AMCA-Sponsored Sessions at CAA, MESA, and DIWAN 7 (2007 – present) | AMCA | Association for Modern + Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran + Turkey

AMCA-Sponsored Sessions at CAA, MESA, and DIWAN 7 (2007 – present)

MESA 2023, Montreal
 
Formulating Modernism through Museums and Exhibitions in the MENA Region 
11/4/2023
 
Chair: Caroline Angle Maguire, University of Maryland

Democratizing and Modernizing the Musée National du Bardo (1956 – 1980)
Caroline Angle Maguire, University of Maryland
 
Revolutionizing the Institution? Remaking Art Histories at the First Pan-African Cultural Festival (PANAF), Algiers 1969
Ashley Miller, Independent Scholar
 
A Museum of Oneʼs Own: Ali Jabri and Curatorial Practice as Worldmaking in the Jordan Museum of Popular Traditions
Elizabeth Rauh, The American University in Cairo
 
MESA 2021, Virtual
 
What is ‘Islamic’ Contemporary Art?
12/3/2021

Chairs: Sascha Crasnow, University of Michigan; Michelle Al-Ferzly, University of Michigan

Not Everyone’s Heaven: Adeela Suleman’s Transhistorical Domesticities
Michelle Al-Ferzly, University of Michigan

Modernism in Islamic Art, Modernism as Islamic Art
Hamed Yousefi Koupai, Northwestern University

Re-Constructing Geometry: Rasheed Araeen’s Negotiations of ‘Islamic Art’
Kylie Gilchrist, University of Manchester
 
Islam, Contemporary Art and Cultural Vision
Valerie Behiery, Independent Scholar

 

CAA 2021, Online

Mapping Art Histories in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, Roundtable Discussion
2/12/21

Moderator: Tiffany Floyd, Columbia University
Nada Shabout, University of North Texas
Sarah Rogers, Middlebury College
Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts
Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas

CAA 2020, Chicago
Art and Revolution Again: Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Egypt: AMCA Idea Exchange
2/14/20

Host: Nada Shabout, University of North Texas

Modern Architecture, Handicraft Design, and Twentieth-Century Tourism
2/15/20
Chairs: Daniel E. Coslett, Western Washington University; Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas

“The Holy Land Offers You Its Products”: The Transformation of Palestinian Handicrafts During the British Mandate
Nisa Ari, University of Houston

Tourism and Artisanry in Italian Colonial Libya in the 1930s
Brian L. McLaren, University of Washington

An Appalachian Pleasure Garden: Tourism and the Reshaping and Exploitation of the American Hinterland
Lizabeth Wardzinski, North Carolina State University

Helena Perheentupa and the Labor of Crafts at Jawaja, India
Vishal Khandelwal, University of Michigan

“Anatolian Humanism”: A Critical Analysis of Decorative Arts in Tourist Spaces of Turkey, 1960–1990
Ozge Sade Mete, Bellevue College


MESA 2019, New Orleans

Voyage to Tomorrow: Futurism and Science Fiction in Middle Eastern Art & Design
11/15/19

Chair: Elizabeth Rauh, University of Michigan
Discussant: Nasser O. Rabbat, MIT

Futurity and the Arts of a New Syria, 1960-1970
Anneka Lenssen, University of California, Berkeley

Life after Earth: Nader Khalili’s “Futuristic Homes for Lunar Surfaces”
Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts

Gulf Futurism: An Art Historical Approach, Definition, and Characteristics
Joan Grandjean, Université de Genève

Subverting Narratives of Occupation in Science Fiction: Larissa Sansour’s “Nation Estate” and “In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain”
Sascha Crasnow, University of Michigan

Speculative Imaginaries in the Moving Image: Citizenship, Matter, and Space-Time Slippages in the Global Middle East
11/16/19

Organizer: Rana Jarbou
Chair: Sintia Issa, UC Santa Cruz, 
Discussant: Tarek El-Ariss, Dartmouth College

