Upcoming Events in December

This December, we’re bringing the Middle East closer to home with an extraordinary lineup of community events across Maine. From the echoes of ancient intellectual exchange to the urgent realities of modern displacement, these conversations illuminate the complex forces shaping one of the world’s most dynamic regions.

In How Politics Works: Erdogan’s Path to Authoritarianism in Turkey, at Rockland Public Library on Dec. 4, Bates professor Senem Aslan will show video clips of the president weeping and reciting poetry as a way of forging a bond with voters.  She cites examples of how the voters react from her extensive recent research, which will be included in a book now in preparation.

Also on Dec.4, Blue Hill Public Library will present Nadia El-Shaarawi,  author and associate professor at Colby, will examine how conflicts in the Middle East continue to disrupt affected populations in Collateral Damages, her recent book.  Refugees and displaced persons from war zones of decades past still define issues facing the region.

Looking back to the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, Professor Robert Morrison of Bowdoin, will raise the curtain on a period when the Islamic world was a leader in science, which Europe was eager to share.  Multilingual and transnational Jewish scholars transmitted ideas between Islamic and Christian societies, to be described in Merchants of Knowledge:  Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe. This talk will take place on Dec. 9 in Camden Public Library.

Fatima Saidi, Board member of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, will approach the refugee experience through story-telling in her talk at Portland Public Library on Dec. 11. Displacement, immigration and identity will be her focus, examining the lives of recent new Mainers and others who left countries of origin to come to the United States.  Fatima is also the director of We Are All America, a national initiative housed at the National Partnership for New Americans.

On Dec. 16 at Belfast Free Library, Michaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, whose career in the U.S. Foreign Service included postings in Cairo and Baghdad, will lead us through 2001-2011: A Pivotal Decade of U.S. Diplomacy in the Middle East.  Micaela will recount her experience working on U.S. policy in the Middle East before and in in the tumultuous decade following the attacks of 9/11.  She is currently executive director of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, publisher of the Maine Monitor.

In a switch from policy to culture, Falmouth Memorial Library will present traditional music of the Middle East with Eric LaPerna of Bates on Dec. 20.  Eric is the director of the Maine Middle Eastern Orchestra, specializing in percussion instruments.

All events are free and open to the public—join us for these remarkable conversations as we prepare for February’s conference.