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New Horizons in Kurdish History Lecture Series

July 18, 2022

In the last decade, Kurdish history has become an exciting arena of scholarly inquiry in Ottoman and Middle Eastern studies. Showcasing this emerging literature was the main goal of the New Horizons in Kurdish History lecture series that Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies, and I organized for spring 2022. Professor Kafadar and I initially formed the idea in his basement office at Robinson Hall during one of our regular meetings in fall 2021, when I worked as a Teaching Fellow for his Ottoman history survey course. Over the course of the semester, we brainstormed about...

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Nadia Murad

Nadia Murad: The Making of an Activist

April 5, 2019

Nadia Murad came to Harvard as a survivor of genocide under ISIS, an advocate for victims of sexual violence, and the first Iraqi citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her talk at the Memorial Church, as part of the Weatherhead Center’s Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture Series, co-sponsored this year by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, focused on her personal journey and how her ordeal turned her into an activist. Read more about her talk in the...

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Nadia Murad

Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture with Nadia Murad

April 3, 2019

The 2019 Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture, "Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad in Conversation with Jennifer Leaning," took place on April 3 at the Memorial Church at Harvard. Nadia Murad is the corecipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, and is a leading advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence. Murad’s peaceful life was savagely interrupted in 2014 when Daesh attacked her homeland in Sinjar, with the intention of ethnically cleansing Iraq of all Yazidis. Like many minority groups, the Yazidis have carried the weight of historical persecution. Women in particular...

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Italy

CMES Summer in Review 2018

October 3, 2018

Each summer, a number of CMES PhD, AM, and undergraduate students whose interests lie in the Middle East have the opportunity to travel to the MENA region for summer research and language study. A group of these students shared stories from their summer travels at the “CMES Summer in Review” event on Friday, September 21, 2018. In a fast-paced format, over a dozen students shared images and stories, and fielded questions from the audience. With the support of funding including CMES grants and fellowships, students strengthened their language skills, participated in internships...

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Designing for Darkness: What Can Latin American Cities Learn From the Arabian Peninsula?

April 13, 2017

Andreina Seijas, an incoming doctoral student at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, attended the April 7-8 symposium After Dark: Nocturnal Landscapes and Public Spaces in the Arabian Peninsula, jointly sponsored by the Aka Khan Program at the GSD and by Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. In her Ciudades Sostenibles blog, Seijas writes about the challenges of urban design in the Arabian Peninsula, regarding especially the night-time urban landscape, that participants explored, and she speculates how some of the lessons learned and in progress in the Arabian Peninsula might apply to Latin American cities facing similar challenges.

Helen Zughaib Migrations

The Everyday Dignity of Helen Zughaib’s Refugees

February 9, 2017

Lebanese-American artist Helen Zughaib's work is on display this month at CGIS, under the auspices of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Her paintings have been displayed widely in public collections, at the White House, the Library of Congress, and elsewhere; they often lend themselves to diplomatic optimism, even as they depict people in desperate situations: fleeing catastrophe in Syria, leaving home to emigrate to America, selling tiny items in the street to feed their families. Read a review of the exhibition and of Zughaib's accompanying artist talk in ...

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