Graduate studies committee
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Graduate Assistants
- TEACHING Number of Graduating Majors SOAN Media
- 3. Student Enrollment in Courses
- Courses Summer ‘15 Fall Spring
- Total 162 853 937 1952
- Total 31 178 194 403
Research Assistants
SOAN Media
2. Number of Majors Summer ’15 Fall Spring
Courses'>3. Student Enrollment in Courses
4. Number of Credit Hours Offered
Anaheed Al-Hardan
Greg Burris I arrived at AUB in August 2015 and taught during the Fall semester. During this time, I published a peer-reviewed article in one of my disciplines flagship journals; I submitted a book chapter for an anthology that will be published next year by Routledge; I taught one of my department’s core undergraduate classes; I submitted a conference paper abstract which was accepted for next April at the annual meeting of the Society of Media and Cinema Studies (SCMS); I designed and taught a graduate seminar on transnational issues in media studies; I agreed to serve as the supervisor for one graduate student; I agreed to be on the MA committee of three other graduate students; I helped the department go through a massive curriculum overhaul; I was elected to the Undergraduate Student Academic Affairs Committee and attended its meetings; I was invited to introduce Jodi Dean at the “Lacan contra Foucault” conference organized by AUB’s Center for Arts and Humanities in December; and I participated on a search committee for a new faculty position in media studies. Nabil Dajani I trust it is fair to claim that my professional accomplishments over a long career as an Arab media scholar and researcher has acquired me a solid reputation as an authority on the Arab media. I am regularly consulted on Arab media affairs by national, regional and international bodies. According to a statement by a US media scholar who evaluated our program I have “an international reputation as a distinguished scholar and researcher on the role of media in society, focusing particularly on media in the Arab world. [I am] also… known for [my] expertise on the role of media in national development and comparative media systems.” Another European media authority who recently evaluated AUB’s media studies program [2] maintains that I “[have] been at the forefront of international media studies for many decades and [my] name is among a small cluster of scholars … who pushed this research area to the foreground of global policy in the context of the so-called New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates of the 1970s and as a member of the international board of the International Association of Mass Communication Research ...” Hatim El-Hibri My efforts in 2015 have been split between working on my book, new curricular development, and service work for both the Media Studies program and FAS. Thanks to the support of my program and department, I was able to accept an Andrew Mellon Faculty Fellowship with the Center for Arts and Humanities, which relieves me of most of my teaching duties. As a result, I have been able to make major progress on the book project—significantly revising the book’s central argument in light of recent theoretical debates in my field, and drafting a proposal for publishers. Part of this process has included developing a conference paper based on part of one chapter, and reworking research presented at previous conference into a book chapter, part of which I am close to submitting to a peer-reviewed journal. I also put a significant amount of time and effort into my work as chair of the Media Studies Undergraduate Curriculum Revision committee, which aimed to make significant revisions to the structure of the BA program. By providing the committee with comparative research on other programs, and keeping to a structured plan and schedule, we unanimously arrived at revisions that have since been approved and will go into effect in fall of 2016. I have also co-chaired the ad-hoc committee to develop a minor in Film and Visual Culture, which has also been approved. I did not teach in the fall of 2015, but my ICE scores for the classes I did teach have increased from last year’s review. May Farah During 2015, two of the chapters I had previously been working on were published. I also submitted and had published an article in a peer reviewed ejournal in the field of media. One other article that I had submitted returned with major revisions. After spending months revising the article, when I resubmit it, it was rejected. The revisions I had made took the article in a direction the editors felt was no longer within the scope of the theme of the journal. Unfortunately, by the time I got that back, the fall semester was about to start and I was pre-occupied with taking over directing duties of the program. I’m planning on working on rewriting parts of this article to resubmit this semester. Last year I won a URB grant to begin a new research project on representations of women in Lebanese media. That project is still ongoing, but I presented preliminary findings at the Middle East Studies Conference in November, and received some helpful feedback. I was also co-investigator (with Dr. Dina Kiwan, the primary investigator) on an Oxfam-funded seven-month project. I had developed a new class to teach in the fall; however, when my colleague was awarded a CAH fellowship, in order for him to be able to accept, I agreed to teach the graduate theory course on his behalf. In the fall, I took over as director of the Media Studies program. This has proven to be a demanding task, and I spent much of the fall semester consumed by my new duties. In addition to scheduling classes, meeting with and hiring part-time faculty, reviewing files of and interviewing potential MA students, overhauling the program website, collecting and overseeing the repository for program syllabi, and advising over 60 undergraduate and around 10 graduate students, I taught three classes (two undergrad and one grad), worked on major curriculum changes to our BA program, co chaired the committee to introduce a new minor in Film and Visual Culture, which was passed, chaired a search committee for a new faculty hire, organized a hugely successful talk by Dr. Bassem Youssef, and continued to serve on the Asfari steering