Report on participation to the Graduate Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies
03. - 04.09.2009, Exeter
The conference was held at the Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies of the Exeter University and it was open to the phd candidates and post-doc researchers dealing with Middle East from different perspectives. When it was established, five years ago, it was thought to be a forum where phd candidates in Middle Eastern studies could come to present their projects in order to get advices and opinions from the elder members of the British Society for Middle East Studies.
The conference was held during two days and it was organized in panels. After the keynote opening speech about the role of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies and that of the conference, the attendants decided what panels attend.
During the morning I attended the panel 1C, where the following papers were presented:
“The use of latinised Arabic in edited printed magazines in Egypt” by Mariam Aboelezz and “Was Jesus crucified? Robust reasoning during the late-Abbasid period” by W. Richard Oakes.
Especially the first talk was interesting for me because sometimes I have to deal with the use of atinised Arabic when I read some “underground” magazines written by informal homosexual groups.
After that I presented my paper “Egypt and homosexuality: some observations” in panel 2B. In the same panel Erica Li Lundqvist presented a paper about “The non-heterosexuality of Islam: reconciling sexual orientation with faith among young Muslims in Lebanon”. It was very interesting for me to speak with her to exchange reciprocal ideas and suggestions on our projects and in order to create a network of people dealing with homosexuality in Islamic countries, which is not yet a well-studied topic.
In the afternoon I attended the panel 3A, where the following papers were presented:
“Al-Nakba in Arabic thought”, 1948-1967 by Anaheed Al-Hardan and “The Israeli resistance: participation or withdrawal?” by Elian Weizman.
The following day I attended the panel 4B, were the following papers were presented: “Retrospective on the Earlier Phase of Alevi Politics in Republican Turkey: 1923-1980” by Murat Yumlu and “Sect and Politics in Syria: The Alawites, ‘Asabiya and the Syrian Regime” by Leon Goldsmith.
I couldn’t attend the following panels because I had necessarily to travel back to Italy that day, because on 6th September I had to leave to Egypt for my field study.
The paper I presented is strictly related to my phd project. I presented some of the results I obtained in the last months of research and it was helpful because forced me to organize some ideas that were already in my mind but not so systematically. Moreover the questions, the remarks and the critics of the attendants were very useful not simply for the paper but for my phd project in general.
The participation to this conference was an important challenge for me, because it was the first time I presented a paper in an international conference. Moreover it was the first time I had to deal with the whole process of presenting a proposal, being accepted and then hold the final presentation, which was, moreover, in English. I really believe that this participation helped me a lot to develop these important skils.
This paper will be presented during the WIP group of 18th November 2009.