Call for paper proposals: Internationalism in the Twentieth-Century Arab World‏

اضيف الخبر في يوم السبت ١٣ - فبراير - ٢٠١٠ ١٢:٠٠ صباحاً.


We welcome paper proposals for "Internationalism in the Twentieth-Century Arab World", the panel we are organizing for MESA 2010.
 
Panel Abstract:
 
Internationalism in the Twentieth-Century Arab World
 
Histories of internationalism rarely consider the Middle East.
Nevertheless, various concepts of internationalism provoked intense debate throughout the Arab world during the twentieth century, and helped to shape Arab perceptions about their newly minted nation-states’ identifications and roles within the international community. This panel seeks to investigate the intellectual history and the political impact of ideas of internationalism in the Arab world, from the inception of the League of Nations in 1919 through the end of the twentieth century.


 
The region’s introduction to formal internationalism - its subjugation to the European powers under the supervision of the newly formed League of Nations - provoked a wide range of reactions, from decrying the League as a tool of imperialism to viewing it as a potential defender of the national rights of the Kurds and Assyrians. The Arab world’s relationship with the institutions of internationalism during the interwar period frequently revolved around issues of borders, citizenship and statelessness; attitudes towards internationalism thus helped to define the bounds of national identities and the position of ethnic and religious minorities in places like Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Simultaneously, a radically different concept of internationalism looked to decolonizing states in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Indian subcontinent to create new forms of global non-Western economic and political cooperation based on anti-imperial ideologies.
 
After 1945, Arab states participated in the newly formed United Nations with a degree of skepticism; their commitment to the internationalist principles represented by the UN was tempered by that body’s continued inability to solve the ongoing problem of Palestine, as well as by its inevitable focus on Cold War alignments. During the 1950s and 1960s, regionalism replaced internationalism as a topic of serious political debate in the Arab world, even as the Arab states continued to declare their participation in the international community through enthusiastic participation in internationalist events like the Olympics. In the post-Cold War era, new concepts of Islamic internationalism emerged which envisioned linking the Arab world to Central Asia and Indonesia through new forms of political and economic collaboration.
 
This panel will explore the shifting attitudes of the Arab world towards concepts and structures of internationalism over the course of the twentieth century. In the process, it will begin to elucidate how doctrines of internationalism helped shape national, ideological, ethnic and religious corporate identities both within the region and in a broader global order.
 
Please contact us by email with proposals or for further information as soon as possible.
 
Cordially,
 
Laura Robson,
lrobson@pdx.edu
Andrea Stanton, astanton@slc.edu

 
Laura Robson
Assistant Professor
Department of History
Portland State University
PO Box 751
Portland, OR 97207-0751
 (503) 725-3941  (503) 725-3941
lrobson@pdx.edu
<mailto:lrobson@pdx.edu>

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