Graduate studies committee

OTHER STAFF ACTIVITIES


Anaheed Al-Hardan
Teaching:

1. 
   Arts and Humanities Initiative (AHI) Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
   

Faculty Fellowship in spring 2015, and was on maternity leave in fall 2015.

2. 
   Designed an MA course “Decolonial Theory” as part of AHI Faculty Fellowship in spring 2015.
   

Service:

1. Co-ran a university wide reading group on Decolonial Theory in spring 2016.

2. Co-organized an international workshop in AUB entitled “Decolonial Provocations: Thinking Coloniality in the Global South” in March 2015.

Selected Conferences, Workshops and Lectures:

1. 
   Arts and Humanities Initiative and the Center for American Studies and Research, American University of Beirut Decolonial Provocations: Thinking Coloniality in the Global South Co-organizer, international workshop.
   
2. 
   Universidade Federal Fluminense, Instituto de Ciências Humanas e FilosofiaThe Palestinian Diaspora: From the Middle East to Latin America Conference paper presentation: The Catastrophes of Today, the Catastrophe of 1948.
   
3. 
   7^th International Conference of Critical Geography Precarious Radicalism on Shifting Grounds: Toward a Politics of Possibility Conference paper presentation: Toward an Arab Decolonial Theory.
   

Greg Burris

1. 
   Thesis committee membership at AUB: Maryam Ghaddar; Chafic Najem; Kareem Rifai (sociology).
   
2. 
   FAS Committees: Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Committee
   
3. 
   Development of new courses: “Issues in Transnational Media Studies” (MCOM 390L).
   

Nabil Dajani
1. Board of Reviewers, National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF).

2. 
   Review Editor, Telematics and Informatics Journal.
   
3. 
   Member, Editorial Review Board, Journal of Mass Communication, Delinquency and Criminology.
   
4. 
   First Chairman of the Board and Founding Member, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ).
   
5. 
   Member of Selection Committee, The Takreem Arab Achievement Awards.
   

Hatim El-Hibri

1. 
   Department Committees: Media Studies Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (Chair); Film and Visual Culture Minor Ad-hoc Committee (Co-chair).
   
2. 
   FAS Committees: Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (Fall 2015-present); CASAR Executive Committee (Fall 2015-present).
   
3. 
   Development of new courses: “Media, Belief, and Conflict” (graduate seminar).
   
4. 
   Service for a professional association: paper reviewer for International Communication Association Annual Conference.
   

May Farah

1. 
   Conference and other research-related participation: Middle East Studies Association, Denver, Co, November 2015.
   
2. 
   Thesis committee membership at AUB: Nayla Mabsout; Jason Lemon.
   
3. 
   Development of new courses: Developed a new class on “Media and Gender,” which subsequently had to be cancelled in order for me to teach the graduate seminar in the fall.
   
4. 
   Department service: I became director of the Media Studies program in Fall 2015: Recruited new part-time faculty; organized class schedule for fall 2015 and spring 2015-16; co-chaired the creation of a new minor (which passed and will be introduced Fall 2016); made a number of minor revisions to the graduate curriculum, and was heavily involved in the subsequent major revisions to the undergraduate curriculum; led the department review and acceptance of new MAs; organized monthly program meetings; met regularly with part-time faculty; was a member of a search committee for a new Media Studies faculty in the spring, and organized and chaired the beginning of a new search (which is still ongoing); was responsible for class demands by all undergraduate majors—with 140 majors, this required significant effort to try to ensure that students could enroll in our generally over-capacity courses. I must also add that there was no transition support when I became director; so much of the first couple of months was trial and error.
   
5. 
   AUB Committees: I served on the Steering Committee for the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship.
   
6. 
   Other Scholarly Activities: I organized a campus talk by leading personality and former TV host Bassem Youssef. The event was a huge success and attracted well over the 500-seat capacity of the auditorium. I worked on the department’s committee for the external review. I prepared the annual report for Media Studies on the program’s learning outcomes (PLOs).
   

Sari Hanafi

1. 
   MA Thesis (Advisor): Sarah El Jamal, “Framing Arab Poverty Knowledge Production: A Socio-bibliometric Study.” MA in Arab and Middle East Studies, 2015.
   
2. 
   MA Thesis (Committee Member): Wen-Yu Wu. Reorientation Toward Future: Lives among the Palestinian refugees from Syria in Lebanon. MA in CAMES, 2015; Riham Kowatly. “Children’s Playscape in Administrative Beirut: “Examining children’s Play and its significance for parents”. MA in Sociology, 2015.
   
