[MES Forum] Announcing a new forum for research and dialogue around communities in the Middle East!

[McClimans, Melinda]

Dear MES Forum,

The Directors of the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and the Middle East Studies Center, partnering with the Center for Ethics and Human Values, are pleased to announce the award of a $75,000 Centers and Institutes Grant from Global Arts and Humanities. Our two-year project, Cross Disciplinary Perspectives on Multi-Ethnic Cultural Production in the Middle East, engages modern and historical questions about power regarding minoritized communities in the Middle East through collaborative research, dialogue, and artistic productions. We are addressing these often-polarized relationships among stakeholders on our campus invested in the Middle East broadly with special attention to Israel and Palestine. We spent a year forging a research partnership, then built a program around our closest stakeholders. We will bring to campus artists and scholars to share their models of engaging questions and difficult conversations that deliberately push the boundaries between Jew and Arab, Israel and Palestine. Embracing our OSU shared values, we step into building the world we want to see and capturing the questions that challenge flattening narratives about minoritized communities in the Middle East.

In the coming years, expect opportunities to experience cultural productions like food, dance, and clothing, engage in dialogue about the Middle Eastern cultures and collectivities that produce them, pursue research collaborations as scholars and students, and welcome both experts and the curious to our campus. Whether you join our Big Table, roundtables, audiences, activities, storytelling, or research pods, please join us in building our communities that include you.

Sponsored by:
The Melton Center for Jewish Studies meltoncenter.osu.edu<https://meltoncenter.osu.edu/>
The Middle East Studies Center mesc.osu.edu <https://mesc.osu.edu/>
The Center for Ethics and Human Values cehv.osu.edu<https://cehv.osu.edu/>
With special thanks to the Global Arts and Humanities Cross-Disciplinary Disciplinary Exchange<https://globalartsandhumanities.osu.edu/>.



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