2022 Spring Meeting: Travel, Mobility, and Cultural Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
April 9-10, 2022

REGISTER HERE

The Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society (SERMEISS) Spring 2022 workshop is being held April 9-10, 2022 at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL. The workshop will focus on “Travel, Mobility, and Cultural Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa” and is being organized by a committee chaired by Dr. Waleed Hazbun (University of Alabama). Papers presented at the 2022 workshop will be considered for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Tourism History.

We are planning an in-person workshop and will follow CDC safety guidance and the University of Alabama policy which requires masks inside all academic buildings. We recommend that all attendees be fully vaccinated and boosted.

Workshop presenters will have 20 minutes to present their papers and will be assigned a discussant. Presenters must submit a draft copy of their papers at least two weeks before the workshop (March 25, 2022), so that these can be circulated among confirmed workshop attendees. Paper presenters interested in submitting their manuscripts to the Journal of Tourism History will be expected to submit revised manuscripts to the workshop organizer by the middle of the summer 2022.

To attend, please register here, then pay the $15 fee via Paypal at the bottom of this page.
All registered attendees will receive. a copy of the conference papers about two weeks before the workshop.

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Logistics: For information about location, transportation, and local restaurants, see Logistics. For a list of hotels, see Hotels.

MORE INFORMATION ON THE MEETING WEBSITE.

Schedule:

Friday, April 8, 2022

Location: Camellia (Room 2020) Gorgas Library, University of Alabama

5:30 pm to 6:30pm Welcome and Introductions

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Saturday, April 9, 2022

Location: Camellia (Room 2020) Gorgas Library, University of Alabama

10:15 to 11:30 am Session 1

-Laith Shakir (PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies, New York University), “Tourism in Iraq: Antiquity and Colonial Development in the Thomas Cook Archives”

-David A. Rahimi (PhD Candidate in History, University of Texas), “’The City of Roses and Nightingales’: Creating Modern Iranian Tourism, 1920s-1970s”

11:30 am to 11: 45 am Break

11:45 am to 1:00 pm Session 2

-Janina Santer (PhD Candidate in History, Columbia University), "Dangerous Roads, Fraudulent Hotels, and Swarms of Mosquitos: Hierarchies of Developing Tourism in Lebanon (1930s)”

-Nadya Sbaiti (Visiting Assistant Professor in History, Georgetown University in Qatar), “’In Guide We Trust’: Leisure, Summering, and Tourism in the Making of Lebanon”

1:00 pm to 2:00 pm Lunch

2:15 pm to 3:30 pm Session 3

-Dylan Baun (Assistant Professor in History, University of Alabama in Huntsville), "Hotel Phoenicia and the Making of American Empire”

-Karin Ahlberg (Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo), "Rule by Tourism: Statecraft, infrastructures of image making and the politics of tourism in Mubarak’s Egypt”

3:30 to 3:45 Break

4:00 to 5:15 Session 4

-Maryam S. Griffin (Assistant Professor in Sociology, University of Washington at Bothell), “The Means of International Mobility, Settler Colonialism, and Decolonization in Palestine”

-Kristin Monroe (Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of Kentucky), "Marital Mobilities among Syrians in Lebanon”

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Location: Camellia (room 2020) Gorgas Library, University of Alabama

11:05 am to 12:20 pm Session 5

-Edith Szanto (Assistant Professor in Religious Studies, University of Alabama), Travelers in “the Other Iraq”

-Esmaeil Esfandiary (Assistant Professor in Communications, Tuskegee University), “Largest pilgrimage in the world: The annual Shi’a Arba’een walk and its socio-political significance”

12:30 to 1 pm Concluding Discussion