CMENAS 2026 Fall Colloquium Series | Projecting Power: Film Diplomacy and the Making of the Turkey-US Alliance
Ayşehan Jülide Etem, University of Virginia
How do states project power beyond military cooperation? This talk examines the role of educational films, institutional networks, and...
2026 Dr. Berj H. Haidostian Annual Distinguished Lecture | Poetry, Traumatic History, Memory: Thinking about the Armenian Genocide
Peter Balakian (Colgate University)
How can a past historical event be transformed by literature that comes after? Pulitzer Prize winning poet Peter Balakian will discuss the...
CMENAS 2026 Fall Colloquium Series | Making the ‘Migrant Crisis?’: Media, Power and Perception
Ismail Einashe, University of Michigan
More than a decade since the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ transformed European politics and media, it remains a deeply contested story....
CMENAS 65th Anniversary: Celebrate the Legacy, Scholarship, & Future of Mena Studies
Keynote by Aaron David Miller, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
10:30–11: Arrival & Registration...
CMENAS 2026 Fall Colloquium Series | Chokepoints: Temporalities of Navigation in the Red Sea
Jatin Dua, University of Michigan
The story of shipping and of global trade is often narrated as one of ever-increasing efficiency and speed, of transitions from sail to...
CMENAS 2026 Fall Colloquium Series | Western Sahara: Multi-scalar Struggles, Recognition and Change in a Thawing Conflict
Irene Fernández-Molina, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Irene Fernández-Molina is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter. She is a scholar of international...
CMENAS 2026 Fall Colloquium Series | ‘Vernacular Sovereignty’ Without a State: Kurdish Studies, Decolonial Thought, and the Making of Online Kurdistan
M. Mashuq Kurt, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom
What does it mean to imagine a nation without a state? This talk draws on my broader research in Kurdish studies to examine how Kurdish...
CMENAS 2026 Fall Colloquium Series | Middle Eastern Christians: The Struggle for Recognition and Rights
Fiona McCallum Guiney, University of St Andrews, Scotland
A continued presence of Christians in the Middle East is perceived as at risk due to demographic change, adverse socio-economic conditions,...
