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Information about several papers discussed at the Women's Memory symposium on the 20th anniversary of the Women's Library and Information Center (WLIC) is presented. Topics include the Turkish women's movement's continuity or discontinuity, the Western second-wave feminism import to Turkey and coordination between the women's libraries. The conference was held at Kadir Has University and some papers were presented by the panel members from Turkey, Europe and Middle East.

Photography and its production, dissemination and reception is a contested terrain in the scholarship of arts during the Mandate Era. Instead of juxtaposing different "national" viewpoints, the article adopts the perspective of an ostensible outsider, the American Colony photographer, Eric Matson. Matson's photographic angle on the realities of the Mandate captured local and global imaginations, and his imperial gaze has much to teach about local political dynamics in an increasingly sectarian space. The article explores his relationship with local inhabitants and international news agents, and the ways in which his status as a creator and agent of images influenced his photographic perspectives. It suggests that despite Matson's close access to the transformations and actors in his surroundings, his ability to engage with them declined over the years. Ultimately his loyalties would be with the international audiences who shaped his decision to perpetuate imperial views. Matson's photography, in its internationalist aspirations and imperial character, illuminates the relationship between the networks of global news communication and the imperial infrastructure that shaped them. His story, thus, reveals an unacknowledged vantage point on the tensions between local national movements and global influences in the Middle East. Finally, the article probes the global historical nature of local photographic production and its importance in scholarship on the Mandate Period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that regional feminisms would be productive in avoiding some of the problems of "global feminism" or the co-opted shapes feminist transnationalism might take when it serves the priorities of international organizations or imperial powers. While Middle Eastern feminists would especially benefit from regional transnational links—given the nature of the social, economic, political, and geopolitical challenges that face the women and the people of the region in an age of capitalist globalization and empire—the paper warns that some dominant feminisms in the region may not be up to the task. The focus of the paper is on "white Turk" identity and ideology which have emerged in Turkey since the 1980s and have significantly influenced political and intellectual orientations among intellectuals, including liberal feminists. It is argued that this influence negatively impacts the capacity of liberal feminism both to articulate inclusive analysis and politics that would address different groups of Turkish women and to relate to other feminist groups in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of many coaching regulatory organizations, such as The International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), women are becoming central to the dialogue. This is especially the case with The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (GCC, 2024) which sees encouraging women and providing empowerment tools and strategies as part of the future strategic transformation in the region. This research essay is based on a survey conducted to explore public opinion on women's participation in coaching as leaders and coaches in Arab local organizations. The survey was launched and circulated in social media and WhatsApp groups using Google Forms. The data collected are representative of both women and men who live and work in Arab cultures and speak Arabic. The survey conveys the perceptions, beliefs, and values of the participants and how they view women's empowerment, leadership, and coaching in organizations. The purpose is to inform women coaches, policymakers, and consultants who support organizational development in MENA. This data-driven article will help enrich the lives of professional women in the field of coaching while supporting practitioners in understanding the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the public sphere in the Middle East and North Africa from the perspective of women's uses of information and communication technologies. I argue that the sociopolitical transformations unfolding in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa are not taking place in the absence of women's contribution and participation. Drawing on examples from different countries, I demonstrate how women are shaping, impacting, and redefining the public sphere by producing alternative discourses and images about womanhood, citizenship, and political participation in their societies. Crusading female journalists, feminist film producers/directors, publishers, and feminist cyber "bloggers" are strategically using old and new media to participate in the production and dissemination of alternative knowledge and the creation of transgressive spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism/s in the Middle East are more than a century old. There have been two major feminist paradigms referred to as ‘secular feminism’ and ‘Islamic feminism.’ The foundational moment of women's ‘secular feminism’ may be traced to the late nineteenth century while the emergence of ‘Islamic feminism’ became evident in the late twentieth century. These feminismis appeared mainly in Muslim-majority societies with plural religions and/or multiple ethnicities. They evolved in historical contexts in which new subjects and identities were being re/fashioned out of shifting combinations of religious, class, ethnic, and national affiliation. The two fin de siècle feminisms surfaced as efforts to re/construct states and vibrant social, economic, and technological transformation were underway. Secular feminism and Islamic feminism may be seen as two discursive modes. Secular feminism draws on and is constituted by multiple discourses including secular nationalist, Islamic modernist, humanitarian/human rights, and democratic. Islamic feminism is expressed in a single or paramount religiously grounded discourse taking the Qur'an as its central text. In this paper I reflect on the two modes of feminism in the Middle East, secular feminism and Islamic feminism and consider what makes them distinct and how they intersect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East" by Jonathan Parry is a political history that explores British diplomacy in the Ottoman Middle East from the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the Crimean War in 1854. The book examines how British officials worked to maintain the territorial integrity of the weak Ottoman Empire while also pursuing British interests and influence in the region. Parry argues that the legacies of this diplomacy continue to shape the politics of the Middle East today. However, some critics argue that the book lacks a multi-dimensional perspective and overlooks the role of the Ottoman Empire and British imperial interests in the Western Indian Ocean. [Extracted from the article]

