Minutes, August 2016

Middle East Sociology Working Group
Minutes, August 2016

The Middle East Sociology Working Group met for brunch at Mamnoon Restaurant near the American Sociological Association’s conference site on August 20, 2016, scheduling the meal an hour earlier than usual in order to allow participants to get back in time for the ASA’s plenary session on Protesting Racism. The following day (Sunday, August 21, 2016) featured an unprecedented series of panels on the Middle East and Islam:

The Broken Spring: The Arab Uprisings and Their Aftermaths. Sunday, 8:30-10:10 a.m.
History from the Bottom Up in the Middle East. Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Gender in the Muslim World: New Perspectives. Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
Redefining the Public Sphere in the Middle East. Sunday, 12:30-2:10 p.m.

The double-booking at 10:30 a.m. was unfortunate, but the ASA’s scheduling office would not alter the line-up.

As of the conference, our petition for a new ASA section on the Global Middle East stood about 30 names short of the 200-signatory threshold. If you are an ASA member and have not yet signed, or know of other ASA members who might be interested in signing, please visit: http://mideastsociology.org/asa-section-proposal/.

Finally, for those of you who have asked to be listed on the Middle East Sociology Working Group webpage (http://mideastsociology.org/#Participants), would you please check to make sure that your information is up-to-date? If you are not listed and would like to be, please write me at kurzman@unc.edu.

Minutes taken by Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.