Events and Member Activities
Upcoming Events in 2023
December 16th, 2023
Public Webinar: "Mobility and Agency in Contemporary Yemeni Diaspora"
11:30am - 1:00pm EST
April 26th, 2023
Members Only Webinar: "Teaching Yemen in American Universities and Under Blockade"
11:00AM - 12:00PM ET
September 17th - 19th, 2023
Dead Sea, Jordan (In-Person)
November 2nd - 5th, 2023
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting
Montreal, Canada (In-Person)
Cultural Change and Adjustment in Contemporary Yemen (Nov 3, 4-5:30pm)
Mobility and Agency in Contemporary Yemeni Diaspora (Nov 4, 5:30-6:15pm)
If you have information on events or member activities, please send the information to the Webshaykh
PAST EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES
President Varisco speaking at the February, 2019 "Culture at Risk: Yemen's Heritage under Threat," forum at theFreer/Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
Conferences/Symposia/Workshops
2022
December 1-4
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado
May 24-26
Recontres Sabéennes XXIV: Crossing Boundaries: Contacts between South and North Arabia
March 13-27
Karama Yemen Human Rights Film Festival
February 21
"The Transformation of the Imamate in Yemen, 1200-1800: Beyond the Failed State Paradigm." Lecture by Ekaterina Pukhovaia
2021
December and onward
Enfances au Yemen
(Online exposition on children in Yemen since the 1950s)
October 28-31
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting
(Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
2020
October 5-17 [Virtual this year]
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting (Washington D.C.)
June 12-13 [Postponed until further notice]
Colophons in Middle Eastern Manuscripts.
Conveners: Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS, George A. Kiraz (IAS School of Historical Studies) and Beth Mardutho (The Syriac Institute). Meeting will be held in the White-Levy Room at IAS, Princeton, NJ. Submission deadline: January 15, 2020
February 19
Why Yemen Matters: The Heritage of a Land in Crisis
Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 5-6:30 pm
White-Levy Room, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
January 21, 23, 27, 28, 30
"Documents/Inscriptions from pre-Islamic Southern Arabia." Series of lectures by Christian Robin in the Near Eastern Studies Workshops, sponsored by Professor Sabine Schmidtke, at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J. Located in Fuld Hall, room 307.
January 3-6
134th annual meeting of the American Historical Society (New York City)
2019
November 14-17
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting (New Orleans)
International Cultural Seminar on the Ḥaḍramī Musical Genre of Dān, Cairo, July 5-6.
March 29
Seminar on Rasulid Studies , Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, Bonn Funding for the seminar was provided by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Kolleg.
February 23
"Culture at Risk: Yemen's Heritage under Threat," (Freer/Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.)
Cultural Events and Films
2019
October 25
Vibrations from Yemen: Traditional and New Sounds,
YCIHA, Washington, D.C.
Exhibitions
2020
through September 6
Cosmos Coffee Exhibition, Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany
through January 26
Yemen: Inside a Crisis, Imperial War Museum, London
AIYS Member Activities
2019
December
• Daniel Martin Varisco delivered a talk on "The Kidnapping of a 14th Century Rasulid Sultan: The Case of al-Malik al-Mujāhid ‘Alī" at the Near Eastern Studies Seminar of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
November
• Najam Haider, Brinkley Messick and Daniel Martin Varisco presented papers on the panel "From al-Hadi ila al-Haqq to Husayn al-Huthi: The Zaydi Phenomenon in Yemen" at the annual MESA meeting in New Orleans.
• Stacey Philbrick Yadov and Jillian Schwedler organized a special session at the annual MESA meeting entitled "Politics and Prospects for peace and Reconstruction in Yemen." AIYS members participating include Waleed Mahdi and Nathalie Peutz.
• Daniel Martin Varisco's paper "When the Water Runs Out: The Environmental Challenge to the Future of Yemeni Society" was read by Andre Gingrich at the
annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Vancouver, Canada
October
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented "Mapping Rasulid Yemen: An Early 14th Century Yemeni Map of the Realm" at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies in Princeton.
July
• Sam Liebhaber of (Middlebury College) delivered a talk on the Yemeni poet Muḥammad al-Zubayrī at Leeds University on Saturday, July 13.
May
• Samuel Liebhaber of Middlebury College gave a talk at the Universidad de Navarra in Spain as part of the project «Discurso público» del Instituto Cultura y Sociedad (ICS) on May, 2019.
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented "The Mamluk Kidnapping of the Rasulid Sultan al-Malik al-Mujahid in Mecca in 751/1351: Comparing the Sources" at the Bonn-Waseda-Day: Workshop on “Text-Context- Problematic.” Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, Bonn.
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented "The Rasulid Dynasty in Yemen" at the University of Bergen.
April
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented "Trade to and from the Yemeni Port of Aden during the early Rasulid era (late 13th – early 14th centuries)." at the Universität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-lnstitut, Abt. Vorderer Orient.
March
• Dan Mahoney organized Seminar on Rasulid Studies at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, Bonn. Papers were presented by Ingrid Hehmeyer, Ellen Kenney, Dan Mahoney, Magdalena Moorthy-Kloss and Dan Varisco.
February
• Members presenting at the “Culture at Risk: Yemen’s Heritage under Threat” Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., included Krista Lewis, Noha Sadek, Daniel Martin Varisco
January
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented "Transcultural Interaction between Mamluk Egypt and Rasulid Yemen 626/1229 - 858/1454" at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg Mamluk Studies program.
