Middle East Studies in an Age of Post-Colonial Hegemony
The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) will hold its next conference, as usual at the Keystone Marriot just over the river from Georgetown DC, this coming year on November 13-15. Hopefully it will be live.
ASMEA was created in 2007 as a counter to MESA’s (Middle East Studies Association) increasing politicization . To ASMEA’s chagrin, MESA’s politicized scholarship has dominated the area-studies to this day (certainly as measured in control of research resources and access to the public), as well as fed the culture wars on campus and beyond in the form of “Apartheid Weeks” and BDS. As such, the anti-Orientalism of post-colonial studies has played an important role in the 21st century response of Western thought leaders to the challenges from the regions involved, not least, to Global Jihad.