MEICON Conference Program and Schedule

Location: Allard Hall 105 

Elif Sarı, Racial/Sexual Politics of Asylum: The Specter of Alan Kurdi, Homophobia, Islam & Deservingness

Panel Chair: Martin Bunton
Location: Allard 121

Ebba Hooft Toomey (BA, UBC), Desertification as Policy Crisis Narrative: The Colonial Origins and Aims of Environmental Policy in Algeria

Sophia Lee (BA, UBC), Troubled Waters: “Token” Cooperation in Israeli-Palestinian Environmental Peacebuilding 

Jeremy Allen (MGEM, UBC), Nature of War: The Political Ecology of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict 

Kiana Zemenchik, (MA, SFU) Flows of Dominance: How water in Palestine is used as a tool of hybrid warfare by the settler colonial state of Israel 

Panel Chair: Thomas Kuehn
Location: Allard 122

Iman Fadaei (PhD, UVic), Middle East, an exception for the state of exception 

Mariam Abdelaziz (BA, UBC), White Violence, Racialized People: White Supremacy and Global War on Terror  

Ayşe Kabaca (BA, UBC), The Spies Among Us: Effects of Lateral Surveillance on Turkish Civic Culture and Civil Society 

Sanad Tabbaa (MA, UBC), Objective Legitimacy and its Nonexistence 

Panel Chair: Naghmeh Babaee
Location: Allard 121

Sabah Ghouse (MA, SFU), Gendered Islamophobia: Analyzing the Experiences of Muslim Girls and Women in Canadian Public Schools  

Mozhgan Fazli (MA, SFU), Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity in Iranian Cinema Through Asghar Farhadi Movies 

Hoornaz Keshavarzian (PhD, SFU), Body as Battlefield: Iranian Women’s Self-representation on Instagram 

Panel Chair: Naveena Naqvi 
Location: Allard 122

Minsoo Jeon (MA, U Washington), Rewriting Anatolia as the Land of Turks: Yazıcızâde Ali’s Translation Strategies for Tevârîḫ-i  l-i Selçuk  

Hamad Abdullah Nazar (MA, UBC) The ideas of Islam and Muslimness in Punjabi text Heer Ranjha   

Panel Chair: Hessam Dehghani
Location: Allard 121

Emma York (BA, Western Washington U), Distance: A Videographic Essay  

Basant Ahmed Sayed (MA, UBC), Transnational Consumption of Japanese Popular Culture in Egypt: The Case of Anime and Cosplay Subculture 

Shehroze Shaikh (MA, SFU), Islam on the Silver Screen: State-Sponsored Historical Dramas and the Formation of Muslim Identity in Pakistan

Panel Chair: Hicham Safieddine
Location: Allard 122

Abolfazl (Abu) Fakhri (PhD, SFU), Governing through precarity: Afghan ‘irregular’ migrants in Iranian and Turkish migration and labour regimes  

Zahra Khan (BA, Kwantlen), Benefitting the Beneficiary: successes and failures of the European Neighbourhood Policy, and hope for democratic reform in the MENA region  

Meryem Belkadi (PhD, UBC), How did the ethnic urban apartheid shift to a socio-economic urban apartheid in Moroccan cities? A comparative analysis of urban policies pre- and post-independence 

Panel Chair: Adel Iskandar
Location: Allard 121

Scott Bursey (PhD, Florida State U), Fairy Tales from the Afghani Jihad: Martyrdom, Miracles, and Mythology in Jihadi Culture  

Sophie Roth (BA, UBC), The Graphic Narrative as a Form of Revolutionary Documentary Witnessing: Zahra’s Paradise and the Iranian Green Movement 

 Magdalen Hamilton (BA, UBC), Rereading Barghouti for the Palestinian Present: De-Allegorization and Re-Humanization in I Saw Ramallah  

İpek Ömercikli (MA, UBC), “These are foreign dead”: Necropolitical Aesthetics and Fantasy in Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise  

Panel Chair: Amaan Merali 
Location: Allard 122

Hala Qasqas (PhD, UVic), The Legitimacy of Coffee and Coffeehouses in Damascus (1600-1800)  

Naz Vardar (PhD, SFU), Gender and Transgression in Apokries and Baklahorani Festivities in Late-Ottoman Istanbul  

Turhan Ozan Yıldız (PhD, UBC), Three Propositions for Two Seventeenth century Ottoman Antiquarian Attitudes: The Cases of Evliya, Katip Çelebi, and Hüseyin Hezarfen Efendi  

İsmail Noyan (PhD, SFU), Mecelle as the Product of Global Islamic Networks