Unfortunately I must cancel our final seminar session on 5.2.2024 due to a required scholalry staff meeting at the university. To make up for the missed discussion time, I invite you to participate in the following reflective activity:
Spend 30-60 minutes writing an internal dialogue between yourself at the beginning of this course and yourself now at the end. What key insights, questions, or critiques would you highlight from your intellectual journey with Puar’s text? How have your perspectives shifted or been complicated?
Then, post 1-2 questions or reflections from this dialogue on the course blog by [date]. These can be areas you still find confusing, moments that felt revealing or unsettling, ideas you want to explore further, or ways Puar’s concepts have informed how you look at the world.
Though we cannot meet in person, this will help synthesize our collective learning over the term. I will respond briefly to each post during the individual follow-up meetings on 12.2.2024. Please contact me if you have any questions.
I want to acknowledge that this has been an unusual semester with many disruptions and schedule changes due to circumstances beyond our control. From transit strikes to staff actions, we navigated various challenges together. While this impacted the flow of our discussions at times, I am grateful for your patience, empathy, and continued engagement with the course material and each other in the midst of uncertainty. I believe we found meaning in Puar’s text despite a sometimes “fuzzy” journey.
Please take a few minutes to provide your feedback on this course via https://lehrevaluation.fu-berlin.de/productive/en/sl/mUhkCt5e4502 . Your perspectives will help me improve courses in this module (Reading the Middle East) for future students.
I’m also excited to announce a new course for next semester – “Peering Through the Artificial Looking Glass: AI and the Middle East”:
Take a journey through the AI looking glass to examine how intelligent technologies are reshaping the Middle East. This seminar provides a critical perspective on AI, moving beyond the hype to probe its emerging influence across the region’s economies, societies, politics, and cultures.
Blending theory with regional insights, we will interpret AI’s impacts on issues from climate change and labor markets to surveillance and geopolitics. The course catalyzes debate on AI’s promises and perils, equipping students to assess its transformative potential with wisdom and nuance.
Lectures situate empirical studies within conceptual frameworks like Crawford’s “Atlas of AI.” Multidisciplinary readings and discussions consider how AI could either entrench or transform power structures. Student projects analyze AI case studies, from Emirati space programs to Saudi data initiatives.
This seminar charts AI’s expansion across a complex region. It eschews simplistic techno-utopian narratives, favoring nuanced and evidence-based perspectives. Join us as we peer critically yet optimistically through the artificial looking glass at the Middle East’s unfolding AI future.
I hope to see some of you there!
Thank you again for your thoughtful participation during an eventful semester – I have learned a great deal from you all. I wish you the very best going forward.
Best wishes, Victoria.
PS: Don’t forget that the semester closing event of the Department of History and Cultural Studies will take place on Wednesday, Feb 14, as of 6 PM in the lecture hall -1.2009 in the Holzlaube; the Iranian Studies institute has organized food and beverages.