committee. I’m also serving as the chair of three ongoing theses committees, and as committee member on two others. Finally, I’ve continued to maintain connections and worked with OIP in order to strengthen our exchange and study abroad agreements. I worked with Professor Dina Kiwan on an Oxfam-funded seven-month research project launched in March 2015 with the overall aim to explore, through qualitative study, dynamics that lead from individual change in perceptions and attitudes on gender equality and women’s participation and leadership in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq-Erbil. Sari Hanafi I mainly worked in a book that I co-authored with Rigas Arvanitis that published in Arabic (Beirut: CAUS) but published in English (Routledge). This book investigates some of the research practice in the Arab world through multiple case studies from this region but particularly from Lebanon and Jordan. The objective here is not to focus on success or failures but to depict the Janus-like face of Arab research poised between the negative and the positive, faced with two potential opposing strands: the local relevance and its internationalization. This book critically assesses the role and dynamic of research, rather than perform an evaluation. To what extent is research internationalized? What is science useful for? Whom does it serve? What is the relevance of concepts such as knowledge society/economy to the Arab region? What are the methodological flaws behind such concepts or the international ranking of universities? These are some of the questions to be debated. While the book deals with all discipline and research fields, it focuses on the social research: its relevance, connection to policy and public, as well as the impact of the languages of publication and geographical location of researcher’s institutions. In addition, I published five articles and book chapters as well as six op-ed pieces and four book reviews. Samir Khalaf The bulk of my time has been devoted to re-writing a second edition of Beirut Reclaimed, originally published in 1993. I have also completed the final draft of a new manuscript, “From Time to Time: Discursive Essays of a Lebanese Sociologist.” The book is currently in press with Dar an-Nahar. For some reason I did not have access to the form. I trust this brief entry will do. Dina Kiwan This year I was awarded a large grant ($88,000) from Oxfam on women’s participation and leadership and participation in Lebanon, Jordan and Erbil, Kurdistan which ran from March – October 2015. It entailed managing a team of 5, and working with a co-PI faculty member. In addition, a number of publications were published in 2015 as detailed below, with a number of forthcoming publications in the pipeline. In addition, in the Fall of 2015, I was on paid research leave working on a project on social change and citizenship in Lebanon, as the Centre for Lebanese Studies Fellow, affiliated as an Academic Visitor at St. Antony’s College (Middle East Centre), University of Oxford; and which will culminate in a workshop in June 2016 with plans for a special issue in a highly esteemed peer refereed journal, where I will act as editor; I also have plans to publish at least 2 academic articles from this work. In addition, I have continued to act as an expert member of the international advisory board on an international comparative research project on Citizenship, youth and security funded by the European Research Council, and presented a paper in November 2015 at a high level workshop which will be published in a special issue of Citizenship Studies. I continue to act as Regional manager for the Varieties of Democracy Project. This is an ambitious, multiyear effort to produce new indicators of democracy for all countries since 1900. (http://kellogg.nd.edu/projects/vdem/ ; https://v-dem.net). It has been initially funded by the Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame at the forefront of research on democratization, and further funded by the EC, the Research Council of Norway, the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the Canadian International Development Agency. It aims to produce vastly improved indicators of democracy for use by researchers, NGOs, international organizations, activists, and journalists. As the regional manager I work with Country coordinators to identify coding experts from academic and practitioner backgrounds, and am involved in methodological developments to understand democracy. I have continued to supervise MA students with one student successfully defending in May 2015, and a second successfully defending his proposal; I also act as a supervisor on MA committees, and have acted as a peer-reviewed for academic journals. Teaching: During Spring 2015, I taught Sexuality and Society for the first time, completely re-designing this course. This course was well-received as evidenced from my ICE scores, well above the university average. I had course releases due to research and service commitments, and paid leave during Fall 2015. Service: This year I acted as Chair of the search committee for the Directorship of a Gender and Sexuality Program. I also was a member of a promotion committee. I continued to serve on the Graduate Studies Committee, and the IRB, as well as acting as a steering committee member of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship. I was also the Chair of the Department’s Self-Study committee. Externally, I have been sought out to be a chapter author of the highly esteemed International Panel of Social Progress, coordinated by Princeton University, and whose steering committee is chaired by Nobel Prize winner Professor Amartya Sen, I will be drafting a chapter on the Paradoxes of democracy and the rule of law. In addition, I have presented at workshops run by UNESCO and UNRWA relating to previous work on global citizenship education that I did in 2014, and that culminated in the publication at the World Education Forum in May 2015 in Seoul, S. Korea on Global Citizenship Education that I had co-authored. Toni Oyry I have greatly enjoyed my 3rd year at AUB during which I have taught MCOM 241, “Broadcast Journalism,” MCOM 242, “Multimedia Journalism,” as well as the Media Labs which I also developed the