The Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society (SERMEISS)

FALL 2024 PROGRAM

Valle Crucis Conference Center

Valle Crucis, North Carolina

October 18-20, 2024

Friday, October 18

6:30 p.m. Dinner

8:00 p.m. SERMEISS Reception 

Saturday, October 19

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. “’My Government Did This’: Comparing the Negative Case of Lebanon’s Anti-Fragile Regime”

    • Dan Brown, College of Charleston

9:50 – 10:30 a.m. “Securing Status: Explaining Qatari and Emirati Support for U.S. Policies in the Middle East”

    • Tyler B. Parker, Mercer University

10:35 – 11:15 a.m. “Behind Enemy Lines: An Account of a Secret Conversion to Shiism in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Aleppo”

   • Devin Stewart, Emory University

11:20 – 12:00 noon. “Invocations of Islam’s Past: Modern Jordan and the Development of an Islamic Historical Heritage”

   • Abdul Basith Basheer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

12:00 p.m. Lunch

1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Executive Board Meeting

1:00 – 4:00 p.m. Downtime: enjoy the Valle Crucis Fair, hikes, waterfalls, and Saturday afternoon in the mountains

4:00 – 4:30 Sermeiss Business Meeting 

4:30 – 5:10 p.m.       “’Plagued with this Great Matter’: The (Mis)Appropriation of the Islamic Past by ISIS in the Mosul Speech of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”

   • Ryan Lynch, Columbus State University 

6:00 p.m. Dinner 

7:00 p.m. The Herbert L. Bodman Memorial Lecture:  “The Middle East in Translation: Feminist Encounters Across Borders”

   • Emet Ergun, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Dr. Emek Ergun is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her most recent book, Virgin Crossing Borders: Feminist Resistance and Solidarity in Translation was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2023. Ergun is also the co-editor of Feminist Translation Studies (Routledge, 2017) and the 5th edition of Feminist Theory Reader (Routledge, 2020). She is currently working on the 6th edition of the Reader. Ergun is also a feminist translator and her most recent published translations include the Turkish translation of Octavia Butler’s speculative novel, Kindred (Ithaki Press, 2019) and the English co-translation titled The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics: Women Politicians Write from Prison (Pluto Press, 2022).

8:15 p.m. Films with Fran Hassencahl, Old Dominion University

Sunday, October 20

8:00 a.m. Breakfast

9:00 – 9:45 a.m. "Generational Consciousness in Palestinian Political Thought”  

    • Michaelle Browers, Wake Forest University 

10:00 –11:50 a.m. Current Issues Roundtable:  “Gaza and the Middle East, One Year Later”

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