#IAmReal- Mediating Difference between Amna and Sophia: Citizenship, Gender and Hyperreality in Saudi Arabia
Rana Jarbou, UC Santa Cruz

Queer Subjectivities and Spatial Dimensions in Tripoli, Lebanon
Raed El Rafei, UC Santa Cruz

A Grammar Built with Rocks: Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Suzy Halajian, UC Santa Cruz

Mapping Waste Matters for a Time of Flowers: Marwa Arsanios
Sintia Issa, UC Santa Cruz

CAA 2019, New York

The Artist and the Allegory: Locating “the Feminine” in Modern Arab Art
2/13/2019

Chairs: Alessandra Amin, UCLA; Nisa Ari, MIT
Discussant: Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas

Two Arab Female Photographers in Conversation: Karimeh Abboud in Palestine and Marie el-Khazen in Lebanon
Yasmine Nachabe Taan, Lebanese American University

Beyond Umm Al-Dunya: New Representations of Fellaha Women in Egyptian Modern Art
Sarah Dwider, Northwestern University

Love in the Time of Arafat: Sexuality and Political Engagement in Prewar Beirut
Alessandra Amin, UCLA

CAA 2018, Los Angeles

Islamic Art Circa 1900
02/22/2018

Chair: Alex Dika Seggerman, Yale University

Islamic Art and the Turn to Tapestry: Women Artists in Tunis 
Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas

The Muybridge Albums in Istanbul: Photography as Diplomacy in the Late Ottoman Empire
Emily Neumeier, The Ohio State University

From Calligraphy to Handicraft: Art Education Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire
Martina Becker, University of Michigan

Alabaster and Emulsion: Photographs of Muhammad Ali Architecture 
Alex Dika Seggerman, Yale University

MESA 2017, Washington, DC

The Islamic and the Modern in the Twentieth Century Visual Middle East
11/19/2017

Organizers: Saleem Al-Bahloly; Nada M. Shabout, University of North Texas
Discussants: Nasser O. Rabbat, MIT; Elizabeth Rauh, University of Michigan

A Mid-Westerner in the Middle East: Abby Weed Grey’s art collections of the 1960s
Sarah-Neel Smith, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

Istilham: Jewad Selim’s negotiation of continuity in art
Nada M. Shabout, University of North Texas

Shakir Hassan Al Said’s theology of line, or the turn to Islamic philosophy after the Ba’ath Coup of 1963 
Saleem Al-Bahloly, Johns Hopkins University

DIWAN 7, 2017, Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI

Art, Pedagogy, and Activism
11/17/2017

Organizer: Sarah Rogers, independent scholar, AMCA President-Elect

Haytham Bahoora, University of Toronto
Amira Pierce, New York University
Dina Ramadan, Bard College 
Sarah Rogers, Independent scholar, AMCA President-Elect
Hanan Toukan, Brown University

CAA 2017, New York City

Getting Nude: Artists, Audiences, and the Present Past in the Middle East
2/16/2017

Chair: Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut

Nudity and the Press: Encounters in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Erotic Literature
Hala Auji, American University of Beirut

Imagined Bodies in Egyptian Modern Art
Nadia Radwan, Université de Bern

Musallikha, or the Anti-Nude
Saleem Al-Bahloly, Johns Hopkins University  

The Nude’s Gaze: Beyond Heteronormativity in the Modern Middle Eastern Nude
Sarah C. Johnson, Freie University Berlin

Body Laid Bare in Performance by Barbad Golshiri
Sandra Skurvida, Fashion Institute of Technology, A State University of New York 

Of Scandals That Never Happened, Or Why Is It Always Somebody Else Who Has a Problem with the Nude?
Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut 

MESA 2016, Washington, DC

The Art Salon in the Middle East: Migration of Institutional Patronage and its Challenges
11/18/2016

Organizers: Monique Bellan and Nadia von Maltzahn, Orient Institut Beirut
Discussant: Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut 

