Friday, October 13

6:30 p.m. Dinner

8:00 p.m. SERMEISS Reception 

Saturday, October 14

8:00 a.m. Breakfast

9:00 a.m. Welcome and Announcements

• SERMEISS President Annie Tracy Samuel, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga 

9:05 – 9:45 a.m. "Intentional Ambiguity: Purposeful Discrepancies Between Law and Implementation in Jordan"

• Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech University

9:50 – 10:30 a.m. “Bottles of Water and Grenades of Gas: The Repression-Dissent Nexus and Arab Monarchies in the Arab Uprisings”

• Daniel P. Brown, College of Charleston

10:35 – 11:15 a.m. “Military Origins and Military Actions During Mass Uprisings: The Cases of Egypt, Syria, and Yemen”

• Silvana Toska, Davidson College

11:20 – 12:00 noon. “Party System Weakness and Democratic Backsliding: Evidence from Post-Revolutionary Tunisia”

• Bedirhan Mutlu, George Washington University & Salih Yasun, Virginia Military Institute

12:00 p.m. Lunch

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. Business Meeting

2:00 – 2:45 p.m. “Science Fiction and Science Fiction Parody as Commentary on Technological Development in Postcolonial Algeria, 1962-2000”

• Elizabeth Perego, Appalachian State University

3:00 – 6:00 p.m. Downtime: enjoy Saturday afternoon in the mountains

6:00 p.m. Dinner

7:00 p.m. Special Presentation: The Herbert L. Bodman Memorial Lecture: “Four Futures for Algeria, 1833”

• Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

France had recently invaded Algeria and removed the Ottoman governor. But what would France do with the territory it now occupied and with the Algerians it now ruled? Should France even stay in North Africa? In 1833, a royal commission sailed to Algiers to investigate these questions and recommend a path forward. The trajectory of European imperialism was up for debate.

8:15 p.m. Film Session

• Fran Hassencahl, Old Dominion University

Sunday, October 15

8:00 a.m. Breakfast

9:00 – 9:45 a.m. “Mughal Chahar Bagh Gardens: Slices of Heaven on Earth”

• Farrukh Hakeem, Appalachian State University 

10:00 –11:50 a.m. Current Issues Roundtable

12:00 p.m. Lunch and departure from Valle Crucis