Spring 2023
"Arts, Humanities and American Studies: East and West" Conference in New York
CASAR hosted a two-day conference in New York on “Arts, Humanities and American Studies: East and West." The event, which took place on May 16 and 17 at AUB's Debs Center, 305 E. 47th Street, New York, featured writers and scholars such as Moustafa Bayoumi, Juan Cole, Marcia Inhorn and David Shumway and presentations about arts, humanities, and American Studies in the Middle East and globally.
After the multiple crises Lebanon has suffered in recent years, CASAR hopes that this conference will allow AUB to reconnect with scholars in North America who share our interests, survey the global state of these vital scholarly disciplines, and serve as a prelude to an expanded conference we plan to convene in Beirut soon.
"We Are the Ones Who live Here" Podcast Launch Party
CASAR organized a listening and official launch party for a new podcast series from emerging Lebanese voices which took place on April 27 in West Hall Auditorium B. The podcast started as a segment from a journalism and theatre workshop in collaboration between the AUB Theatre Initiative and Hand2Mouth Theatre in New York in the spring of 2022. Spearheaded by ben Mourad, the podcast took on a new life and form, being extended into a full fledged series. Every episode reads like an auditory art piece, taking listeners on different journeys and stories throughout Lebanon, narrated by the people who live there.
Season 1 of this Podcast was produced with the generous support of Public Affairs Section at U.S. Embassy in Beirut.
The podcast series is out on all streaming platforms! A total of five episodes have been released for Season 1. You can also visit welebanonpod.com.
Workshop production of 1000 Strange Places: A Play by Robert Myers
Twenty years ago, the US led an illegal invasion of Iraq that cost the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them Iraqis. In 2003, as the world waited for George W. Bush to launch the war of “shock and awe" he had threatened, almost every Western journalist left Iraq.
One reporter, newly hired by The Washington Post, a Lebanese-American journalist named Anthony Shadid, from Oklahoma City, demanded to stay in Iraq and report the war from the perspective of ordinary Iraqis. Those stories, which constituted a new, more human form of journalism and which offered an alternative to the official narrative of preventing “weapons of mass destruction" and “spreading freedom" would win Shadid the first of two Pulitzer Prizes.
He would go on to write a memoir, House of Stone, about his family, rebuilding his grandmother's stone house in Marjayoun and the meaning of home, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. A Thousand Strange Places: Anthony Shadid and the Middle East is a workshop production of a new play about the extraordinary life and career of Anthony Shadid, based in part on his archive at AUB's Jafet Library.
Online and in-person registration here: registration
Etel Adnan Symposium
The English Department, AUB Libraries, the Sheikh Zayed Chair for Arabic and Islamic Studies, and the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) are glad to host a symposium which brings together academic research with personal testimonies and cultural practices In homage to Etel Adnan to explore her life and work across languages, cultures, and exiles. Born in Beirut in 1925 to a Greek Christian mother from Smyrna and an Arab Muslim father from Damascus who served as an officer in the Ottoman Empire, Etel Adnan's life has its beginnings in the aftermath of World War I and spanned almost a century. She received significant international acclaim as a visual artist over the past decade for work in a range of mediums, including painting, drawing and tapestry. However, she was also a powerful master of words, experimenting in a wide array of forms – as a journalist, novelist, essayist, activist, and poet philosopher. All of her work is deeply grounded in a humanistic approach, embracing the universe in critical yet joyful and visionary ways.
This symposium is accompanied by an exhibition of Etel Adnan's private papers, which she generously bequeathed to the American University of Beirut, film screenings, a staged reading, and a music concert.
For the event program, please visit CASAR's instagram page @casar_aub.
"Boycott": Movie Screening and Conversation with Julia Bacha
The Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research is glad to host a screening of the film Boycott by Brazilian award-winning documentary filmmaker Julia Bacha. The screening will be followed by a talk with Julia Bacha and Professor Greg Burris, Associate Professor and Director of Media Studies at the American university of Beirut, and a Q&A.