While there are innumerable studies about global international organizations (IOs) in education, the role of regional organizations seems overshadowed by more powerful actors in the field, the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Although they are important in their regions, little is known about them and their interactions with global IOs. This research reveals new insight regarding the role that regional organizations play in the design of education policy in the Arab world, including all 22 Arab-speaking states of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region that is defined by a common language, culture and religion, and how these policies are shaped by the interaction between regional and global IOs. Using a postcolonial framework, a qualitative case study was conducted of a regional IO focusing on the Arab world and an important actor in education policy: the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO). The analysis reveals how the ALECSO is unmoored between two trends that pull it in different directions: its spoken aim to counter Western hegemony in the region, and the dominance of certain IOs that necessarily define other organizations' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the gratitude expressed by the "Journal of Middle East Women's Studies" for the support given by the contestant during the Association for Middle East Women's Studies' (AMEWS) graduate student essay competition. The contest is initiated by the publication, wherein two dozen papers were submitted from graduate students in the U.S. and abroad. The first and second prize winners of the competition will carry the award and it will be published in the organization's official publication. The author expressed its heartfelt gratitude to the selection committee, the contestants, as well as the reviewers who made the event successful.

Despite the importance of the ideological cleavage in Israel, there is a literary gap between the interpretation of Right-Wing positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its vision for Israel and the Middle East. Based on a conceptual analysis of arguments articulated in Ribonut journal by diverse members of the Right-Wing elite, the article presents new empirical evidence for the unique narrative of the conflict by the Israeli Right that leads to an ideological rejection of a two-state solution and a preference for a one-state solution, unilateral annexation, and a limited expansion of Palestinian rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on German Jewish immigrants and their memories of encounters with the British in Mandatory Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, as recorded in oral history interviews with them. Their affinity and perceived cultural similarity with the British is contextualized here using contemporary sources like newspaper articles, administrative and ego documents. The article offers new perspectives on the interaction between the British and the Jews of the era, internal conflicts within the Yishuv, and the self-perception of Central European immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Foreign Relations documents of the U.S. and the papers of government officials in the Truman administration that reveals the possibilities for peace in the Middle East in 1949 and the opportunities present for the U.S. to have played a major role in the peace process. The first Arab-Israeli war came to an end with the signing of an armistice agreement between Egypt and Israel on the island of Rhodes, on February 24, 1949, under the direction of United Nations Mediator Ralph Bunche. Within the next five months, successful armistice agreements were concluded between Israel and Trans Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; and permanent peace negotiations were expected to follow before the year's end. In order to appreciate the possibilities for peace in the Middle East in 1949, we must go back to December 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly, in anticipation of the end of hostilities between the Arabs and Jews, established a Palestine Conciliation Commission consisting of representatives from France, Turkey and the U.S. Its major task, which was to be pursued concurrently with the armistice negotiations, was to negotiate peace treaties between Israel and the Arab states. Along with its pursuit of permanent peace, the Commission was also to formulate a plan for the internationalization of Jerusalem and to arrange for the repatriation and resettlement of approximately 725,000 Palestinian Arab refugees.