3. 
   Current positions: From July 1, 2011: Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies (SOAM), American University of Beirut (AUB); from September 15, 2012: Chair, SOAM- AUB; from September 1, 2015: Faculty member, Program of Public Policy and International Affairs.
   
4. 
   Awards and Research Grants: Kuwait Award for social science, 2015; Abdelhamid Shouman Award for role of technology in social change, 2015; URB grant, “Investigating Islamic narratives in Lebanon: Friday sermons and religious curriculum,” 2015.
   
5. 
   Organization of Workshops and International Conferences:
   

1. 
   “The Knowledge Production Project-Middle East,” AUB. Co-organizer, July 24, 2015.
   
2. 
   “Fourth International Conference on Social Thought and Theory in the MENA Region: Comparative Methods in Studying Religion and Society,” American University of Beirut. Co-organizer, 25-26 April 2015.
   
3. 
   “Questioning Social Inequality and Difference in the Arab Region.” Conference organized by the Arab Council for Social Science. Beirut. Chair, organizing committee, March 13-15, 2015
   

6. 
   Service: Faculty member, Program of Public Policy and International Affairs, 2015-.
   
7. 
   Selected Conferences and Seminar papers:
   

1. 
   21 December 2015: “The role of internal politics of Arab countries (particularly in the Gulf) in the apathy and distant approach to the Syrian refugee crisis.” Symposium on “The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Analysis and Response,” Qatar University.
   
2. 
   30 November 2015 : “Broken Cycle between university and society in the Arab world,” Department of Sociology, Kuwait University.
   
3. 
   24-25 November 2015: “Islamization of Knowledge: A Critical Assessment,” at the conference on “The Integration of Knowledge between Religious Sciences and other Sciences”. University Abdelqader Al-Jazaïri, Constantine, Algeria.
   
4. 
   22-23 November 2015: “The Janus-like Face of Higher Education and Research in the Arab World: Internationalization and Local Relevance.” Colloque international “Université et éthique professionnelle: enjeux actuels,” Centre de recherché en anthopologie sociale et culturelle. Oran, Algeria.
   
5. 
   12 November 2015: “Knowledge Production in the Arab World: critical assessment”. The Arab Thought Forum (ATF) and UN-ESCWA Technology Centre, Amman.
   
6. 
   29-30 October: “Transnational movement of Islamic reform: New configurations,” at the international conference entitled “With or Without Brother: Domestic, Regional, and International Trends in Islamism (2013-2015)”. Organized by WAFAW. CERI-Science Po.
   
7. 
   24-25 Sept. 2015: “Complex Entanglements: Moving from Professional to Public Sociology in the Arab World”. Workshop ‘Palestine and Self-­‐determination beyond National Frames: Emerging Politics, Cultures, and Claims’. Organized by SOAS and Exeter Univ. Athena.
   
8. 
   25 to 28 Aug, 2015: Semi-Plenary “The Meeting of Civilizations: Towards a Euro-Arab Sociology?” 12th Conference of the European Sociological Association. Prague.
   
9. 
   21-23 Aug, 2015: “The broken cycle between research, university and society in the global South.” 7th Slovenian Social Science Conference on “After the Berlin Wall: 25 years of transformations” FUDŠ / SASS. Nova Gorica-Slovenia.
   
10. 
    27 May: Three keynotes at the Saint Augustine University of Tanzania.
    
11. 
    June 3, 2015: [Mwanza], University of Dodoma, University of Dar es Salaam Association of Sociologists), organized by Tanzanian Association of Sociologists.
    
12. 
    25-26 April 2015: “We speak the truth!” Knowledge (and) politics in Friday sermons in Lebanon. In “Fourth International Conference on Social Thought and Theory in the MENA Region: Comparative Methods in Studying Religion and Society.” AUB.
    
13. 
    March 13-15, 2015: Talk in plenary session (with Sarah El Jamal), “Knowledge Production on Arab Poverty: Debates framed by World Bank but with resistance”, in “Questioning Social Inequality and Difference in the Arab Region’’, Conference organized by the Arab Council for Social Science. Beirut.
    

8. 
   Memberships: 2015- (Vice President) Arab Council for the Social Sciences; 2014- (Vice President) International Sociological Association (ISA).
   

