This conference explores the constructions and contextualizations of the modern Middle East through artistic, scholarly, economic, political, sociological, historical, and philological works and texts.

The proposed panel will explore the culture of the modern Middle East through some of its most vibrant markers: visual, performance and performative arts. The purpose is to call attention to the events, texts, works, performances and images that have shaped, on the one hand, representations of the Middle East in modern and historical art, music, theater and architecture; on the other, the appropriations and adaptations of such rich archive in the construction of a distinct and uniquely identifiable "Middle East" in the modern mind. Topics can address the fields of art, architecture, music, theater/film, media and dance- through themes that include (but should not be limited to):

1. Art and architecture as a means/expressions of power (legitimation, segregation, assimilation, sovereignty, restitution and identity) and/or resistance to it.

2. East-West encounters: Clash and/or dialogue in colonial and post-colonial art and architecture in the Middle East

3. Iconography and Iconoclasm in Middle Eastern art and architecture.

4. The burdens of history and the dialectic of modernization and preservation in the modern Middle East.

5. How visual and performance arts express minor and gendered, subjectivities in/about the Middle East

6. Art and the Public Sphere.

Please submit proposals of 300-400 words to Dr. A. Sameh El kharbawy (aelkharbawy@csufresno.edu) by May 31, 2010

With your abstract please include:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements

For more information, see the conference website: http://www.csufresno.edu/mesp/news_events/me_conference/index.shtml