Brief Commentary: JMEWS Conference at UCLA

Abstract

Brief CommentaryJMEWS Conference at UCLA Sondra Hale JMEWS sponsored its first conference on the UCLA campus in July 2006 to introduce the journal to UCLA and the surrounding Southern California area, to celebrate its first years, and to acknowledge the intellectual achievements of Middle East women's studies. Aiming to capture the journal's breadth with a broad theme, the conference was titled "JMEWS: Gender and the Transnational Middle East." It was organized by Sondra Hale and Nancy Gallagher with primary support from the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies and help from the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, the UCLA International Institute, and the UCSB Program in Middle Eastern Studies. In an era dominated by communications and technology and characterized by the mass reproduction and transmission of ideas, images, sexualities, commodities, and knowledge, Arabs, the Middle East, and Muslim communities figure prominently in scholarship and politics. In the conference we focused on the Middle East and Muslim and Middle Eastern communities where these transnational transmissions are integrally connected with empire, the gendered nation, citizenship, space, religion, culture, and human rights. The traveling trope of the "Middle Eastern woman" in its cultural and political manifestations served as a keynote for papers that analyzed the new subjectivities emerging from these transnational processes and their relevance to gender power relations. The conference assembled some of the leading figures in the field—JMEWS editors, associate editors, a few editorial board members, and some guests—with the practical goal of charting the next four years of [End Page 131] the journal theoretically, epistemologically, and philosophically. In the final session of the conference, participants joined with editors to chart the new course. Some called on JMEWS not to be imprisoned by area studies, to expand beyond the loosely defined area of the "Middle East," to engage in more comparative studies—especially with regard to dialogues with South Asian, Southeast Asian and Central Asian studies—and to link up with already developing interregional networks. Participants also called on JMEWS to make room for non-normative language and to embrace cultural studies and sexuality studies. Some called for JMEWS to bring the urgency and energy of the web to the print journal, including considering visual and graphic culture, making space for urgent matters, carrying out collaborative work regarding theoretical debates, addressing activist connections, inviting guest editorials, and making JMEWS a place for encounters. Participants called on JMEWS to expand its horizon by hosting intellectual events. This is in line with the JMEWS plan to encourage annual workshops and conferences at various institutions, with the goal of playing a leading intellectual role in Middle East women's studies and beyond. Copyright © 2007 Association for Middle East Women's Studies