Dina Kiwan

1. 
   Grants received: Oxfam UK funded research project: Women’s participation and leadership in Lebanon, Jordan and Northern Iraq. March 2015-October 2015; $88,385.
   
2. 
   Other awarded internal grants: Asfari Institute 6 month fellowship (but not taken up as instead taking unpaid leave for 2016-17)
   
3. 
   Conference and other research-related participation:
   

1. 
   March 11, 2015: “Implications of widening access to higher education in the Arab World: implementing a holistic lifelong learning policy.” Issam Fares Policy Institute, AUB.
   
2. 
   March 20-22, 2015: “Syrian women refugees in Lebanon: negotiating discourses of vulnerability, subjectivity and agency.’ Bodies in Motion conference, University of North Carolina, USA.
   
3. 
   June, 4, 2015: “Conceptions of Global Citizenship.” UNRWA-UNESCO session at European Development Day, Brussels, Belgium.
   
4. 
   November 26-27, 2015: “American liberal education and the ‘Arab Spring’: an exploration of contested conceptions of ‘citizenship’ and ‘learning’ in arts and humanities curricula and initiatives at the American University of Beirut,” European Council Workshop, University of Sheffield, UK.
   

4. 
   Other research-related activities:
   
5. 
   Co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
   
6. 
   Department Committees: Chair of Self-Study Committee; Member of Promotion Committee
   
7. 
   FAS Committee: Member of Graduate Studies committee.
   
8. 
   AUB Committees: Chair of search committee for Director of Gender and Sexuality Program; Member of IRB.
   
9. 
   External service:
   

1. 
   UNESCO, Paris, France; pre-launch for document of Global Citizenship Education, January 2015.
   
2. 
   UNRWA-UNESCO panel at EU, Brussels, June 2015. Rapporteur for Adyan Foundation conference on Intercultural Citizenship, Lebanon, April 24-25, 2015.
   
3. 
   Case-study paper on Lebanon for the Global Pluralism Centre, Ottawa, Canada.
   

10. 
    Awards and Honors: Centre for Lebanese Studies Fellow, affiliated as Academic Visitor, St. Antony’s College, and University of Oxford, 2015-6.
    
11. 
    Other activities: Publication of UNESCO document on Global Citizenship Education as co-author.
    

Sylvain Perdigon

1. 
   External Funding: Fellowship (“Membership” in the institution’s own nomenclature), School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2015-16. $55,000, Sept. 1, 2015-June 30, 2016.
   
2. 
   Conference and other research-related participation:
   
   1. 
      “Silat al-rahim and the ethics of marginality in Palestinian refugee camps in Tyre, Lebanon,” a roundtable entitled “Ethically Disconnected,” at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, November 2015. Invited.
      
   2. 
      “Palestinian Refugees and the Space of Appearance,” Anthropology Department Colloquium Series, Johns Hopkins University, October 2015. Invited.
      
   3. 
      “Recovering Natality: Cosmopolitics, Refugeeness, Endurance,” International Conference ‘Forces of Life’, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, July 2015. Invited.
      
   4. 
      “Moral Perfectionism and the Mutuality of Being: on silat al-rahim in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of Tyre, Lebanon,” Workshop on ‘Islamic Intimacies’, New York University-Abu Dhabi, May 2015. Invited.
      
   5. 
      “Moral Perfectionism and the Mutuality of Being: On silat al-rahim in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of Tyre, Lebanon,” Majalis in Islamic Studies, American University of Beirut, April 2015. Invited.
      
   6. 
      “Crise de l’Ethique ou Ethique de Crise? Le mariage des cousins dans les camps palestiniens de Tyr, Sud Liban”, Séminaire Palestine, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, January 2015. Invited.
      
3. 
   Review of articles:
   
   1. 
      Cultural Anthropology, 1 paper reviewed in 2015.
      
   2. 
      Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1 paper reviewed in 2015.
      
   3. 
      Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1 paper reviewed in 2015.
      
4. 
   Thesis committee membership at AUB:
   
   1. 
      Nayla Mabsout, MCOM MA, “Creation of a nation in discourse: notion of sacrifice in Nasser’s and Nasrallah’s speeches,” proposal defended on January 26, 2015.
      
   2. 
      Giulia Guadagnoli, UPP MA, “Bottom-up urbanism between needs and imagination: challenging binaries in planning contemporary Beirut,” proposal defended on June 10, 2014.
      
