An interdisciplinary centre, MENA is devoted to various cultural aspects found within the Middle East and North Africa and their diasporic populations.
Established by a team of researchers across several departments in the Faculty of Arts, the Ryerson University Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Studies Centre is devoted to the culture, history, literature, politics, and societies in the Middle East and North Africa and of diasporic populations from the MENA region in North America and Europe. This is a critical time in which to launch a resear
Please note this page is no longer active. The updated page for the TMU Middle And North Africa Studies Centre can be found here: https://m.facebook.com/mena.torontomu
Toronto Metropolitan University Middle East and North Africa Studies Centre Middle East and North Africa Studies Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University.
10/08/2019
EVENT TOMORROW:
Dr. Gonca Dardeniz Arikan, professor at the Institute for European and Mediterranean Archeology in SUNY Buffalo, is presenting a talk on: Innovation or Imitation: Alloying Practices in North-Central Anatolia During the Bronze Age.
WHEN: October 9, 2019, 6pm
WHERE: University of Toronto:19 Russell St. AP 130
See the Poster for more information
10/08/2019
Tomorrow the students of LM 9841 will be interviewing Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian on the book No Friend But the Mountains.
OCT. 9, 12-1pm At Ryerson University
You don't want to miss that!
For more information see the poster
03/27/2019
THIS FRIDAY, DON'T MISS THE JENS HANSSEN TALK!!
‘Arab Theory’ and the 20th-century German Intellectual Tradition
WHEN: Date: March 29th (Friday, 12-2pm)�
WHERE: RCC 223 (Rogers Communications Centre, 80 Gould St, Toronto, ON M5B 2M7)
03/18/2019
For our next event:
A talk on:
North African Jewish-Muslim Relations and the threat of European Anti-Semitism, 1934-1940
By: Aomar Boum
Associate professor in the Anthropology department at the University of California, Los Angeles.
WHEN: Tuesday April 2nd from 12-2pm
WHERE: JOR 1402 (350 Victoria Street)
There will be light refreshments!
03/15/2019
Hi Everyone,
Please join the Middle East and North Africa Studies Centre for a Talk on:
‘Arab Theory’ and the 20th-century German Intellectual Tradition
By: Dr. Jens Hanssen, Associate Professor of Arab Civilization, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean History at the University of Toronto
WHEN: Date: March 29th (Friday, 12-2pm)
WHERE: Location: RCC 223 (Rogers Communications Centre, 80 Gould St, Toronto, ON M5B 2M7)
Jens Hanssen is Associate Professor of Arab Civilization, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean History at the University of Toronto. He received his D.Phil. in Modern History from Oxford University in 2001 and joined the University of Toronto the following year. He has held a SSHRC Insight Grant (2014-2018) on “German-Jewish Echoes in 20th-Arab Thought.” Jens’s overall research explores the intellectual entanglements between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East since the 19th century. He is author of Fin de Siècle Beirut (2005), and co-editor of "Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age" and "Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age" (CUP, 2016 & 2018). His latest book, "A Clarion for Syria: A Patriot’s Call Against the Civil War of 1860", will come out with University of California Press in April, to be republished by the American University of Beirut Press.