curriculum for, MCOM 295A, “Media Brown Bag”, MCOM 295B “Digital Bootcamp”, MCOM 295C “Video Editing”, MCOM 295D “Media Entrepreneurship” and MCOM 295E “Content Management.” I continue to feel this experience to be extremely enriching; especially when most of my students feel that they have learned a lot from the material I have delivered to them. This is reflected in my constantly well performing ICE scores and the qualitative assessment from the students. The weekly guest speakers at Media Brown bag that I have brought in the past nearly three years are some of the most highly regarded media professionals in Lebanon, the region and the world. These vary from the Hollywood legend, director of the “Lion King” to people leading the way in journalism, broadcasting, PR, academia and advertising in the region. A list of the speakers may be found at: http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/sbs/media_studies/activities/Pages/default.aspx Having worked for major global news organizations and having a wealth of experience in production from small web productions to multimillion dollar film productions, I believe I have been able to transmit to the students, not only the basic and some advanced skills needed in the field, but the mindset of using creativity to drive performance. Practical media production is a field that mixes theory and practice and I strongly believe that the most important thing in practical media courses is to learn how to find information, critically analyze it and then implement it. Technology moves forward at such a speed that only by actively following up on the latest trends and technology solutions, one can stay ahead of the curve of the developments in digital media and the changes in audience participation of today’s media in general. I believe that I have been able to inspire the students to explore the various career paths in the media industry to be able to discover what is their passion and how it can be incorporated to a successful career path in the industry. Being an active media practitioner positions me extremely well to be a bridge between the students and the media industry in Lebanon and globally and I look forward to the coming two years at AUB. Sylvain Perdigon 2015 saw the appearance in print of 2 papers that I had submitted the previous year and mentioned in my 2014 performance review. An article I wrote on poverty in the context of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon was published in October by Current Anthropology, a journal consistently ranked amongst the five most influential in my discipline in recent years (e.g., #5 on Web of Science or #1 on Google Scholar). A text I wrote on dreaming, spirit possession and fetal loss became a chapter in Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium, an ambitious, 850-page volume published at the University of California Press and designed to become a reference work for anthropological research and teaching, and where my piece appears alongside chapters by such senior and prominent scholars in contemporary anthropology as Talal Asad, Didier Fassin or João Biehl. I mention these pieces here because 2015 is their printing year and I can already measure at the time of writing this review that their availability has significantly enhanced my research profile. In Spring 2015, I was invited to submit an article by the editors of a forthcoming special issue of HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory on “the Anthropology of Life Itself.” HAU has quickly risen in recent years to become one of the most influential and vibrant publications in social and cultural anthropology, and I take it as a recognition of my work that I was invited to submit a piece for a thematic issue. In response to this invitation, I wrote an entirely original, 10,000-word piece that I submitted in late September 2015. This text was accepted by the editors of the special issue and it has been awaiting blind peer review since October 2015. I have good hopes that the piece will eventually be accepted given its inclusion and endorsement by the editors of this special issue. Were HAU to reject it, Professor Joan Scott who has read it at the Institute for Advanced Study has offered to publish it in the Journal of the History of the Present. It is my most ambitious piece so far and writing it provided me with an occasion to make significant breakthroughs regarding the composition and overall argument of my book manuscript. As of the writing of this review (February 2015), I am working on my book manuscript (the argument of which I presented in the reappointment statement I submitted in January 2015) while spending the year and participating in two research seminars on the campus of the IAS in Princeton. In October 2015, I met informally in Princeton with Reed Malcolm, anthropology editor at the University of California Press. Mr. Malcolm, who had contacted me after the defense of my dissertation, expressed a renewed interest in my book project after seeing my contribution to the Living and Dying volume that he supervised. He encouraged me to get in touch with him when 80% of the manuscript is completed, which I expect to be in Fall 2016 as I am also planning to prepare versions of one or perhaps two chapters that could stand on their own as articles for publication in journals. Senior colleagues who are following my work have also offered to help consideration of my manuscript by Stanford University Press and Fordham University Press when it is ready. Finally, during the same year, I was also invited to present my research in a variety of international settings: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Seminar “Palestine”, January 2015), NYU-Abu Dhabi (Workshop “Islamic Intimacies”, May 2015), National University of Singapore (Conference “Forces of Life”, July 2015), Johns Hopkins University (Anthropology Department Colloquium Series, October 2015), Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Roundtable “Ethically Disconnected”, November 2015). I was also invited to present my work in the newly launched Majalis in Islamic Studies at AUB (April 2015), for which I prepared an entirely original, one-hour long lecture that will provide the basis for one of the chapters of my book manuscript.
