Middle East and Islamic Consortium (MEICON)

• Allan Antliff, Art History and Visual Studies
• Evanthia Baboula, Art History and Visual Studies
• Melia Belli Bose, Art History and Visual Studies
• Greg Blue, History
• Neilesh Bose, History
• Shamma Boyarin, Religious Studies/English
• Paul Bramadat, CSRS/Religious Studies/History
• Rachel Brown, CSRS/Religious Studies
• Martin Bunton, History
• Michael J. Carpenter, Political Science
• Adel Guitouni, Business
• Hanny Hilmy, Centre for Global Studies
• Marcus Milwright, Art History and Visual Studies
• Daromir Rudnyckyj, Anthoropology
• Deniz Ünsal, Anthropology
• Peyman Vahabzadeh, Sociology
• Andrew Wender, History/Political Science/Religious Studies

Conference Program

Registration and Refreshments
9:00 am - 9:20 am
David Strong Building, Lobby

Welcome Message
9:20 am - 9:40 am
David Strong Building, Room: C103


Concurrent Sessions 1, 2, and 3

PANEL 1: Ecologies, Economies, and Agency
9:45 am - 11:00 am
David Strong Building, Room: C116

Chair: Dr. Adel Iskandar (Simon Fraser University)
Presenters:
• Leigh Tipper (University of Victoria), “At the Mercy of the Nile: Environmental Factors in the Decline of the Fatimid Dynasty”
• Mujtaba Hamdi (University of Victoria), “Between Risk and Rizq: Muslim Traders, Uncertainty, and Speculative Finance in Indonesia”
• Nabila Huq (Queen’s University), Online Presentation, “Solidarity Between Indigenous Peoples and Palestinians: An Underutilized Link Among Muslims Across Canada”

PANEL 2: Palestine: Media, Memory, and Historiography
9:45 am - 11:00 am
David Strong Building, Room: C118

Chair: Dr. Martin Bunton (University of Victoria)
Presenters:
• Coco Cunningham (University of Victoria), “Headlining Harm: Analyzing Contrasting Media Portrayals of Sexual Violence in the Israel-Gaza Conflict as Tools for Norm Production, Reinforcing Masculinities, and Absolving Responsibility”
• Finlay Pike (University of Victoria), “ChatGPT, a Historian’s Indeterminacy, and the Debate of the PLO’s Intentions as a Historiographical Issue”
• Jonathan Nash (University of Victoria), “Drawing the Diaspora: Palestinian Archives and their Social Imagination in Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi”

PANEL 3: Muslim Lives in Canada: Youth, Gender, and Public Perception
9:45 am - 11:00 am
David Strong Building, Room: C122

Chair: Dr. Sara Farhan (University of Northern British Columbia)
Presenters:
• Hiba Yassin (York University), “The Nuances of Exclusion - Investigating the Vilification of Muslim Men in Canadian Society”
• Khushi Makhani (University of Victoria), “Roots and Routes: Migration, Faith, and Intergenerational Identity Among Ismaili Muslim Women in Canada”
• Suad Ahmed (York University, CSRS Graduate Fellow at the University of Victoria), “Through our Eyes: The Social and Emotional Lives of Somali Muslim Youth”

BREAK
11:00 am - 11:15 am

Concurrent Sessions 4, 5 and 6

PANEL 4: Women, Power, and Participation: Negotiating Visibility and Autonomy
11:30 am - 12:45 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C116

Chair: Dr. Sara Naderinajafabadi (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
Presenters:
• Aashna Kulshreshtha (University of Victoria), Online Presentation, “Mughal Women: (In)visibility and Agency in Mughal History”
• Adriana Wilson (University of Victoria), “Between Modernity and Religious Conservatism: The Struggle for Female Autonomy in Saudi Arabia”
• Ali Sayyah (Simon Fraser University), “From Communicative Abundance to Political Constraint: The Woman–Life–Freedom Movement and Transformations of Participation”