5. 
   Development of new courses: While I had taught both SOAN103 and SOAN 226 before, I renewed these courses in depth in spring 2015: I taught an entirely new version of SOAN103, organized around a textbook that I had never used before and which, I thought, would better address the interests and needs of freshmen students. It proved a very successful experiment based both on my assessment of students’ works and high ICI scores obtained with rather large sections. I renewed about 60% of the readings for SOAN226 (Religion and Society) based on an assessment of what had worked or not when I first taught the course. The new version was covered more material and issues and proved more popular with students (4.5 vs. 3.9 when I had previously taught the course).
   
6. 
   FAS Committees:
   
   1. 
      Member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Arab and Middle East Studies (September 2014-Present).
      
   2. 
      Member of the Undergraduate Students Academic Affairs Committee (September 2014-September 2015; stepped down because of leave without pay.)
      
7. 
   External service: Member of the American Anthropological Association (Cultural Anthropology section). Attended the annual meeting held in Denver in November 2015.
   

Kirsten Scheid

1. 
   External Funding: National Endowment for the Humanities (FPIRI) “Global Art at Home: An Ethnography of Art and Palestine” (for May-August, 2016) c. $16,000.
   
2. 
   Conference and other research-related participation:
   
   1. 
      American Anthropological Association, Nov. 16-20, 2015 (board member).
      
   2. 
      Middle East Studies Association, Nov. 20-23 (discussant).
      
   3. 
      Paper presented: “Thinking about Art in Time,” conference on “Thinking About Time,” AUB Art Galleries and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, March 26.
      
3. 
   Review of articles:
   
   1. 
      Cultural Anthropology (1)
      
   2. 
      International Journal of Islamic Architecture (1)
      
4. 
   Other research-related activities: Curating with Octavian Esanu, The Arab Nude: The Artist as Awakener (Ansar al-‘ury: al-fannan al-mustanhid) to be held at the University Art Galleries, AUB. Opened in March 2016.
   
5. 
   Development of new courses:
   
   1. 
      “Hands-On Anthropology” (SOAN 216) was new for me and required both reading new material and developing a set of classroom exercises and diagnostics.
      
   2. 
      “Arab Culture and Society “(SOAN 237): I have not taught in three years, and I greatly revamped it to meet the needs of SOAM’s MCOM students.
      
6. 
   Self-development activities:
   
   1. 
      SOAM Reading Group (with Hatim Hibri, May Farah, and Greg Burris)
      
   2. 
      Academic Muse (online) Writing Group (http://academicmuse.org/)
      
   3. 
      Swedish (refresher) language lessons
      
   4. 
      Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (http://www.estarser.net/)
      
7. 
   Department committees and service:
   
   1. 
      Anthropology Graduate and Undergraduate Programs coordinator (Fall 2015).
      
   2. 
      Renewal Committee for May Farah.
      
   3. 
      Promotion Committees for Livia Wick and Jad Melki.
      
   4. 
      Gender Studies search (we were asked to evaluate the candidate).
      
   5. 
      MCOM Studies search (evaluated the candidates as a departmental member).
      
   6. 
      Greatly contributed to the departmental self-study, especially its revision.
      
   7. 
      Mentor for Sylvain Perdigon.
      
8. 
   FAS Committees:
   
   1. 
      Promotion Committee for Livia Wick.
      
   2. 
      Faculty of Arts and Sciences 150th Anniversary Celebration.
      
   3. 
      Faculty of Arts and Sciences Student Disciplinary Action Committee.
      
   4. 
      University Art Gallery Steering Committee.
      
   5. 
      AUB Award for Excellence in Teaching Selection Committee.
      
9. 
   External service:
   
   1. 
      Organized and led a two-day workshop on art pedagogy and research methodology, “The Troubles of Teaching Art Here,” for the Arts and Humanities Initiative, AUB, April 20-21.
      
   2. 
      Discussant for the panel “Art and Politics in the Wake of the Second Intifada,” Middle East Studies Association, November 22.
      
   3. 
      Chair for the panel, “When Class Matters: Interdisciplinary Inquiries on Class in the Middle Eastern Cities,” American Anthropological Association, November 24.
      