This article discusses the relationship between H. Saint John Philby and the Zionist movement. According to the author, Philby was one of the Englishmen that had been suspected by the Zionist movement. The author observes that Zionists felt that men who were so devoted to the Arabs were bound to sympathize with the latter's feelings regarding Palestine and consequently take an antagonistic attitude to Zionism. Moreover, the author explores the involvement of Philby in a plan for solving the Jewish-Arab in 1929.

Marcia C. Inhorn is the recipient of the 2013 Middle East Distin- guished Scholar Award, given by the Middle East Section (MES) of the American Anthropological Association. This biennial award was established in 2006 to recognize the efforts of "a senior scholar in Middle Eastern anthropology who is an outstanding academic in terms of scholarly publications and service to Middle Eastern anthropology." The MES Award Committee wrote to Inhorn: "Our committee greatly values your efforts as a scholar, a mentor, and a leader who has been deeply invested in the anthropology of the Middle East. We very much value your impressive pioneering and important work on medical anthropology, science and reproductive technologies, the anthropology of gender, and religion in the Middle East. Your thick ethnographic accounts of the lives of men and women who struggle with infertility and how they appropriate different discourses and technologies in their quest for conception as well as your engagement with broader theories and concerns in anthropology have been very valuable contributions to our field. We also greatly value your service to the anthropology of the Middle East and leading role in making our discipline more visible in different institutions and organizations, including MESA as well as your committed work with the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. In addition, we deeply appreciate your mentoring of students and junior faculty. As was communicated by one of your students, you are renowned among graduate students and recent PhDs 'as one of the best mentors in the field' for your 'support, enthusiasm, and warmth.' On behalf of the MES Distinguished Scholar Award Committee, I would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations and warmly invite you to give our Distinguished Lecture at the MES Business Meeting during the AAA's 2013 Annual Meetings, and we look forward to celebrating your work and contributions to our field." Inhorn's Distinguished Lecture reflects on the state of Middle East anthropology, including ten directions for the future. New paths in Middle East gender ethnography are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of the periodical and its parent organization, the Association for Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS). Topics discussed include the establishment of AMEWS by Suad Joseph of the University of California-Davis in 1984, the launch of the periodical in 2004 with the University of Michigan serving as its editorial home, and the periodical's launch of an annual distinguished lectureship.

This inquiry explores questions of movement and tourism in relation to sexuality within the context of Lebanon's nascent gay travel industry. The first section examines how imagery of Arab men is mediatized and circulated, with (un)intended effects. Many of the images take form through hypermasculinized men and within the subculture of the 'bear.' The second section explores this specific sexual subculture in the context of two demographics of men (both bearded and able to pass through heteronormative spaces), the ethnographic encounters of male tourists who have traveled on tours with LebTour from 2007 to 2011, and those men in the region who are increasingly identifying as bears. This research hopes to complicate the oft cited local/global bifurcation of sexuality. What becomes most interesting are the changing affinities, conceptions of rights, and aesthetics of desirability in the negotiations of the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how everyday theories of masculinity and vernacular discourses of 'masculinities in crisis' play crucial roles in misrecognizing, racializing, moralistically-depoliticizing, and class-displacing emergent social forces in the Middle East. Public discourses and hegemonic theories of male trouble render illegible the social realities of twenty-first-century multipolar geopolitics and the changing shapes of racialism, humanitarianism, nationalism, security governance, and social movement. In order to help generate new kinds of critical research on Middle East masculinities, this article creates a larger map of discourses and methods, drawing upon studies of coloniality and gender in and from the global South. This mapping puts masculinity studies into dialogue with critiques of liberalism and security governance and with work in postcolonial queer theory, public health studies, and feminist international relations theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a close reading of At-Talmud: Asluhu wa-tasalsuluhu wa-adabuhu (The Talmud: Its Origin, Transmission, and Ethics; 1909), an Arabic work published in Egypt by the Jaffa-born writer Shimon Moyal. The book was intended to be the first of a multivolume translation of the Talmud into Arabic. The article places this translation project into its historical context in the fin-de-siècle Middle East and explores the various ways in which Moyal, through his translation, attempted to present Judaism more favorably and familiarly to a mixed Christian and Muslim readership. It is further suggested that Moyal's description of ancient Jewish history, and especially his use of nationalist terminology in recounting this past, may be read for insights about Moyal's own approach to Zionism. The article thereby also contributes to the scholarly discourse on the character of Sephardi Zionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the intersection of women, consumer capitalism and Islamic culture industry in the Middle East. It offers information on how contemporary Muslim women are mediated through the forces of consumer capitalism and how it impact their identities, properties and lifestyles. It examines the centrality of gender and its effects on Islamic consumer culture. It explores on the correlation between capitalism and religion and the increase of commodity communities in the region.