The Egyptian Avant-Garde Defying the Salon
Monique Bellan, Orient Institut Beirut

The Baghdad Avant-Garde’s Unofficial Salons
Nada Shabout, University of North Texas

Guiding the Artist and the Public? Salon d’Automne at Beirut’s Sursock Museum
Nadia von Maltzahn, Orient Institut Beirut

Examining the role of the auteur in the Arab world
11/20/2016

Organizer: Samirah Alkassim

Dead Auteurs and their Legacies in the Post-Cinematic Age
Samirah Alkassim, Independent Film Scholar / Program & Communications Manager, The Jerusalem Fund, Washington DC

Intertextuality and Trauma:  Muhammad Malas as the Transnational, Syrian, and Arab Auteur
Nezar Andary, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi

Skeptical Auteurism in the Arab World
Peter Limbrick, University of California Santa Cruz

Landscapes of Erasure and the Cinematic Language of Kamal Aljafari
Najat Rahman, Université de Montréal

CAA 2016, Washington, DC

Curating the Middle East in America: A Roundtable Discussion
02/04/2016

Chairs: Sarah-Neel Smith, Maryland Institute College of Art; Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas
Organizer: Nada Shabout, University of North Texas

Mitra M. Abbaspour, Independent Curator and Scholar
Kimberly Masteller, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Valerie Hillings, Abu Dhabi Project, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

MESA 2015, Denver

As Images Move: Circulation, Appropriation, and Transformation in Contemporary Visual Production
11/23/15 

Chair/Discussant: Sarah-Neel Smith, Maryland Institute College of Art

Psychoanalysis and the Social Life of Dreams in Hassan Khanʼs Trusted Sources
Tammer El Sheikh, Concordia University

Art after Abu Ghraib: Spectacle and Medium in the Fashioning of Iraqi War Art
Haytham Bahoora, University of Colorado Boulder

The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back 
Dina A. Ramadan, Bard College

CAA 2015, New York City

What is Contemporary Islamic Art?
2/14/2015

Chairs: Nada Shabout, University of North Texas; Sarah A. Rogers, AMCA President-Elect

Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University
Dina Bangdel, Virginia Commonwealth University
Gul Inanc, Nanyang Technological University
Azra Aksamija, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Finbarr B. Flood, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Avinoam Shalem, Columbia University

MESA 2014, Washington, DC

Maghrebi Visual Culture and the Politics of Memory
11/23/14

Chair: Patricia M. Goldsworthy

Approaching Maghrebi Visual Culture
David Prochaska

Postcolonial Re-exposures: The Moroccan Afterlife of French Colonial Photography 
Patricia M. Goldsworthy

Decolonizing Patrimony: Institutions, Nationhood and the Construction of Heritage in Bourguiba’s Tunisia 
Nancy Demerdash

Visual Genealogies of an Algerian Vernacular 
Anna Cavness

Defeat and Dissent in the Cinematic Discourse of Nouri Bouzid 
Nouri Gana

Spaces of Movement: An Architectural Critique of Globality in the Middle East
11/24/14

Chairs: Vahid Vahdat Zad; Shima Mohajeri

Sarmatism, Orientalism, and the Third Reich: The Afterlife of Ottoman Imperial Tents in EuropeAshley Dimmig

Shopping Mall in Translation: From US Suburbs to Pahlavi Tehran (1960-79) 
Farshid Emami

Antoine Tabet’s Garden Mansions Housing Project in Haifa at the Crossroads of Empires: 1937-1945 
Adeeb Naccache

Imagining the Mediterranean in Tripoli: Decoding the Nautical Chart of Ibrāhīm al-Mursī, 865AH/1461 CE 
Jeremy Ledger

CAA 2014, Chicago

Unstable Fields: Research Practices and Political Upheaval in the Middle East
2/15/2014

Chairs: Alexandra Dika Seggerman, Yale University; Sarah-Neel Smith, University of California, Los Angeles

