Middle Eastern Studies: Experience of Culture and Identity
Open gallery
The third annual Middle Eastern Studies Symposium, the college’s newest symposium, was held in late February.
The annual event is organized by Lewis & Clark’s Middle East Initiative, a student organization whose advocacy helped realize the creation of a robust Arabic language program and the recent approval of a new Middle East and North African studies minor.
This year’s theme was Experience of Culture and Identity in the Middle East. Laura Robson, associate professor of history at Portland State University, delivered the keynote lecture on the politics of ethnicity and religion in the 20th-century Arab world. Other sessions focused on topics such as goal achievement in Cairo, interpretations of the Middle East in American media, and the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Sema Hasan BA ’18 and Emma Slater BA ’19 served as the event cochairs.