10. 
    Service for a professional association:
    
    1. 
       Middle East Section, American Anthropological Association, board member.
       
    2. 
       Middle East Section, Student Paper Award, chair.
       
    3. 
       Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research, founding member
       
11. 
    Community service:
    
    1. 
       Anthropological Society in Lebanon (ASIL), founding member and organizer.
       
    2. 
       Roundtable on the future of the Salon d’automne exhibition at the Nicolas Sursock Museum (Beirut), May 15.
       
12. 
    Consulting:
    
    1. 
       Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Consultant, Primary Documents series: Arab Art in the Twentieth Century. International Publication series.
       
    2. 
       Palestine Museum, Consultant to the Director on exhibition and display.
       
13. 
    Other activities:
    
    1. 
       Arranged and moderated a student-panel, “Let’s Talk About Us,” at the Beirut Art Center, for six students from SOAN 227 (Fall 2014).
       
    2. 
       Paper presented: “Where Is Beirut?” at the symposium, “Exploring Contemporary Arab Art 1995-2015,” Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Beirut, April 3, 2016
       

Livia Wick

1. 
   Teaching and Mentoring: My advisee, Annabel Turner, successfully defended her thesis entitled “Yoga practices in Beirut” in partial fulfillment of her MA in anthropology in January of 2015.
   
2. 
   I was a committee member for 3 MA theses in anthropology and Arab and Middle East studies.
   
3. 
   I have been Sociology/Anthropology major advisor for our twenty-three undergraduate students.
   
4. 
   I taught five core courses for Sociology/Anthropology and one core course for both SOAN and Media Studies.
   
5. 
   Service to the University, to the department and to the Community:
   
   1. 
      board member of the Center for Arts and Humanities (formerly Arts and Humanities Initiative).
      
   2. 
      member of the Graduate Committee in September of 2015.
      
   3. 
      member of the Self-Study Report Committee for the SOAM department.
      
   4. 
      member of the Gender Studies Initiative at AUB.
      
   5. 
      member of a departmental search committee.
      
6. 
   Service to the Professional Community:
   
   1. 
      American Ethnologist- manuscript reviewer (2015).
      
   2. 
      Medicine Anthropology Theory- manuscript reviewer (2015).
      
7. 
   Seminars, Conferences, Presentations and Workshops:
   
   1. 
      February 2nd 2016, organized a lecture by Wendy Pearlman at CAMES entitled “Trajectories of Fear in Syria.”
      
   2. 
      November 17-22, 2015, delivered a paper entitled “The concept of sumud and the oral histories of nurses” on a panel on “Gender and Sexuality Discourses in the Arab World and Beyond” at the American Anthropological Association annual meetings in Denver, Colorado.
      

6. 
   PUBLICATIONS
   

Anaheed Al-Hardan
Journal Article: “Al-Nakba in Arabic Thought, 1948-1967: The Transformation of a Concept,” Comparative Studies of Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35, no. 3 (2015): 622-638.

Monograph: “Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities” (Revision completed).

Greg Burris
Journal Article: “Prometheus in Chicago: Film Portrayals of the Chaining and Gagging of Bobby Seale and the ‘Real-ization’ of Resistance,” Cinema Journal 45, n. 4 (August 2015), pp. 26-49.
Hatim El-Hibri
Book chapter: “Media Studies, the ‘Spatial Turn,’ and the Middle East” in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East. In press, 2016.
May Farah
Book chapters:

1. 
   “Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: worthy lives in unworthy conditions,” in Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community, ed. Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
   
2. 
   “Mediating Palestine,” in Mediated Communities: Civic Voices, Empowerment and Belonging in the Digital Age, ed. Moses Shumow. New York: Peter Lang, 2015.
   

Journal article:

3. 
   “Palestinian refugees and mediated connections to Palestine.” Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network 8, no.2 (2015).
   

Sari Hanafi
Books:

1. 
   With Rigas Arvanitis, Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise. In Arabic, Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2015; in English, UK: Routledge.س. حنفي، ور. ارفانيتس، البحث العربي ومجتمع المعرفة: رؤية نقدية جديدة. بيروت: مركز دراسات الوحدة العربية. (2015)Reviews: Round table about the book, al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi, issue no 445 (March 2016).
   
2. 
   (2015):ساري حنفي و نورية بن غبريط-رمعون ومجاهدي مصطفى (تحرير) مستقبل العلوم الاجتماعية في الوطن العربي. بيروت: مركز دراسات الوحدة العربية. S. Hanafi, N. Ben Ghreit-Ramoun and M. Mustafa. (eds.) The Future of the Social Science in the Arab World. Beirut: CAUS, 2015. (in Arabic)
   
3. 
   With Lex Takkenberg and Leila Hilal, eds. UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees: From Relief and Works to Human Development. Routledge 2014.
   