Boycott, the most recent film by Just Vision, follows the stories of a news publisher, an attorney and a speech therapist, who, when forced to choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across America. The film traces the impact of state legislation passed in 34 states designed to penalize individuals and companies that choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record. The film's story becomes more timely by the day. This spring, the Supreme Court will likely decide whether or not to take up one of the legal cases spearheaded by the ACLU that we follow in the film. We will also see copy-cat billscontinue to spread across the country and begin to target more and more movements for justice and equity. Just last month, South Carolina prefiled a template bill that targets abortion rights, trans rights & workplace equity. Similar anti-boycott legislation is taking place across the United States, as well as internationally. The film takes a bracing look at the far-reaching implications of this legislation and shares inspiring tales of everyday people standing up to protect their right to dissent.
Location: West Hall, Auditorium B
Date: February 7, 6 PM Beirut Time
Fall 2022-2023
Film Screening: "Blood Zero" by Doyle Avant
The Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) brings "Blood Zero," a film written and firected by Doyle Avant starring Basma Baydoun, Joyce Abu Jaoude, Nada Abou Farhat, Sara Abdo, and Suha Nader.
Due to a surge in deaths from D.I.V. (the Death Immuno-Sufficiency Virus) a new branch of Purgatory has opened up in the historic Ambassador Hotel – the site of Robert Kennedy's 1968 assassination. Purgatory also doubles as a lurid nightclub where Saddam Hussein, Marina Oswald Jr., Sirhan Sirhan and a swirling array of walks-ons from history gather to await the end of time – 6:08 p.m. 4 August 2020.
Blood ZerO was performed and filmed at Station Beirut during the peak of the Covid pandemic. It is now being screened for the first time at The Ark.
Running time: 93 min.
The film Screening will take place on the 17th of December 2022 at 7 p.m.
The Ark
Adel El Solh Street
Karakas
Price: 0 LL
For reservations and more information: 78 812 651 / [email protected]
Link to the movie trailor: https://vimeo.com/779016735?embed_email_provider=gmail
A Panel on the American 2022 Mid-Term Elections: Impacts on the U.S., the Middle East and the World
The Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), in collaboration with the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) and the Global Engagement Initiative at the American University of Beirut, organized a panel on the 17th of November on the Mid-term US elections with speakers R. William Johnstone, Maya Berry, Karim Makdisi and Huwaida Arraf, moderated by Rami Khouri.
(PBS News Hour)
In one of the most consequential mid-term elections in the U. S. in decades, Democrats out-performed pollsters' predictions and deprived the Republican Party of substantial congressional power. The ire of voters, especially female voters, at the recent Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights was clearly underplayed by pundits and the mainstream media, and President Biden and former President Obama's warnings that “democracy is on the ballot" clearly resonated with voters in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. But in the Florida governor's race, Trump's primary rival, Republican Ron DeSantis, won in a landslide. What are the ramifications of the mid-terms for the political future in the U.S., for domestic policy in the next two years and for the world and the Middle East in a time of continuing turmoil? Join us to discuss these and other topics with a diverse array of politicians, pollsters, activists, scholars and political analysts.
Maya Berry is the executive director of the Arab American Institute and former legislative director for U. S. Congressional Minority Whip David Bonior. At AAI, she has worked on combating hate crime, protecting the rights of securitized communities and strengthening democracy in the U. S.
R. William Johnstone has since 2006 provided consulting services for a variety of political polling, communications and research firms. In 2021-22 he has served as research director for a consortium of political organizations working on behalf of 32 Democratic candidates for the U.S. House. Prior to that, he worked for over twenty years as legislative director and chief of staff for U.S. Senators Wyche Fowler, Jr. (D-GA) and Max Cleland (D-GA). In 1986, he received the Campaign Manager of the Year Award from the American Association of Political Consultants for his work on Fowler's successful Senate campaign that year. Johnstone also served on the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission). He is the author of 9/11 and the Future of Transportation Security; Bioterror: Anthrax, Influenza, and the Future of Public Health Security; and Protecting Transportation. Mr. Johnstone attended Emory University (BA, MA).
Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian American human rights attorney, activist, and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian civil society-led movement which utilizes nonviolent direct action to confront and challenge Israeli military occupation and colonial violence. She is the former chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, and in 2008 led five successful sea voyages to the Gaza Strip to confront and challenge Israel's illegal blockade of the two million Palestinians living there. She currently resides with her husband and two children in Michigan, where she works as a civil rights attorney. In 2020, she served as a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention and in 2022 was a candidate for the US Congress in Michigan's 10th congressional district.
Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Politics, and Director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.
Rami George Khouri is co-director of Global Engagement at the American University of Beirut, an internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was formerly executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, editor-in-chief of The Jordan Times, and founding director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006.
Link to the full panel will be posted soon.
CASAR supports Civilization Sequence Program (CVSP) Prestigious Lecture Series (2022-23)
"The Sovereign Debt Crisis in Lebanon and Other Emerging Markets" a talk by Sami Geadah
(Ozge Ozdemir, BBC Turkish)
In collaboration with the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & International Affairs (IFI) and the Global Engagement Center in New York, the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) hosted a hybrid talk titled "The Sovereign Debt Crisis in Lebanon and Other Emerging Markets: Problems and Prospects" on October 2oth, given by Sami Geadah (IFI- AUB Associate Fellow) and moderated by Sumru Altug (Chair of the Department of Economics, AUB) at the IFI buidling.
Professor Geadah discussed the rapid increase in emerging market sovereign debt levels in recent years and how the share of this debt held by domestic banks has also increased, tightening the connection between sovereign debt and financial risks. While Lebanon was an outlier in emerging markets in these vulnerabilities—which were an important cause of the ongoing crisis—Lebanon was not unique in this regard. The ongoing changes to global economic conditions are expected to be unfavorable to emerging market debt, including to several countries in our region, raising questions about debt sustainability. Countries can take measures to alleviate these risks, namely in the fiscal and financial areas, some of which might be challenging given pressures to increase near term growth and provide employment opportunities especially for the youth.
Link to the talk: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13TU7nFO7pE7X1XjHKEB5zk1QzCSXzeUo/view?usp=sharing
Link to Q&A portion: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15HlzfuzS2TlKssI6dcMPD5fYslwDhI7i/view?usp=sharing
Link to Q&A portion PART 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y22EXjnMvXwQySuX6G2jtYUJZPbeyzig/view?usp=sharing
Directors Lab Mediterranean (DLM) 2022
With the support of the Al Waleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), the Director's Lab Mediterranean (DLM) is holding its fourth edition fully in person at the American University of Beirut from the 12th to the 19th September, 2022.
DLM follows the model of the Directors Lab at Lincoln Center Theater in New York City, and it aims to provide emerging and mid-career stage directors from all over the world with the opportunity to build peer connections and create artistic networks while exploring Mediterranean theater traditions and current practices. It was endorsed by Anne Cattaneo, the founder of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and was initially launched at the American University of Beirut in July 2019 hosted by the AUB Theater Initiative and the Department of Fine Arts and Art History.
Summer 2022
Global Humanities Institute: Climate Justice and Problems of Scale University of Pretoria 2022
The Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) participated in the Global Humanities Institute (GHI) on “Climate Justice and Problems of Scale" held at the University of Pretoria (and over virtual platforms). The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the institute which will run from July 29 through August 7, 2022. The panel titled “Environmental and Artistic Activism” was presented by panelists Leo Bernucci, Marcos Colón, and Robert Myers addressing environmental and artistic activism in the Amazon, Africa and globally by examining the history and consequences of extractivist practices, perspectives of Indigenous peoples, the dangers activists and those who report on environmental degradation face, and the role of film, theater and other media in drawing attention to corporate and governmental destruction of the environment.
The Cofounder and Managing Director of Environment Academy, Sammy Kayed, travelled to South Africa to give a workshop at the Global Humanities Institute (GHI). Sammy's workshop broke down the situation in Lebanon and argued that the country acts as a portal for the conceivable and inconceivable characteristics of the civilizational collapse warned of by climate scientists and critiques of neoliberalism. He looked at the genuine and co-opted rush towards transformation and justice. He gave several absurd stories of co-optation, exhibitionism, and instances of false solutions emerging from Lebanon. He then gave stories of hope emerging from over 100 community members and 30 experts deeply involved in the Environment Academy. He invited the audience to reflect on their beliefs on whether or not their country is doomed and what doom means to them. He then nudged these perceptions toward a hopeful imaginative where the frontlines of doom are actually the most ripe areas for genuine transformation.