Abstract:
What fascinated and haunted Farah Antun so much about Friedrich Nietzsche that he dedicated a series of newspaper articles to introduce this philosopher to an Arabic-speaking audience between 1906 and 1909? And what was Nietzsche’s afterlife among 20th-century Arab intellectuals? Why did Ernst Bloch find it expedient to invoke Ibn Sina in his critique of Dialectical Materialism of 1973, “Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left?” These two sets of questions are part of a larger research project that investigates the way Critical Theory – broadly defined – was affected by 20th-century developments in the Middle East, most notably in Palestine, and how the 20th-century German intellectual tradition influenced intellectual currents across the Mediterranean. Drawing on my previous work on “Kafka and Arabs” (2012) and “Arendt and Arab political Culture” (2013), as well as colleagues’ work on the Arab Darwin (M. ElShakry, 2015), Freud (O. Elshakry, 2017), and Sartre (di Capua, 2012, 2018), I propose to read European and Arab intellectual history in one dialectical framework of cultural mobility and multidirectional translation to ask where, how and when did such diverse thinkers as Nietzsche and Bloch, among many others pass in and out of intellectual circulation in the Arab world
03/12/2019
TOMORROW, don't forget to come to the book launch of Professor Ingrid Hehmeyer.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 12, 2019 from 5:00 to 7:00pm
WHERE: JOR 1410 (Jorgenson Hall, 350 Victoria Street)
03/06/2019
For our third event of the semester,
Please join the Middle East and North Africa Studies Centre for a Book Launch on:
A History of Water Engineering and Management in Yemen: Material Remains and Textual Foundations
By: Dr. Ingrid Hehmeyer, Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at Ryerson University.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 12, 2019 from 5:00 to 7:00pm
WHERE: JOR 1410 (Jorgenson Hall, 350 Victoria Street)
WHAT: In A History of Water Engineering and Management in Yemen, Ingrid Hehmeyer describes the three-way relationship between water, land, and humans from ancient to medieval and premodern times. Eight case studies address technical and managerial struggles, failures, and successes.
Bio: Dr. Ingrid Hehmeyer, Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at Ryerson University, is an agricultural engineer who specializes in human-environmental relationships in the arid regions of ancient and medieval Arabia. Her second area of research is the history of the medical sciences in the Islamic world. As a licensed pharmacist, she is particularly interested in the use of medicinal substances and their manufacture.
Light refreshment will be served.
We look forward to seeing you there.
03/01/2019
TODAY IS THE "Sovereign and the Sensible: Governing Prostitution in Iran, 1914-1933" TALK!
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE!
02/13/2019
Dear MENA Members,
Please join the Middle East and North Africa Studies Centre for a Talk on:
The Sovereign and the Sensible: Governing Prostitution in Iran, 1914-1933
By: Dr. Jairan Gahan postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto
WHEN: Friday, March 1, 2019 From: 12:00-2:00pm
WHERE: JOR 1410 (Jorgenson Hall, 350 Victoria Street)
Dr. Jairan Gahan is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at University of Toronto. Her research broadly investigates microhistories of precarious populations in the modern Middle East, spanning the twentieth century, with a focus on Iran. She is currently working on her book manuscript "Red-Light Tehran: Prostitution, Islamism, and the Rule of the Sovereign," which investigates the governance of the red-light district of Tehran from its inception in 1921 to its erasure in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution (1979) in 1981.
Abstract: This talk investigates the history of the formation of the red-light district of Tehran in 1922, to tackle larger questions about the genealogy of Islamic state in Iran, in the 20th century. Through an engagement with the Islamic local campaign against prostitution, and the state’s subsequent sovereign decision to form the district, I demonstrate how Islamic public sensibilities moved to the forefront of analytics of governance, under the quasi-secular post-constitutional state formations (1911-). This revisionist narrative remaps the force of religion in Tehran, a city that is so often glossed as a case of state-oriented top-down secularization and subsequent Islamization in the 20th century. The aim is not to question the process of secularization or to render it incomplete, but to demonstrate how secularism in Iran negotiated and consolidated a particular relationship between Islam and sovereign modern rule. As such, I read the history of the district against the grain of the grand narrative of the Islamic Revolution’s (1979) moment of rupture to trace the genealogical roots of moral governance in the Islamic Republic, within the post-constitutional state formations in early 20th century.
11/30/2018
TOMORROW DON'T FORGET TO COME TO WHAT PROMISES TO BE A GREAT TALK!!
HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.
11/27/2018
Hey Everyone,
Don't miss our next event this Friday NOV. 30 at 12:00 pm!
(Great talk and food!)
