2022-2024 Joint Series: Gender and Body Politics: Arts in the Middle East and its Diasporas

Hosted by the Brown University Center for Middle East Studies and the Columbia University Middle East Institute

March 25, 2022

Brown University's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) and Columbia University's Middle East Institute (MEI) are collaborating on a joint series titled Gender and Body Politics: Arts in the Middle East and its Diasporas. In conversation with artists from the Middle East and North Africa as well as its diasporas, the series examines intersecting inequalities and body politics expressed, represented and transgressed in both visual and performance art. Against the backdrop of war and conflict, the rise of authoritarian regimes, displacement and diaspora mobilization, Islamophobia, ongoing orientalist depictions, and challenges linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, this series explores the ways in which artists are informed by and/or contribute to anti-racist, transnational feminist, and queer praxis.  

The series features artists online and hosted in-person events. Exhibitions & performances complement the series in locations around NYC and Providence. During academic year 2021-22, the series will have hosted Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas | May Amnesia Never Kiss Us On The Mouth and The Politics of Queer Bots. In 2022-23, Tania El Khoury | As Far As Isolation Goes, Alia Al-Senussi | Gendered Perspectives on Culture and Amitis Motevalli | Borrowing Authority from Dead.