Four publications appeared last year under my name: One is an experimental reflection on methodology provoked by doing research at the juncture of art history, anthropology, and Middle East area studies. This 9000-word essay involved archival research into Mandate-period Lebanese cultural production and political debate. Tacking between visual and textual analysis, oral history, and audience studies it proposes a materially-grounded approach to studying unwritten histories of alternative political movements. It was published in the Routledge Companion to the Middle Eastern Mandates (eds. Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan). Similarly experimental was the commentary I undertook for an annotated translation (3500 words) I did of the avant-garde artists Saloua Raouda Choucair’s 1951 manifesto, “Kayfa fahima al-‘arabi fann al-taswir,” which had been published in AUB’s own Al-Abhath. My 6000-word commentary focused on the challenges Choucair’s thought and Arabic expression pose to modernist art theory. The other two pieces I published were much shorter, in an attempt to reach mixed academic-art community-activist audiences. Appearing in Anthropology Now and Middle East Report and running 3300 words each, both dealt with the theoretical and methodological problems of understanding art that is meant to cross border but is literally trapped at a checkpoint. I presented my current work locally and internationally. In March, I presented a paper for the conference “Thinking about Art in Time,” co-hosted by the AUB Art Galleries and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Using contrasting documents from the French diplomatic archives and Lebanese artists’ and audiences’ personal papers, I explored contests over the meaning of time and professionalization in art production. The following month I presented, “Where Is Beirut?”, a talk reviewing the institutional changes in Lebanon’s fine arts scene since 1993 at the anniversary symposium of Galerie Sfeir-Semler, a major art institution in Beirut. In November I served as the discussant for the panel “Art and Politics in the Wake of the Second Intifada” at the Middle East Studies Association. Two organizations selected this panel for their sponsorship: the Association for Modern and Contemporary Arts (AMCA) and the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC). For my discussant remarks, I wrote a 10-page paper that I will turn into an article. With these public appearances I am significantly contributing to the development of research about fine art production in this region while also encouraging its constant interplay with the community of art producers, curators, and cultural activists. Perhaps the most important venue for cross-fertilization of my expertise in Arab art history and cultural anthropology is the exhibition I spent many long days in 2015 developing with Octavian Esanu, “The Arab Nude: The Artist as Awakener “(Ansar al-‘ury: al-fannan al-mustanhad) to be held at the University Art Galleries, which opened in March 2016. Based on an article I published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2010, this project has required much work ranging from tedious to creative, contacting collectors, gallerists, and artists, and developing a bilingual archival basis to present my research in a totally new visual-spatial manifestation. I contributed to SOAM’s program by teaching “Arab Culture and Society” (SOAM 237), two sections, in the spring. Given the new structure of undergraduate programs housed in our department, I greatly revamped the course from my previous approach to involve more directly our department’s MCOM undergraduates. In the fall I taught a course that was new to me, “Hands-On Anthropology” (SOAN 216). This course was previously taught by Sylvain Perdigon, who is on leave this year. I have not been trained in methodologies, and I credit my colleague with putting together an excellent set of readings and lecture points which he generously shared with me. I added to them a set of weekly exercises that increased my ability to provide one-on-one training for the students. I also taught a graduate course in the fall, a topic that, though my specialty, I had not taught in three years. The gap since I last taught required a good deal of review. In preparing for the Fall classes, I took into account the comments students on the Spring ICEs, and as a result, I brought my ICE scores up by an average of 0.8, reaching to the high 4s. I also served on the thesis committee of Agnes Eshak and Dana El-Hajj, both in SOAM, and supervised the PhD research of Sabine de Maussion, a PhD candidate at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. In 2015 I contributed to important administrative