Negotiating Egyptian Collections after January 25th
Alexandra Dika Seggerman, Yale University

Reading the Past in Gezi Park
Sarah-Neel Smith, University of California, Los Angeles

Challenges and Opportunities Researching the Ottoman Rail Network
Peter Christensen, Harvard University

Reconstructing the Past in a Political Hotbed: Reflections on Current Archival Research on the Modern Maghreb
Nancy Demerdash, Princeton University

Beg, Borrow, and Steal: Navigating Iraqi Visual Archives
Mona Damluji, Wheaton College

MESA 2013, New Orleans

A Relocated Politics: Making Art Elsewhere than the Nation
10/2013

Organizers: Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut; Anneka Lenssen, American University of Cairo
Discussant: Kirsten Scheid

Who Imagines the Nation-State? Picasso, Palestine and the Cultural Politics of Modernity in Ramallah
Hanan Toukan, EUME/Berlin

Alien-nation in the Global Art Economy
Sandra Skurvida, Fashion Institute of Technology, A State University of New York

Impossible Identification: The Politics of Palestinian Contemporary Art in Israel
Kiven Strohm, Université de Montréal

Modern Art and the Arab Awakening: Eros as a Figure of Vitality in the Painting of Jawad Salim
Saleem Al-Bahloly, University of California, Berkeley

CAA 2013, New York City

A Revolution in Art? The Arab Uprisings and Artistic Production
2/15/2013

Chairs:Dina A. Ramadan, Bard College; Jennifer Pruitt, Smith College

Can There Be an Art of a Revolution? The Counter-Example of the Politics of Painting in 1950s Baghdad
Saleem Al-Bahloly,University of California, Berkeley

When Artists Become Martyrs: Understanding the Place of Art in the “Revolution”
Dina A Ramadan, Bard College 

“King of Kings of Africa”: Racializing Gaddafi in the Visual Output of the 2011 Libyan Revolution
Christiane Gruber, University of Michigan

Painted Discontent: The Role of Street Art in the Egyptian Revolution
Jennifer Pruitt, Smith College

MESA 2012, Denver

In the Shadow of the Cold War: Modern Art in the Arab World
11/18/2012

Organizers: Sarah Rogers, Darat al Funun; Saleem Al-Bahloly, UC-Berkeley

American University of Beirut and the Formation of the Modern Lebanese Artist
Sarah Rogers, Darat al Funun

The Politics of the Modern Artwork in Cold War Iraq
Saleem al-Bahloly, UC-Berkeley

Mutable Form and Materiality: “Interweaving” Art and Politics in the New Tapestry of Safia Farhat, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Maria Laskiewicz, and Jagoda Buic
Jessica Gerschultz, University of Kansas

Arab Spring, Artistic Awakening? Art, Resistance and Revolution
11/19/2012

Organizers: Jennifer Pruitt, Smith College; Dina A Ramadan, Bard College
Chair/Discussant: Elliott Colla, Georgetown University

“King of Kings of Africa”: Racializing Gaddafi in the Visual Output of the 2011 Libyan Revolution
Christiane J. Gruber, University of Michigan

The Global Street: The Rise of Cairene Street Art, 2011-2012
Jennifer Pruitt, Smith College

The Artist and the Martyr: Egyptian Art in the Time of Revolution
Dina A Ramadan, Bard College

Demanding Images: Documenting Revolution in Syria
Anne-Marie McManus, Yale University

CAA 2012, Los Angeles

Artists in Times of War and Revolution
2/24/2012

Chair: Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Wafaa Bilal, New York University
Salwa Mikdadi, Emirates Foundation
Nada Shabout, University of North Texas
Sandra Skurvida, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York

CAA 2011, New York City

Modern Arab Art and Its Historical and Methodological Relationships to the Post-Colonial Context
2/9/2011