PANEL 5: Text, Image, and Aesthetic Worlds in Islamic Contexts
11:30 am - 12:45 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C118

Chair: Dr. Murat Inan (Vancouver Island University)
Presenters:
• Ambreen Shehzad Hussaini (University of Victoria), “The Miḥrāb as Qur’an: Textual Architecture and Postcolonial Aesthetics in Pakistan”
• Nader Nasiri (University of Victoria), “The Impact of Imperialism on Modern Persian Literature”
• Niusha Hatefinia (Simon Fraser University), Online Presentation, “Mirrors, Screens, and the Imaginal Realm: A Persian-Islamic Perspective on Cinematic Ontology”

PANEL 6: Empire, Citizenship, and Cultural Imaginaries in the Late Ottoman World
11:30 am - 12:45 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C122

Chair: Dr. Pheroze Unwalla (University of British Columbia)
Presenters:
• Ermioni Vlachidou (Simon Fraser University), “Vampires of Pontus The Ottoman Afterlife of the Hortlak”
• Hamid Incidelen (Simon Fraser University), “From Provincial Violence to Gunboat Diplomacy: The Destruction of Euphrates College of Harput in 1895”
• Ismail Noyan (Simon Fraser University), “A Comparative Conceptual History of Civilization(ism): Education, Language, and Print in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman and Nahda Thought”

LUNCH
12:45 pm - 1:30 pm
David Strong Building, Lobby

Dr. Andrew Rippin Prize Announcement
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm
David Strong Building, Lobby

Musical Performance
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C103

Iraj Quartet
• Ney: Davoud Jafari
• Tar: Tayebeh Adami
• Vocal and Santur: Keyvan Bahrampour
• Setar: Azar Mirzaei

Keynote Speaker
Dr. Zulfikar Hirji (York University), “Multisensory Islam: Stories from the Swahili Coast”
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C103
Moderated by Dr. Neilesh Bose (University of Victoria)


BREAK
3:30 pm - 3:45 pm

Concurrent Sessions 7, 8, and 9

PANEL 7: State Power, Policing, and the Criminalization of Dissent
3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C116

Chair: Yasser Abdelrahim (Royal Roads University)
Presenters:
• Andrea Dillon (University of Northern British Columbia), “‘Pharoh’s Dirty Kingdom Clean’: The Prostitution Question in War-time Colonial Egypt (1910-1922)”
• Fidel Wendt (University of Northern British Columbia), “The Politicization of Criminality and Its Prosecution in Syria from 1950 to 1964”
• Jannat Yaqobi (York University), “Policing Dissent: The Criminalization of Pro-Palestinian Activism on North American University Campuses”

PANEL 8: Resistance, Subjectivity, and the Politics of Theory
3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C118

Chair: Melia Belli Bose (University of Victoria)
Presenters:
• Aso Javaheri (Simon Fraser University), “Inventing Newroz: The History of Resistance and Counter-Hegemony in Kurdistan”
• Mehdi Hosseini Dehaghani (University of Victoria), “Social Nonmovements Reconsidered: Conceptual Reconstruction and Immanent Critique of Asef Bayat”
• Uthman Khan (University of Alberta), Online Presentation, “Grooves of Control: Resonance, Trauma, and the Emotional Governance of Muslim Subjectivity”

PANEL 9: Sovereignty, Sacred Worlds, and Comparative Traditions
3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
David Strong Building, Room: C122

Chair: Dr. Andrew Wender (University of Victoria)
Presenters:
• Carly Egan (University of Victoria), “Between Immanence and Transcendence: The Development of Divine Kingship Across Old, Middle, and Neo-Assyrian Imperial History”
• Saqib H. Khateeb (University of Ottawa), Online Presentation, “Questioning Religions: Discourses of Nonreligion and Muslim Subjectivity”
• Group Project (Trinity Western University), “Comparative Perspectives in Islam and Christianity: Beliefs, Practices, and Perceptions”