functions in my department, faculty, and the university. Specifically, I took over coordinating the Anthropology Program in the Fall semester and directly set about expanding our interaction with other Schools, such as OSB and HSON. I arranged a student focus group to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the program. We are currently revising our curriculum and expanding our campus activities as a result of the students’ feedback. I also took on the advising of our MA-ANTH students. I contributed to one renewal committee in the department and two promotion committees (on one of which I was a member of the ad hoc committee as well). I contributed to two searches that enlisted our department, in Media Studies and Gender Studies. I mentored Sylvain Perdigon (and I am proud that with my encouragement he continued to apply for and received a very prestigious fellowship and focused on his book manuscript). I contributed greatly to the SOAM departmental self-study, which needed major revisions at the last minute. With my colleagues in Media Studies I participate in a faculty reading group, which has enhanced our collaborations in course planning and student supervision. For the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I served on the FAS 150th Commemoration Committee and the Student Disciplinary Affairs Committee. While at the MESA conference in Denver, I manned the CAMES booth for a few hours. For the University, I served on the University Art Galleries Steering Committee and the Teaching Excellence Award Committee (which is extremely time-consuming). For my profession, in 2015 I served my third year on the board of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and I chaired its Student Paper Award Committee. I also blind-reviewed two peer manuscripts, one for Cultural Anthropology and one for The Journal of Islamic Architecture. Further, I continue to serve as a consultant for the Museum of Modern Art (New York) for the production of a volume on primary art documents from the Arab world, which will run with their highly respected Primary Documents series. Likewise, I have consulted in 2015 for the Palestine Museum and the Nicholas Sursock Museum on questions of display and outreach. In order to enhance the production and relevance of anthropology locally I organize monthly meetings of the Anthropology Society in Lebanon (ASIL) at which students, faculty, practitioners, and visiting researches meet to share ongoing anthropological research and discuss new directions to be approached collectively. I am also a co-founder of the Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR), which seeks to develop experimental pedagogical approaches and has hosted several academic events that join Anglophone and Arabophone audiences. Along those lines, I arranged and moderated a roundtable at the Beirut Art Center (BAC) in March, at which six students from my “Cultural Boundaries and Identities” course (Fall 2014) reflected on how Stuart Hall’s theories of identity relevant to people living here and exploring their own identity here in Beirut. In this way, the students were able to intervene in an exhibition that dealt with identity construction and Hall’s theories in particular, and also come to know the BAC as a resource for their personal development. I want to mention a few projects that I have undertaken for my self-development. In 2015 I participated in an online writing program, Academic Muse (http://academicmuse.com/) with a professional coach. This is to focus my writing on my book manuscript revisions, which tend to get lost in the daily press. I also remained a committed member of an international group for experimental aesthetic practices, Esthetical Society for Transcendental and Applied Realization (http://www.estarser.net/) and conducted several exercises with this group in Beirut. Livia Wick I am working on my book manuscript provisionally entitled “Sumud: An Ethnographic Genealogy of Palestinian Concept,” I have written three out of five chapters. The book chapter entitled “Trajectories of Gendered Labor in Palestine” was published in A Companion to Middle East Anthropology, edited by Soraya Altorki (New York: John Wiley and Sons). I have received a request to revise and resubmit my article entitled “Negotiating access to childbirth care: a study of mothers of ‘neo-natal near-miss cases’ in Lebanon,” to Reproductive Health Matters. I am a co-author on a monograph forthcoming with AUB Press led by colleagues from the Faculty of Health Sciences entitled “The Ras Beirut Well-Being Survey: Profile of a Neighborhood,” with Afamia Kaddour, Cynthia Myntti, Sawsan Abdulrahim, Nisreen Salti, Huda Zurayk.
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