Collaborations

Racial Formations in the Middle East and Africa

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On February 25-26, 2021, the Project on Middle East Political Science and the  Program on African Social Research hosted the online conference “Racial Formations in the Middle East and Africa.”  A large, diverse group of almost thirty scholars from across disciplines and regional specializations presented short papers, which will be published in the POMEPS STUDIES series this spring.

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This is the second conference in an ongoing project of rethinking the Middle East as a region and its relations with Africa and beyond. The first conference, held last February at Columbia University, focused on the relationship between Africa and the Middle East, challenging conventional intellectual divisions between Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Horn.  (see POMEPS STUDIES 40 Africa and the Middle East: Beyond the Divides).

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This year’s conference highlights the politics of difference and racial formation in a comparative, historical and transnational perspectives across Africa and the broader Middle East. It explicitly seeks to de-exceptionalize both regions, and to articulate transregional perspectives on issues of race, racism, ethnicity, caste and state power which transcends divisions of the world into arbitrary regions such as “Africa” and “the Middle East.”

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Organizers:

Hisham Aidi

Marc Lynch

Zachariah Mampilly

Discussants:

Ann McDougall

Noah Salomon

Presenters:

Bayan Abubakr

Zeyad el Nabolsy

Gokh Alshaif

Sabria Al-Thawr

A. George Bajalia

Ezgi Cakmak

Deniz Duruiz

Eric Hahonou

Sean Jacobs

Sumayya Kassamali

Diana Kim

Stephen J. King

Yoana Kuzmova

Amélie Le Renard

Afifa Ltifi

Noora Lori

Wendell Marsh

Nathaniel Mathews

Yasmin Moll

Zachary Mondesire

Annie Olaloku-Teriba

Denis Regnier

Zekeria Ahmed Salem

Abdourahmane (Abdou) Seck

Paul Silverstein

Annie Olaloku-Teriba

Ayantu Tibeso

Parisa Vaziri

Neha Vora

Efrat Yerday

Alden Young