The Monthly Digest is a resource provided by Security in Context that provides a list of recent publications, calls, conferences and other items relevant to the critical global, security, and international political economy studies audience. In addition to new items, our digest may contain relatively recent entries, so please double check dates on any calls or conferences. All descriptions taken from their original sources unless otherwise indicated. If we’ve missed something, or you have items you’d like to contribute for future digests, please email us at: submissions@securityincontext.org
Books
The Nation Form in the Global Age
This open access book argues that contrary to dominant approaches that view nationalism as unaffected by globalization or globalization undermining the nation-state, the contemporary world is actually marked by globalization of the nation form. Based on fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East and drawing, among others, on Peter van der Veer’s comparative work on religion and nation, it discuss practices of nationalism visa-a-vis migration, rituals of sacrifice and prayer, music, media, e-commerce, Islamophobia, bare life, secularism, literature and atheism. The volume offers new understandings of nationalism in a broader perspective.
The text will appeal to students and researchers interested in nationalism outside of the West, especially those working in anthropology, sociology and history.
The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir
In The Occupied Clinic, Saiba Varma explores the psychological, ontological, and political entanglements between medicine and violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir—the world's most densely militarized place. Into a long history of occupations, insurgencies, suppressions, natural disasters, and a crisis of public health infrastructure come interventions in human distress, especially those of doctors and humanitarians, who struggle against an epidemic: more than sixty percent of the civilian population suffers from depression, anxiety, PTSD, or acute stress. Drawing on encounters between medical providers and patients in an array of settings, Varma reveals how colonization is embodied and how overlapping state practices of care and violence create disorienting worlds for doctors and patients alike. Varma shows how occupation creates worlds of disrupted meaning in which clinical life is connected to political disorder, subverting biomedical neutrality, ethics, and processes of care in profound ways. By highlighting the imbrications between humanitarianism and militarism and between care and violence, Varma theorizes care not as a redemptive practice, but as a fraught sphere of action that is never quite what it seems.
Scholarships/Fellowships
Fellowship Program on Exiting Violence
Thanks to the generosity of The Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme (FMSH) in Paris and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Columbia Global Centers | Amman has co-established a six-month virtual fellowship to support scholars working in the social sciences on themes relating to exiting violence.
While there is a substantial amount of research on the issue of violence as well as on its causes and modalities, very little research has been done on the issue of ‘exiting’ violence. Thus, this virtual fellowship program aims to involve researchers, including young researchers, from the MENA region, and provide them with opportunities to investigate how to exit violence by analyzing the processes involved in exiting violence as part of an ongoing dialogue with policy-makers and practitioners.
Fellows will be part of the International Panel on Exiting Violence (IPEV), which is a multidisciplinary community of researchers and specialists internationally recognized for their work on contemporary forms of violence.
During the six-month virtual fellowship, fellows are expected to produce and publish articles and op-ed pieces on exiting violence in publications in the region, as well as in international online publications (such as The Conversation, the Huffington Post, Slate, etc.), participate in a series of virtual webinars, and contribute by offering recommendations in video or podcast format to international, regional and national institutions, policy-makers, NGO representatives, and practitioners on this issue.
Support mechanisms for Fellows include:
Creating collaborations between researchers in the MENA region and their peers in the U.S. and Europe;
Enhancing visibility of the issues addressed by IPEV in the media and among policymakers internationally;
Disseminating the research work and ideas through media content;
Building capacity of researchers through access to two virtual training workshops designed by the Columbia Writing Center and the Journalism School; and,
Fostering a network of fellows by linking them to other related Columbia initiatives that support social science researchers.
Internship Opportunities: Arab Studies Institute
This is a call for interns in various positions at the Arab Studies Institute. The Arab Studies Institute is the umbrella organization for the Arab Studies Journal, Jadaliyya, Quilting Point, Forum on Arab and Muslim Affairs (FAMA), and Tadween Publishing.
Below are the specific projects at the Institute with available internship positions. ASI internships represent temporary (3-6 month) assignments as part of any number of ASI projects and teams within. All ASI team members, whether interns or more long-term team members volunteer their time to one extent or another. As a solidarity-based organization, we commit ourselves to professional mentorship, skills acquisition, and leadership opportunities. We also work with interns to provide feedback on potential publications as well as job and graduate school applications. We are also committed to serving as long-term references and recommendation letter writers.
Applicants must be willing to commit to working with our team for three months at a minimum, for roughly 10-15 hours per week. Applicants need not be based in the Washington, D.C .or Beirut, Lebanon area. All internship positions are virtual unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Applications should be submitted via the Arab Studies Institute’s website, here. Completed applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis beginning on December 4th.
Articles/Journals
The Arab council for Social Sciences's upcoming Gendered Resistance Publication will include pieces on:
Race & Empire in International Law at the Intersection of TWAIL & CRT
In January 2020, E. Tendayi Achiume & Aslı Ü. Bâli convened the UCLA Law Review symposium, ‘Transnational Legal Discourse on Race and Empire’. The resulting symposium issue was published as volume 67:6, fully available here.