Chapters in Edited Books:

1. 
   (2015): "إدارة مخيمات اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في لبنان وسوريا : حالتا مخيمي نهر البارد واليرموك " اللاجئون الفلسطينيون في المشرق العربي: الهوية والفضاء والمكان. المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات. (تحرير آري كنودسن وساري حنفي) 2015
   
2. 
   (2015): مقدمة الطبعة الانجليزية . اللاجئون الفلسطينيون في المشرق العربي: الهوية والفضاء والمكان. المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات. (تحرير آري كنودسن وساري حنفي)
   

3. (2015)الإنتاج المعرفي الاجتماعي الفلسطيني: التمويل والمحدّدات الوطنية

“Palestinian Sociological Production: Funding and National Considerations”. S. Hanafi, N. Benghabrat and M. Mustapha (Eds.). The future of the social science in the Arab World. Beirut: Center for the Arab Unity Studies, 2015.

الأشراك المعقّدة لسوسيولوجيا العموم: في الوطن العربي: دراسة تجربة4. (2015):

“Complex Entanglements of Public Sociology in the Arab World: un experience”. S. Hanafi, N. Benghabrat and M. Mustapha (Eds.). The Future of Social Science in the Arab World. Beirut: Center for the Arab Unity Studies, 2015.

Journal Articles:

1. 
   (2015):س. حنفي، أ. كنودسن و ر. فلاهيف. "عدالة مؤطرة: سياسات الإعلام اللبنانية تجاه المحكمة الخاصة في لبنان". المجلة العربية للعلوم السياسية. عدد 45-46. صص. 89-108.S Hanafi, A Knudsen, and R Flahive. “Framed justice: The Politics of Media for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.” Arab Journal for Political Science, nos. 45-46 (2015): 89-108.
   
2. 
   (2015): M. Bamyeh and S. Hanafi. “Introduction to the special issue on Arab uprisings”. International Sociology. 30 (4): pp. 343-347.
   
3. 
   (2015): N AlMaghlouth, R Arvanitis, J-P Cointet and S Hanafi* “Who frames the debate on the Arab Uprisings? Analysis of Arabic, English and French Academic Scholarship. International Sociology. (30:4). July.
   
4. 
   (2015): S. Hanafi and Rigas Arvanitis. البحث العربي ومجتمع المعرفة: رؤية نقدية جديدة
   

Arab research and knowledge society: a new critical perspective. Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi (Arab Future) Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies. (in Arabic)

5. 
   (2015): “Forward: Fragmentation of the research activities of the Arab social scientists” (الشرذمة: إشكالية الأنشطة البحثية للأكاديميين في العلوم الاجتماعية في العالم العربي). Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology. No 28. Pp. 4-11. 2015
   

Dina Kiwan
Book chapters:

1. 
   “Citizenship, inclusion and education,” in Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, ed. M. A. Peters. Springer: Singapore.
   
2. 
   With M. Farah, R. Annan, and H. Jaber, “Women’s participation and leadership in Lebanon, Jordan and Erbil (N. Iraq): Moving from individual to collective change. Oxfam Report, 2015.
   
3. 
   With M. Evans, “Global Citizenship Education. Topics and Learning Objectives by Age.” UNESCO: Paris, France, 2015.
   

Journal article:

4. 
   “Contesting citizenship in the Arab revolutions: youth, women and refugees,” Democracy and Security, 11 (2015): 129-144.
   

Sylvain Perdigon
Book chapters:

1. 
   “Bleeding dreams: Miscarriage and the bindings of the unborn in the Palestinian refugee community of Tyre, Lebanon.” In Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium, ed. Veena Das and Clara Han, pp. 143-158. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015.
   
2. 
   “Ethnography in the times of martyrs: History and pain in current anthropological practice.” In Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance, ed. Roma Chatterji, pp. 21-37. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.
   

Journal article:

3. 
   “‘For us it is otherwise’: Three sketches on making poverty sensible in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon.” Current Anthropology 56 (S11): S88-S96.
   

Kirsten Scheid
Book chapter:

1. 
   “Divinely Imprinting Prints: Or, How Pictures Became Influential Persons in Mandate Lebanon,” in Routledge Companion to the Middle Eastern Mandates, eds. Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan, pp. 349-369. London: Routledge, 2015.
   