In the Middle East, many men who experience reproductive difficulties within marriage end up undergoing a risky form of male genital surgery called ‘varicocelectomy’. Promoted by urological surgeons as a way to enhance fertility, varicocelectomy is a form of men's embodied suff ering and a little-appreciated aspect of Middle Eastern men's reproductive lives. This article examines men's experiences of varicocelectomy, particularly in Lebanon, where the surgery is commonly carried out on both infertile and fertile men's bodies, despite significant controversy and critique. Reasons for this surgery are examined, including physician avarice, masculinity expectations within homosocially competitive fertility regimes, and husbands' desires to share the burden of reproductive suffering with beloved wives. It is argued that within the Middle East, men as well as women are heavily implicated in the trials and tribulations of infertility treatment—a form of reproductive intervention that has been inaccurately ‘naturalized’ by Western feminist scholars as an exclusively female domain and burden. Varicocelectomy is not only an important issue in male reproductive health, but an understudied and unappreciated dimension of the lived experience of manhood in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-prescribing automates the manual prescription process which enables physicians, pharmacies and payers to gain access to information that contributes to patient safety, controlling costs, and gaining business intelligence. In this article, the information flow of the leading eprescribing approaches in the United States (US) is compared with an e-prescribing system under development in a Middle East country. The focus is on the implication of process changes (e.g., shift in roles) and the secondary use of information that results from the integration of the prescription information chain. The comparison highlights differences in implementation that will impact the adoption of e-prescribing in the US. For example, the US approach requires a physician to specify where the e-prescription is to be sent, which in the past was solely a patient decision. In contrast, the approach by the Middle East company is for a cyber-mediary to hold the e-prescription until retrieved by the pharmacy a patient chooses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on three separate debates held between Arnold Toynbee and Yaacov Talmon, Yaacov Herzog, and Isaiah Friedman. Unlike the first two, who argued with Toynbee in general terms over his evaluation of the Jewish people and Zionism, Isaiah Friedman's debate with Toynbee was held on different grounds and along other lines. Friedman's debate was not ideological, but professional, academic, historical, and based upon diplomatic documents as his chief tools. He aimed to undermine the historical claims made by a great historian who had also filled a marginal role in the process of shaping the new Middle East after the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considers the impact of the June 1967 war in the Middle East, initiated by then Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser, on 21st century civilization. Factors that caused the conflict; World political leaders involved in the decision-making during the war; Nations involved in the war; Lessons regarding international relations and politics provided by the 1967 conflict; Ways by which the conflict has shaped 21st century politics in the Middle East.

Examines changes in patterns of female labor, social policy, and political economy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Problems with data on economic activities of women in the MENA region; Impact of the oil boom era and the neoliberal era on the livelihood and entitlements of women; Role of gender policies of the state in shaping the economic participation and entitlements of women.

The article presents a brief commentary regarding the "Journal of Middle East Women's Studies" (JMEWS) conference at UCLA. The conference entitled "JMEWS: Gender and the Transnational Middle East," was organized by Sondra Hale and Nancy Gallagher. Middle East and Muslim communities where transnational transmissions are integrally connected with citizenship, culture and human rights are given emphasis.