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How East Meets West Today: Economies and Cultures of the Middle East in a Global Era

A one-day conference organized by Asli Bali, UCLA

Friday, February 12, 2010
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
School of Law, Room 1457
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA United States

By tradition, and especially after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Middle East is portrayed as distinct and apart from the rest of the world, especially the West. But the region is more closely tied to the world than ever before: What happens there affects what happens here, and vice versa. This is most obvious in the domain of war and peace, but it is also true on the level of economics and culture.  This one-day conference will consider the interconnectedness of the Middle East with the rest of the world, and particularly the West, in the context of globalization and global crisis in the 21st century.

Welcome and Introduction

10:00 – 10:30 am

PANEL I: Interwoven Economies

10:30 am – 12:30 pm

Asli Bali, Acting Professor of Law, UCLA; moderator

The War Economy in Iraq

Pete Moore, Associate Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve University

Economic Roots of Iran's Long, Hot Summer of 2009

Arang Keshavarzian, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University

Hawalas: Financing Radical Islam or Survival?

Khalid Medani, Assistant Professor of Political Science, McGill University

Beyond Eurabia: Muslims in European Politics, Economy and Culture

Paul Silverstein, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Reed College

Lunch Break

12: 30 pm - 2:00 pm

PANEL II: Connected Cultures

2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Susan Slyomovics, Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA; moderator

Culture and War in Iraq

Rochelle Davis, Assistant Professor of Arab Studies, Georgetown University

Tehran Political Posters Then and Now

Shiva Balaghi, Cogut International Humanities Fellow, Brown University

Arabs and Muslims in Mainstream American Culture

Louise Cainkar, Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, Marquette University

The Global Kaffiyya Craze

Ted Swedenburg, Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas

 

Cost: Free and open to the public

For more information please contact

Amy Bruinooge, Center for Near Eastern Studies
Tel: (310) 825-1181
cnes@international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/events

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies