The symposium brings together scholars working across and beyond Middle East and North Africa studies to explore how discursive fields are constituted, and to ask what becomes possible when we read across and against established disciplinary and regional boundaries. Rather than simply juxtaposing area studies frameworks (e.g., Syria or Palestine), we aim to theorize “the regional” anew. This conversation began as an exchange around Syro-Palestine, reflecting on how regional fields—particularly those of Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, and Algeria—have been positioned in relation to the Question of Palestine. This positioning has tended to circumscribe the terrain of inquiry, foreclosing other narratives, epistemologies, and questions. Our symposium aims to explore a conceptual vocabulary that resists colonial inheritances and disciplinary segmentation, and that reimagines scholarly methods through forms of relation not yet captured by dominant frameworks.

The two-day program includes a Thursday evening keynote panel featuring four speakers, followed by three closed-door sessions on Friday with a cohort of invited scholars.

SYMPOSIUM CO-ORGANIZERS:

Aamer Ibraheem, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

Adrien Zakar, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and the History of Science and Technology, University of Toronto

Esmat Elhalaby, Assistant Professor in History, University of Toronto

Iheb Guermazi, The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University