In the following excerpt from their symposium introduction, ‘Race and Empire: Legal Theory Within, Through, and Across National Borders’, Professors Achiume and Bâli situate the symposium within its broader intellectual context: renewed momentum among Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars to engage Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholars in collaboration aimed at deeper understanding of issues of shared concern. They argue that building a global, transnational TWAIL/CRT project will create productive insights about ideologies of racial domination and racial injustices in a domestic, international, and transnational context. By combining the insights of CRT and TWAIL together, it becomes possible to theorize imperialism and racism more extensively than is currently possible within each approach separately. We thank UCLA Law Review for permission to publish this excerpt.
Lectures/Webinars
De-Securitizing Muslim Identity Lecture Series
ACSS 10th Anniversary Webinars- Webinar 7
Social Science: Voices of the New Generation
Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Time: 5:00-7:00 (Beirut time)
Speakers:
Ali Saeed Al-Batati, American University in Cairo – Egypt
Qasam Deeb Al-Qasem, Birzeit University – Palestine
Nouraldin Tayseer Araj, Birzeit University – Palestine
Janda Barazi, Lebanese American University – Lebanon
Ahmed Bedoui, University of Sfax – Tunisia
Sari El Habr, Lebanese American University – Lebanon
Fatma Mosaad Ibrahim, Cairo University – Egypt
Rabeb Laabidi, University of Sfax – Tunisia
Moderators:
Houssem Eddine Chachia, Assistant Professor in Modern History, University of Sfax – Tunisia
Abaher El-Sakka, Associate Professor in Sociology, Birzeit University - Palestine
Hanan Sabea, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University in Cairo – Egypt
The webinar will be held in Arabic with simultaneous translation to English and French for those registered over zoom and will be broadcast live on the ACSS Facebook page.
To register over zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvcumurT0qHNJt6k_3HPxPd26aSmsmL0Ja
This webinar is co-organized with the Lebanese American University - Lebanon, Birzeit University – Palestine, University of Sfax – Tunisia and the American University in Cairo - Egypt
A calendar of all the upcoming webinars can be viewed here.
Job Openings
Public Education Academic Coordinator - The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies
The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites applications for the Public Education Academic Coordinator position. This is a part-time (67%), calendar-year position. The initial appointment will be through June 30, 2022.
Although this position is described as a 67% position, we encourage anyone who applies for this position to also apply for our Lecturer position at UCSB in the Global Studies Department that would cover the additional 33% workload, to add up to a total of 100% salary. The lecturer position can be found here and would be to teach one undergrad seminar each quarter on topics related to global studies research and education abroad.
Naval War College, National Security Affairs
Assistant Professor in National Security Affairs AD-1701-03
Launch your scholarly career at one of the nation’s largest and most vibrant graduate teaching departments in the interdisciplinary field of foreign policy analysis and international security. The National Security Affairs (NSA) Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island seeks to fill an anticipated vacancy beginning in July 2022 for a tenure-track assistant professor of national security affairs.
U.S. Naval War College. The Naval War College is a Professional Military Education (PME) institution serving the nation, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Navy. U.S. and selected international graduates earn Master of Arts degrees in National Security & Strategic Studies or Defense & Strategic Studies accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. The College educates and develops future leaders through the development of strategic perspective, critical thinking, and cultural awareness, as well as enhancing the capability to advise senior leaders and policy makers. The College also helps to define the future Navy and its roles and missions; supports combat readiness; strengthens global maritime partnerships; and promotes ethics and leadership throughout the force. We are actively seeking candidates with diverse academic, demographic, and professional backgrounds. More information on the college can be found at www.usnwc.edu.
Interviews
Of Death and Dominion – Interview with Mohammed Bamyeh
Mohammed Bamyeh’s 2007 book, Of Death and Dominion: The Existential Foundations of Governance, was translated into German in 2020 and released by Turia + Kant. We spoke with the author about his research process, how death played out within historical power structures, and the role of mortality in contemporary society.
Tod und Herrschaft is the German translation of your study, Of Death and Dominion, published in 2007. What made you write this book?
The seed of this idea had emerged during my earlier exploration of the role of existential questions in histories of religion, which I had carried out in my first book, The Social Origins of Islam. In Of Death and Dominion, I shifted my perspective in two ways. First, I was no longer thinking strictly about Islam, or even religion in general, but about underlying ideas: why we venerate a past we have not known, worship absence, glorify distant heroes, and idealize experiences we do not empirically possess. That is to say, why do dead things live on, and specifically as part of our socio-political imagination?
Podcasts
Arab Reform Initiative Podcast
Jalsa | جلسة is a multi-series podcast production by the Arab Reform Initiative. It brings together diverse voices for conversations that matter on topics facing the MENA region. We will be covering issues ranging from environmental politics to alternative economies, women and youth as political actors, the realities of field research in crisis situations, and much more. We will be speaking to key agents of change in the region about their experiences, their stories of hope and frustration as they try to navigate contexts of transition in their specific domains.
We launch Jalsa | جلسة with a unique series of conversations where young women and men from countries that are in war (Syria, Iraq, Libya) delve into their personal experiences and open up to each other about their expectations, fears, and aspirations as they try to move out of the conflict and exert agency over their lives.
Series # 1: Navigating Conflict: Youth in a Time of War
What happens when you become an adult in a context of conflict? How does it affect your choices, your options, your ambitions? In a series of frank conversations between youth in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, we hear directly from them about how war affected their plans, how they have navigated their daily lives in the context of conflict and their aspirations for their futures.
Released weekly, each episode has two youth discussing how they are living through the conflict, how they see their future moving forward, and what strategies they have found to rekindle hope in their lives.
