Science at Mohammed V University in Rabat and the founder and academic director of the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning in Morocco. Ksikes is the author of numerous plays, novels, and essays and is editor in chief of the journal Economia.
Joel Beinin on labor struggles in the Arab world & the bleak situation in Egypt
On April 3, 2017, MENA Assistant Director Danny Postel interviewed Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University, about his recent book Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Beinin's previous books include Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882 1954, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, and Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa.
Esra Özyürek on religion, secularism, and nationalism in Turkey and Europe
On February 14, 2017, Nazlı Özkan, a PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology and Middle East & North African Studies at Northwestern, spokme with Esra Özyürek, Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of author of Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey and Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion and Conversion in the New Europe and the editor of The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey.
Bassam Haddad & Brian Edwards on public scholarship & Middle East studies
On January 30, 2017, MENA director Brian Edwards interviewed Bassam Haddad, Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at George Mason University, Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute, and the co-founder and co-editor of the online magazine Jadaliyya. Haddad is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience and co-editor of Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? and Critical Voices, a book of interviews with leading researchers, intellectuals, artists, and activists in the Middle East today.
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