Spring 2022
Media and Environment: Moderators: Round Table Discussion Moderated by Blake Atwood (AUB) and Suzanne Enzerink (University of St. Gallen)
This roundtable discussion approaches these questions from two different, if parallel, approaches: representation and infrastructure. We set out to understand how people encounter the environment in the everyday, be it through novels, media coverage, or material experiences. The roundtable purposefully foregrounds different geographies--the US vs. India--and methodologies to showcase the breadth of recent scholarship that theorizes human responses to environmental change and/or catastrophe. Ultimately, by bringing together these different perspectives, we aim to underscore that the effects of modernity, colonialism, and extraction are felt across the world. This global framing is pressing in Lebanon, where environmental collapse is interwoven with a multitude of other crises, including financial, political, and public health.
Panelists:
Min Hyoung Song (Boston College, Professor of English and Director of the Asian American Studies program)
Rahul Mukherjee (University of Pennsylvania, Dick Wolf Associate Professor of Television and New Media Studies; Associate Professor of English; Director, Cinema and Media Studies Program)
May 4, 2022 at 5pm Beirut time, 10am EST
Find the link to the panel here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JVpCipRkeFouQ41_0CBLRkHvouXDVlz-/view?usp=sharing
"A Thousand Strange Places": Play About Anthony Shadid Premiered at Yale
A Thousand Strange Places: Anthony Shadid and the Middle East, a play about the career of renowned Lebanese-American journalist Antony Shadid, by CASAR director Robert Myers, produced by the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale University in conjunction with CASAR and AUB, premiered at Yale on April 29 and 30 and in New York on May 2. The play, which is based in part on the Shadid archive housed at AUB's Jafet Library, took place in conjunction with a panel, organized by prominent journalist and AUB professor Rami Khouri, of celebrated foreign correspondents and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Columbia School of Journalism who knew and worked with Anthony Shadid. These events were developed by the CASAR Working Group on Anthony Shadid, which was initiated and is directed by Rami Khouri, director of Global Engagement at Debs Center in New York. Other members of the Working Group include prize-winning photographer George Azar, who teaches in the Department of Media Studies at AUB, Associate Professor of English at AUB Amy Zenger, and Kaoukab Chebaro, formerly a curator at AUB's Jafet Library and currently the director of special collections at Columbia University. Marcia C. Inhorn, the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale and Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies, says, “We are looking forward to hosting the premiere of this extraordinary new play and panel about Anthony Shadid at Yale and to working again with our partners at CASAR and AUB."
Anthony Shadid Workshop Series and Performance April 2022
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Environmental Literacy Workshop Presented by Professor Rola Khishfe
The AUB Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, and Prince AlWaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at the American University of Beirut, hosted an interactive workshop about Environmental Literacy on Thursday, March 3, 2022, at IFI’s conference room.
To tackle the real-world environmental problems facing our societies, environmental literacy has become a goal of many worldwide science curricula. The interactive workshop thus aimed to address environmental literacy in teacher education programs with prospective teachers who will address environmental literacy in their classrooms. The issue of environmental literacy was explored through the lens of argumentation in relation to environmental social science-based issues.
De-colonized Global Media: Reporting as if Ordinary People Matter
Global media reporting and commentary are increasingly polarized, profit-oriented, ideologically driven, and entertainment-based — when the world needs exactly the opposite: complete, accurate, empathetic, and non-colonial views of other cultures.The NYCity-based AUB's Global Engagement Initiative offers from March 22 to April 19, 2022, a five-session, free, and non-credit online seminar that explores why this matters and how we might achieve this goal.
The seminar “De-colonized Global Media: Reporting as if Ordinary People Matter" begins by appreciating the enduring relevance of the craft and legacy of the late Arab-American foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid. His peers repeatedly recognized the power of his conveying to the world the sentiments of ordinary people across the Middle East. These sentiments often determine the fate of entire countries – as we see in the non-stop national uprisings by bludgeoned, desperate men and women across the Middle East.
