TARII is pleased to sponsor a panel at this year’s Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Annual Meeting.
Panel P-6056: Iraqi Modernities
Modern Iraq is predominantly studied as a site of war, imperial plunder, political upheaval and militarized occupation. Indeed, these conditions and their consequences have profoundly shaped life for Iraqis inside and outside of the country. What are the salient social, cultural and political spheres that have emerged in order to imagine and organize life in Iraq under such conditions? Specifically, how has modernity been differently imagined and experienced across various institutions of social, cultural and political life in Iraq over the last century? This panel foregrounds the range of methods through which we can address these questions. Papers address various approaches including textual analysis, biography, archival research, and ethnography to examining social, cultural and political formations of the nation-state under conditions of post-war occupation and revolution at distinct historical moments: First World War, anti-colonial struggles during the mid-twentieth century, and present day. Drawing together interdisciplinary perspectives, the panel will stimulate a broad dialogue based upon in-depth perspectives on modern life in Iraq from political activism, legal systems and infrastructure, to cinema and narrative fiction.
Mona Damluji - Chair
Khaled Al Hilli - Presenter:
Literary Cartography: Mapping National Space and Spatializing Memory in Contemporary Iraqi Fiction
Mona Damluji - Presenter:
Oil Infrastructure and Cinema in Iraq
Sara Pursley - Presenter:
The Sectarianization of Family Law during the British Occupation of Ottoman Iraq
Zainab Saleh - Presenter:
British Empire and the Construction of Revolutionary Subjectivity in Iraq
Toby C. Jones - Discussant
More information, including paper abstracts, biographies, and registration details can be found on the MESA website.