Journal articles:

2. 
   “Toward a Material Modernism: Introduction to S.R. Choucair’s “How the Arab Understood Visual Art”,” with a translation of “Kayfa fahima al-‘arabi fann al-taswir,” by Saloua Raouda Choucair in ARTMargins, 4 (February 1, 2015):108-128.
   
3. 
   “Adding Art to a Checkpoint: Review of Qalandiya International Biennale 2,” Anthropology Now 7(September 2, 2015): 139-149.
   
4. 
   “Can Art Really Cross Borders: Qalandiya and the Problem of Tanzir,” Middle East Report 274 (Spring, 2015): 22-27.
   

Livia Wick
Books:

1. 
   “Sumud: An Ethnographic Genealogy of a Palestinian Concept.” I have submitted a book proposal to multiple publishers.
   
2. 
   The Ras Beirut Well-Being Survey: Profile of a Neighborhood, co-authored with Afamia Kaddour, Cynthia Myntti, Sawsan Abdulrahim, Nisreen Salti, and Huda Zurayk. American University of Beirut Press, forthcoming.
   

Journal article:

3. 
   “Negotiating access to childbirth care: A study of mothers of ‘neo-natal near-miss cases’ in Lebanon,” Reproductive Health Matters. Revise and resubmit.
   

Book Chapter:

4. 
   “Trajectories of Gendered Labor in Palestine” in A Companion to Middle East Anthropology, ed. Soraya Altorki. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2015.
   

7. 
   FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
   

During 2015 SOAM carried out a self-study and received two external reviewers. The following actions for improvement are proposed with the aim of improving structures and processes in the department in order to improve both the student and faculty experience:

Introducing a structured and devolved mentoring program: The implementation of such a program should be facilitated now that more faculty have been promoted to associate professor level, so there are more faculty potentially available to mentor incoming junior faculty.  However, associate professors (and even professors) may feel in need of mentoring, and this should also be developed which could go beyond the department, given that there are only three professors (only two of which are full-time). This could also involve developing a collaborative and supportive research culture within the department across disciplines and programs.
Development of exchange programs for SOAN: This would have the potential of not only extending our academic coverage for expertise, but would strengthen and diversify institutional links and may pave the way for developing a PhD program in the medium to long term.
Initiate a discussion about the possibility and means of gradually reducing the number of part-time faculty in SOAN and MCOM. This has been a goal of FAS for a number of years and there has been some reduction in part-time faculty but it is still an issue that needs to be addressed.
Leading on from the reduction of part-time instructors, in a department with multiple new programs, we by default rely on part-timers until we get new professorial lines. Therefore, it is important to make recommendations for additional professorial lines in the department. This will also extend the scope of teaching and research expertise in the department.
National and regional inter-university cooperation: Whilst there are such individual commitments (e.g. Professor Hanafi’s work on Idafat, Professor Kiwan’s collaboration with the Edraak, the first Arab online MOOC platform, Queen Rania Foundation, Jordan), efforts to institutionalize such cooperation will enrich SOAM’s programs by being involved in the production of social science at the regional level.
The department should actively promote the programs of the department in order to attract more applicants, which in turn will allow the department to be more selective and therefore improve quality.
The department should set up a working committee to address the balance between providing a service to the wider university community, and serving the department’s own students.
The department should encourage a stronger graduate student research community experience, through monthly meetings, whereby students present their own work as well as those of guest speakers.
The department should start a conversation about standardizing grading so that grades are not widely dispersed and/or inflated.
There is urgent and pressing need for additional space and equipment. Most importantly, office space for faculty, a seminar room and a departmental meeting room are needed. In addition, a new photocopier is needed, as well as additional production equipment for media studies.
The department should start a structured and goal-oriented conversation about the future vision of SOAM, given differing visions held about the trajectories and inter-relatedness of the two programs.
The department should introduce an annual departmental retreat to discuss short, medium and long-term plans for the department, covering department structure, program development, curricula, student experience, faculty experience, research, international collaborations, facilities and institutional support.
The department should raise through faculty and other institutional channels the issue of a devolved budget where the chair holds responsibility rather than this being held at the level of the Dean’s office.
The department should create a more conducive research culture by highlighting obstacles at various levels or domains, including at the institutional level, including faculty concerns relating to the stringency and delays incurred through the IRB, discrepancies in systems between ethical and financial reporting requirements, and excessive bureaucracy in the means of operating research grants.
Recommendations from faculty members and graduate students resulted in highlighting several needed actions for improvement. Most importantly, the department is in need of more professorial faculty teaching a greater number and diversity of courses. The department has expanded during the past ten years. The number of full-time professorial faculty members has increased too. However, this increase is less than adequate relative to the number of majors in the department and to the number of “service” courses taught for the university relying on part-time instructors.
On the undergraduate level, no urgent curriculum changes were noted. However, the department needs to discuss the distribution of courses per semester between core sociology/anthropology courses and advanced senior seminars in order to ensure a comprehensive and thorough knowledge base in the major fields of sociology/anthropology. The department has already flagged core areas which it cannot cover such as economic anthropology, economic sociology and political economy.
On the graduate level, several weaknesses were noted in the graduate programs as reported by students and faculty. First of all, MA students take longer than two years to finish their degree. To begin to address this problem, the department has recommended permitting students on Graduate Assistantships to take three courses instead of two courses per semester as well as to streamline admissions to the Fall semester only. Furthermore, students and faculty recommend that more course options need to be offered.
With regard to both the graduate and the undergraduate curricula, faculty recommended that the department discuss and have a formalized agreement on the contribution of affiliated faculty to the core curricula of SOAN and MCOM.
In sum, major recommendations are as follows:

1. 
   Add professorial lines.
   
2. 
   Find a common space for the SOAM department.
   
3. 
   Provide a space for seminars and graduate students.
   
4. 
   Find strategies to boost enrollment especially in the MA program.
   

Sari Hanafi

Chairperson

UNIVERSITY PREPARATORY PROGRAM

1. 
   SUMMARY OF PROGRAMS
   

During 2015-2016, the University Preparatory Program (UPP) implemented its regular English, Humanities, Science, Information Technology and Mathematics course offerings designed to prepare college-bound high school graduates to join AUB or other English-medium universities. In addition, UPP offered two summer intensive English courses to graduate students admitted to AUB but needed to improve their English proficiency. Additional intensive English courses for graduate students were designed and implemented for the Fall, Winter and Spring semesters, upon the request of the Faculty of Health Sciences for their scholarship students. The total number of students enrolled in UPP courses during 2015-2016 was 192 during the fall, 10 during the winter, 164 during spring and 50 during summer.

Program Learning Outcomes:

1. 
   Communicate appropriately in a variety of academic and social settings.
   
2. 
   Discuss various topics of interest.
   
3. 
   Deliver research-based presentations using relevant technology.
   
4. 
   Apply writing skills based on a comprehensive view of the writing process.
   
5. 
   Compose unified and well-developed essays of various rhetorical modes (illustration, narration, description, comparison/contrast, cause/effect, opinion, argumentation).
   
6. 
   Write in clear, correct, Standard English.
   
7. 
   Use different reading strategies to aid comprehension.
   
8. 
   Comprehend various written texts at the literal and higher-order levels.
   
9. 
   Acquire generic and discipline specific vocabulary, idioms and expressions.
   
10. 
    Apply listening skills to various types of spoken discourse (e.g. lecture, news broadcast, reports, conversation, etc.).
    
11. 
    Appreciate cultural differences.
    
12. 
    Respond to texts from different contexts: history, philosophy, literature, & the arts.
    
13. 
    Apply the required mathematical knowledge and skills for college study: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, data analysis and probability.
    
14. 
    Use various computer programs (MS-Office text editing programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and internet search engines in academic projects and presentations.
    
15. 
    Transfer the analytical skills acquired across subjects.
    
16. 
    Increase students' scientific literacy by providing them with learning opportunities where they tackle issues from different angles.
    
17. 
    Engage students in interdisciplinary learning that requires a “synthesizing mind” where they purposefully and reflectively integrate and synthesize multiple perspectives from different disciplines (biology, chemistry and physics) in order to solve real-world problems.
    
18. 
    Raise students’ standard of English which allows for proper understanding, effective communication and accurate writing of scientific vocabulary used in an English context.
    

2. 
   PESRONNEL
   

1. 
   Faculty Members
   

Full Time Faculty
Harkous-Rihan, Samar Director PhD

(USP Associate Director)

El-Harake, Rima Instructor, MA

Associate Director

Awwad, Mohamad Instructor MA

Ghaith, Nadine Instructor MA

El Hadi, Sandra Instructor MA

Zreik, Hassan Instructor MA