Each 75-minute session is led by a media scholar-activist journalist whose professional experiences across cultures bring to life the three-dimensional totality of individuals, cultures, and countries across the Global South — in contrast to fear-mongering and aggressive silhouettes of foreign societies that are often seen through prisms of war, sanctions, and threats.
Reporters who successfully capture human sentiments often use narrative reporting and writing techniques that mirror the work of creative artists — novelists, painters, dramatists, poets, cinematographers, documentarians, photographers, and short story writers. Established communicators in some of these art forms who lead the seminar sessions will analyze the craft elements of people-centered reporting by Shadid and others, and why it captivates readers and editors. They will discuss with participants non-colonial journalism's core quest for social justice at home and transnational justice among states.
The five instructors are:
 
| Seminar coordinator Rami G. Khouri, AUB director of global engagement and journalist-in-residence, with over 50 years of experience in journalism in the Middle East, North America and Europe. He has studied the personal papers of Shadid at the AUB Libraries Archives, analyzed all of Shadid's books, articles, lectures, and interviews, and interviewed 50 of Shadid's colleagues who worked with him. |
 
| Dr. Robert Myers, professor of English and comparative literature, award-winning playwright, director of the AUB Theater Initiative , and director of AUB's Center for American Studies and Research. He will explain how Shadid's texts often mirror the work of dramatists in capturing people's emotions, in the wider context of their societies' conditions. His new play that opens at Yale University in Spring 2022, 1000 Strange Places, brings to life episodes in Shadid's reporting around the Middle East that simultaneously capture the complexities of U.S.-Mideast interactions. |
 
| George Azar , award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker, has covered the Middle East for four decades for Al Jazeera, Jadaliyya , the New York Times, the AP and others. He is AUB's “Photojournalist-in-Residence" and teaches documentary filmmaking and photojournalism. A book author and director of numerous documentary films, he has been awarded a Rory Peck Award for 'extraordinary courage behind the camera', a British Royal Television Society Award, and the Jury Prize at the Al Jazeera International Documentary Festival. |
 
| Ken Harper, an award-winning designer, professor, photojournalist, and media educator, is associate professor and the first director of the Newhouse Center for Global Engagement at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. The center is dedicated to bringing knowledge to the world through storytelling, collaboration, and innovation. Harper has pioneered international programs that link journalism students with counterparts around the Middle East and Africa |
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| Helena Cobban, Founder and President of Just World Educational Foundation, was an award-winning foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and the Sunday Times and now promotes social justice and decolonization through publishing, philanthropy, and advocacy. She focuses on the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice, especially in the Global South. She is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Washington DC-based Center for International Policy.
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Each 75-minutes-long online session will be conducted in English, every Tuesday at 1 pm US Eastern Time, from March 22 to April 19, 2022. It is free of charge and open to students, working journalists, and interested professionals. Modest amounts of readings will be sent to participants before each session, and there are no written assignments. In-session discussion is the heart of the seminar and is highly encouraged.
Applicants should complete a short questionnaire about their professional status and their interest in the seminar topic. Spaces are limited. Accepted applicants should commit to attending all five sessions and will be sent log-in information.
JONI MITCHELL AND THE LITERATURE OF CONFESSION
Presented by the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) and co-sponsored by the English Department:
In this talk, David Shumway will connect the singer-songwriter's music and lyrics with confessionalism in literature, including fiction, poetry, autobiography, and film from the later 1960s through the 1980s. While Mitchell has long been understood as having some relationship to confessional poets such as Sylvia Plath, Shumway expands that context and looks more deeply at the similarities and differences.
David R. Shumway is Professor of English, and Literary and Cultural Studies, and the founding Director of the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University. His most recent book is Rock Star: The Making of Musical Icons from Elvis to Springsteen (2014), and he has published numerous articles on popular music. Some of his other books include Michel Foucault (1989), Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis (2003), and John Sayles (2012). His next book deals with realism in novels, films, plays, and television series.
Time: Thursday, February 8 pm Beirut time
Find the link to the talk here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ae2wtsaR5DMXJN51rapy8rupyjJ83_dU/view?usp=sharing