Chair: Sarah Rogers 

Prita Meier 
Robin Greeley
Nada Shabout
Saloni Mathur

MESA 2010, San Diego

Articulating Politics, Mobilizing Art: The Left and the Visual Arts
11/2010

Organizers: Dina A. Ramadan; Sarah Rogers
Chair/Discussant: Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Northwestern University

Writing for Art and Freedom: Reading Aesthetics and Ideology in Al-Tatawwur
Dina A. Ramadan, Bard College

The Visual Culture of the Left in Cold War Iran
Z. Pamela Karimi, UMASS-Dartmouth

The Arab Surrealist Movement in Exile, 1973-1980
Donald LaCoss, University of Wisconsin LaCrosse

Palestinian Art & Leftist Politics in Beirut
Sarah A. Rogers, Columbia University Middle East Research Center, Amman

The Specter of the Political and the Promise of Politics: Contemporary Artistic Production and the Middle East
Omnia El Shakry, UC Davis

MESA 2009, Boston

Pirated Politics: Contemporary Art, Artists, and the Post-production of the Middle East
11/2009

Chairs: Anneka Lenssen; Rhonda Saad
Discussant: Nada Shabout

(Mis)consuming Reality in Omer Fast’s The Casting (2007)
Rhonda Saad

Street Art in Post-Revolutionary Iran
Elizabeth Rauh

Mediated Reality In and Out of Palestine
Kathy Zarur

Between Public Memory and National Narrative: The Visual Document and History in the Middle East
11/2009

Chairs: Mitra Abbaspour; Alex Seggerman
Discussant: Kishwar Rizvi

Ordering History in Time: The Beirut National Museum
Joanne Nucho

Joseph Lindon Smith’s Painting Excavations of Egypt
Katie Pfohl

The Street and the Road: Public Art in Cairo
Alexandra Dika Seggerman

Collecting Truths: Strategies of the Photo Archive in Contemporary Lebanese Art
Mitra M. Abbaspour

MESA 2008, Washington, DC

A History of the Real World: Realism and the Visual Arts in Egypt and Lebanon
11/2008

Organizers: Raja Adal; Sarah Rogers

Reconsidering Realism in Early Fatimid Art: The Fatimid Luster Workshop of Muslim bin al-Dahhan
Jennifer Pruitt, Harvard University

Evaluating Real Images: Early Egyptian Art Criticism and the Pursuit of Realism
Dina A. Ramadan, Columbia University

Reality and Unreality in Egyptian Primary School Drawing Classes during the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Raja Adal, Harvard University

It’s Like Really Being There: al-Nahdah, Ideology and the Photographic Aesthetic
Stephen Sheehi, University of South Carolina

Daoud Corm, Realism, and the Origins of Lebanese Art
Sarah Rogers, MIT

MESA 2007, Montreal, Canada

AMCA’s Inaugural Double Session: Art Without History? Evaluating ‘Arab’ Art
11/2007

Organizers: Nada Shabout; Dina Ramadan; Sarah Rogers
Chairs: Nada Shabout and Silvia Naef
Discussant: Shiva Balaghi

Building a Market, Defining an Audience: Beirut’s Gallery System, 1960s & 1970s
Sarah Rogers, MIT

Visualizing the Nadha: Egyptian Artists’ Collectives and their Criticism during the Interwar Years
Dina Ramadan, Columbia University 

London’s Arab Renaissance c. 1975 
Anneka Lenssen, MIT

Women and Institutionalization of Contemporary Art Practices in the Arab World
Salwa Mikdadi, Independent Curator

Art in the Streets: Modern Art, Museum Practice and the Urban Environment in Contemporary Morocco 
Katarzyna Pieprzak, Williams College 

Modernity and its Post in Constructing an Arab Capital: Baghdad’s urban space, context and questions
Caecilia Pieri, EHESS Paris/Amman Ahlia University, Jordan

Lebanese Cultural Workers and Artists: Navigating the Arab Cultural Terrain in New York and Beirut
Nadine Khalil, American University of Beirut