Faculty News Archive
Peter Krause is organizing the Northeast Middle East Politics Workshop, which will be held at Boston College for the first time on March 31-April 1. The workshop brings together 35-40 of the top scholars of Middle East politics to present and critique their ongoing research. There will be a public lecture and discussion on a current Middle East topic by a few of the scholars on the night of Thursday, March 30. Professor Krause's book Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win will be published in April with Cornell University Press. The book explains why some national movements employ violence and achieve independent states while others do not. He compares the Palestinian, Zionist, Algerian, and Irish national movements over time, based on years of fieldwork he conducted in each country, along with over 150 interviews with key members from each movement.
A podcast interview about Dana Sajdi's book, The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press) was published by the Ottoman History Podcast and was selected as one of the best 10 podcasts for 2016 by the editors.
Frank Salameh published a new book, Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese ‘Young Phoenician’ (Lexington, 2015). He is also currently in the copyediting phase of another volume slated for publication in the spring, titled The Other Middle East: An Anthology of Modern Levantine Literature (Yale University Press, 2017.) He also gave a talk at Jerusalem’s Ben Zvi Institute on a topic from his current research, a “memory project” chronicling early 20th century history of Lebanese Jews. He also published three essays on this same topic in Middle Eastern Studies, and the Journal of the Middle East and Africa in collaboration with his Undergraduate Research Fellow, and ICS major and Boston College Presidential Scholar, Hagop Toghramadjian.
Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in response to a column asserting that "terrorism has a lot to do with Islam", Jonathan Laurence argued that the present-day pathologies of European Islam are a kind of aftershock from a century-old mistake (Germanand English).The Economist subsequently discussed the piece online. He also provided commentary on the inauguration of President Trump for French television BFM from Washington, DC. His forthcoming book, Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State (Princeton), is due to be published next year.
Kathleen Bailey was the recipient of a major grant from the Boston College Institute for Liberal Arts to organize a conference on the Future of Afghanistan. The conference is scheduled for April 24, 2015, and will include panels on the themes of security; media and youth; women, health and education; regional issues. Conference proceedings will be published. Professor Bailey was also the recipient of the OIP/McGillycuddy-Logue Center award for Outstanding Faculty Member, given to a faculty member who has exhibited deep and continued commitment to fostering global programming on campus.
David DiPasquale completed two book manuscripts during Summer 2014m which are presently under review at Cambridge University Press: Alfarabi and the Starting Point of Islamic Philosophy: A Study of the Kitab al-Jadal (Book of Dialectic), a super-commentary on Alfarabi's study of Aristotle's Topics, including first English translation of the entire Arabic text; and An Introduction to Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the first line-by-line commentary on Alfarabi's foundational philosophical text, with revisions to standard Mahdi (Cornell) translation based on new manuscript sources. Professor DiPasquale also recently completed several articles: “Averroes: Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmed ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd.” Published in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (ed. Michael T. Gibbons [Wiley-Blackwell]: 2014); “Averroes and the Politics of Health and Sickness in The Decisive Treatise.” Completed this summer and submitted toThe Review of Politics; “Charles Butterworth on the Political Significance of Averroes’ Rhetoric.” Manuscript completed this summer. To be included in forthcoming Festschrift in honor of Charles E. Butterworth; and “The Place of Human Beings in Roger Bacon’s De multiplicatione specierum: A Chapter on the Optics of Latin Averroism.” Manuscript largely completed this summer; for spring 2015 submission.
Peter Krause recently published several items: “The Structure of Success: How the Internal Distribution of Power Drives Armed Group Behavior and National Movement Effectiveness,” International Security, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Winter 2014), 72-116; Podcast with MIT Press, www.mitpressjournals.org (January 17, 2014); “Power, Violence, and the Outcomes of National and Insurgent Movements,” blog post in Political Violence @ a Glance (March 5, 2014); “The ‘Price’ of Radical Flanks and the Conflict in Gaza,” with Ehud Eiran, Washington Post, Monkey Cage, July 11, 2014. Professor Krause was also recentely named a Research Fellow at the International Security Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2014-2015, and gave a number of presentations: “Syria and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” The Chilton Club, September 2014; “The Algerian National Movement: Struggling to Hegemony,” Northeast Middle East Politics Workshop, University of Vermont, April 2014; “The Crisis in Syria: War, Politics, and Confusion,” Middle East and Islamic Studies Students Association, January 2014.
Franck Salameh gave a presentation at the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, October 30-November 1, 2014, entitled The Beirut Jewish Community and Early Twentieth Century Lebanese Nationalism (based on a current book project examining the Jews of Lebanon). Professor Salameh also recently published a number of essays and opinion editorials: “The Lebanese Prophecy,” al-Majalla, July 2014; “Trampled in Abraham’s Dust; The Destruction of Near Eastern Christianity,” The Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2014; “The Lights are Dimmer over Middle East Studies Tonight,”, The Jerusalem Post, June 25, 2014. He also gave an interview, "How Arabic’s Three Dozen Dialects Help (And Hinder) Middle East Peace," the University of Oklahoma Public Radio, September 5, 2014.
James Morris recently paraticipated in a number of public lectures and workshops: San Francisco University, April 10-11, 2015. National Conference on Teaching of Islam at U.S. Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Public lecture: The Central Role of Study Abroad in Religious Studies: Possibilities and Challenges; Sufi Cultural Festival, Abode of the Message, New Lebanon, NY, November 15-16, 2014. Public lecture and workshop: Meditation and Interreligious Understanding: Pir Vilayat’s Contributions; New York, Sufi Books, October 25, 2014. Public lecture and workshop: Dream, Sleepwalking and Awakenings: Ibn ‘Arabi on the Mysteries of Divine “Cinema” and Its Human Reflections; Iranian Cultural Institute, Sadra Philosophical Institute (Jakarta) and Gadjah Mada University (UGM), Yogyakarta, Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), June 16, 2014. Colloquium on Eschatology and Contemporary Issues in the Christianity and Islam. Public Lecture: The “Rapture” and the “Second Coming”: Apocalypse and Messianism in American Religious Culture, 19th Century to the Present; National Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga and American Institute for Indonesian Studies, Jogjakarta, Indonesia, June 19, 2014. Public Lecture and faculty seminar: "Rethinking the Interface between Islamic Learning and Society: Educating for Lifelong Creativity"; New York, Cerrahi Sufi Cultural Center, February 15, 2014. Public lecture and workshop: Sohbet: Sharing, Intimacy and the Mysteries of Spiritual Realization.