AMECYS at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference
AMECYS sponsors up to three panels at the annual MESA meeting, focusing on themes relevant to the study of children in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf, and their diasporic communities. Upcoming and past sponsored panels are listed below.
In the lead-up to the annual meeting, AMECYS circulates a call for paid members seeking panel sponsorship at the annual meeting via our listserv and posts it here on our website.
AMECYS at MESA 2025
Tuesday, November 24, 8:00 - 10:00 PM EST
AMECYS Joint Reception
​​Co-hosted by AMECYS, AMEWS, AASA and AMEA
The meeting will be held in Anacostia Ballroom Salons E-F at the Washington DC Westin, Downtown. AMECYS thanks Suad Joseph for her generous cost defrayment of the reception. Current and Interested AMECYS, AMEWS, AASA and AMEA members all welcome!
Tuesday, November 25, 12:30 PM-2:00 PM EST
AMECYS Business Meeting
Dr. Yael Warshel-- AMECYS President
Dr. Dylan Baun -- Vice President
Dr. Heidi Morrison -- Treasurer
Dr. Reda Rafei -- Secretary
Dr. Tylor Brand -- Communication Chair
Ms. Melis Sulos -- Student Representative
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Dr. Hillary Falb Talisman, Dr. Atacan Atakan,
Dr. Rüstem ErtuÄŸ Altınay, Ms. Rehab Alayoubi, Dr. Majid Hanoum and Dr. Didem Yavuz -- Board Members-at-Large
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​The meeting will be held in the RedBud Room at the Washington DC Westin, Downtown. Current and Interested AMECYS members all welcome!
Sunday, November 23 at 8:30 am
Palestinian Young People and Research Methodologies
Dr. Heidi Morrison -- Organizer, Presenter, Chair
Dr. Fida Adely -- Presenter
Dr. Amahl Bishara -- Presenter
Ms. Janette Habashi -- Presenter
Ms. Catherine Pitcher -- Presenter
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In conventional academic discourse, media, and political dialogue, Palestinian children tend to be represented in one of four ways: passive, resilient, violent, or heroic. None of these adjectives do justice to the lived experience of being young in Palestine. To understand the impact of political violence on Palestinian children – an imperative made even more urgent from the deaths of nearly 20,000 Palestinian children in the past 18 months – critical attention needs to be paid to the voices of Palestinian children themselves. In this roundtable, scholars will discuss strategies for research that seek to remain true to the children they research.​
Monday, November 24 at 11:00 am
Law, Leisure, and Politics: Children and Youth as Historical Actors in the MENA Region
Dr. Kimberly B. Katz -- Organizer, Presenter
Dr. Rochelle Davis, Chair
Dr. Orit Bashkin -- Presenter
Dr. Keren Zdafee -- Presenter
Ms. Salmah Elmasry -- Presenter
Mr. Asaf Levy -- Presenter
Mr. Joonhwan Choi -- Presenter
Dr. Yael Warshel -- Discussant
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This panel considers the role of children and youth as historical and political actors in case studies across the modern Middle East and North Africa and includes studies on the Jordanian West Bank, Israel, Egypt and Tunisia, and Iran. Panelists examine the experiences of children and youths as criminal defendants in the Jordanian West Bank, as participants in leisure/political activities in the Jordanian West Bank, as child laborers and vandals in Israeli transit camps set up for Arab Jewish immigrants, as student/political protestors in Egypt and Tunisia, and as filmic narrators of Iranian society. Presenters variously draw on legal documents, popular media, letters, sketches, official complaints, interviews, focus groups, films, as well as government sources to engage youth’s experiences in what is normatively seen as adults’ spheres: law enforcement, cultural representation, migration and national acclimation, political participation through protest, and as the navigators of cultural and political issues in society.
Past MESA Panels
2024
Multiple Layers of Childhood Landscape: Emotional, Physical and Spatial Encounters in Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey
Dr. Dylan Baun -- Discussant, Chair
Mrs. Melis Sulos -- Presenter
Dr. Atacan Atakan -- Organizer, Presenter
Cansu Degirmencioglu -- Presenter
Dr. Didem Yavuz VelipaÅŸaoÄŸlu -- Presenter
2023
Children's Incarceration in Modern Egypt
Dr. Dylan Baun -- Chair
Dr. Heidi Morrison -- Discussant
Dr. Hanan H. Hammad -- Organizer, Presenter
Ms. Samar Nour -- Presenter
Maryam Fouad -- Presenter
2022
Between Family and State: Children as Subjects of Concern
Dr. Dylan Baun -- Chair
Mrs. Melis Sulos -- Presenter
Dr. Atacan Atakan -- Presenter
Ms. Samar Nour -- Presenter
Dr. Reda Rafei -- Organizer, Presenter
October, 13, 2020
Reframing Childhood in the Modern Middle East
Dr. Dylan Baun -- Discussant, Chair
Dr. Sivan Balslev -- Organizer
Mrs. Melis Sulos -- Presenter
Dr. Maayan Hillel -- Organizer, Presenter
Mr. Colin Murtha -- Presenter
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​AMECYS program chair Dylan Baun served as the discussant for three papers on pediatrics in Early Republican Turkey (Melis Sulos), new leisure practices in Mandate Palestine (Mayaan Hillel), and discourses on aging in the Early Ottoman period (Colin Murtha).
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November, 21, 2019
Youth Activities, Positionality, and Future Aspirations in the Maghreb
Dr. Dylan Baun -- Discussant, Chair
Erin Gould -- Organizer, Presenter
Mr. David Balgley -- Organizer, Presenter
Nada Berrada -- Presenter
Sarah Schwartz -- Presenter