Samuel Liebhaber (second from left) of Middlebury College gave a talk at the Universidad de Navarra in Spain as part of the project «Discurso público» del Instituto Cultura y Sociedad (ICS) on May, 2019.
AIYS Member Activities
2022
December
• AIYS members Mohammed Aziz, Flagg Miller, Sam Liebhaber, Emily Sumner and Dan Varisco presented at the 2022 MESA meeting in Denver.
October
• Daniel Martin Varisco discussed the issue of food sovereignty for Yemen at the Food Sovereignty Workshop at Ohio State University.
June
"Sharīʿa Genres and their Writers in Imamic Yemen" Zoom Lecture by Brinkley Messick for the Society for Palestinian Anthropologists.
May
• Stacey Philbrick-Yadav served as moderator, “What’s Happening in Yemen?” Internationalism From Below series, Haymarket Books, May 17, 2022. https://youtu.be/WF8AlZuWrVM
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented the paper "Agricultural Change in South Arabia/Yemen in the First Millennium CE: Insights from Archaeology, Arabic Sources and Ethnography" at the First Millennium CE Crop Diffusion in the Middle East and Mediterranean Workshop at Cambridge University, May 23.
March
• Daniel Martin Varisco and Najwa Adra participated in the Workshop on Tribal and Customary Laws in the Pre-modern Middle East, Lausanne, March 18.
Varisco presented the paper "Aḥkām al-Qabā'il vs. Ṭaghūt: The Premodern Context of Tribal Customary Law in Yemen." Adra was a discussant and panel chair.
2021
December
• AIYS Fellow Gabriel Lavin (University of California, Los Angeles) presented "Yemeni Culture: An Exploration of Adeni Music in the Late Colonial Period" for the British-Yemeni Society.
• AIYS Members Neama Alamri, Abdulhakem Alsadah, Gokh Amin Alshaif, Waleed Mahri and Dan Varisco presented in two AIYS panels at the annual MESA meeting.
• Stacey Philbrick-Yadav presented “ ‘One Hand Does Not Clap’: Partisanship and the Dual Challenge of Women’s Inclusion in Yemen,” (with Rim Mugahed) Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, December 2, 2021. https://sanaacenter.org/publications/analysis/15809
October
• Roxani Margariti presented "The Maritime Edge: Marine Harvests, Subsistence and Mobility in the Premodern Red Sea" for the The Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient on Zoom.
• IStacey Philbrick-Yadav was an invited speaker for, “Case Study: Yemen in Neglect,” Pearson Global Forum 2021, Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, University of Chicago, October 22, 2021. https://thepearsoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/2021-Pearson%20Global%20Forum%20Report.pdf
September
• Waleed Mahdi discussed the film "Valentino's Ghost: Why We Hate Arabs" in an online showing of the Voices from the Holy Land Online Film Salon.
July
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented "Weighing the Baghdādī Raṭl: A Metrological Muddle" for the Ulrich Haarmann Memorial Lectures Online (Bonn) on Zoom.
June
• Thomas Kuehn (Simon Fraser University) presented "Imperial Contractors and the Governance of Ottoman Yemen 1872-1919" for the Institute for Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
January
• Charles Schmitz presented in "What exactly is the Biden Plan in Yemen?, Middle East Institute, February 8.
2020
December
• Sam Liebhaber presented “Presentation on the Digital Exhibit: When Melodies Gather”, Language and Nature in Southern Arabia Remote Workshop .
• Charles Schmitz was interviewed by the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs about the Yemeni Civil War's Past, Present and Future, December 11.
September
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented a ZOOM lecture for the political science class of Dr. Imad Mansur (McGill, Montreal) on "Yemen and the Gulf: A Historical Overview"
June
• Daniel Martin Varisco presented a ZOOM lecture on "Mamluk Egyptian Agriculture in Yemeni Rasulid Sources" for the EGYLandscape Project.
• Stacey Philbrick Yadav presented "For a durable peace in Yemen, inclusion must mean more than simply a voice for civil actors<https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/06/08/yemen-peace-inclusion-civil-actors/>.” (with Marie-Christine Heinze) Responsible Statecraft,
April
• Sam Liebhaber presented “Bin Faris, Bin Shamasa and Ba Dujana: The Sovereign Dynasties of Western al-Mahra”, Language and Nature in Southern Arabia Workshop .
February
• Nancy Umm delivered a talk on "From City to Text to Image: Pieter van den Broecke and Safi ibn Vali in Seventeenth-Century Mocha" at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society of the University of Chicago.
• Najwa Adra delivered a talk on "Tribal Dynamics and Nation Building in Yemen" at the Near Eastern and Islamic Studies seminar at the School for Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Nathalie Peutz delivered the following talks: “Gate of Tears: Migration and Impasse in the Horn of Africa.” Social Science Seminar, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study; “A Tale of Two Camps: Yemeni Refugees and Ethiopian Migrants in the Horn of Africa.” Friends of the Institute Lunch with a Member, Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies; Panel presentation, “Yemen’s Biotic, Linguistic, and Cultural Diversity: Diversity and Interconnectivity.” Panel: “Why Yemen Matters: The Heritage of a Land in Crisis.” Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies; “Islands of Heritage: Conservation and Transformation in Soqotra (Yemen).” Sponsored by the Middle East and North Africa Studies Program, Northwestern University; Public Talk, MENA Monday Night Series: “A Tale of Two Camps: Yemeni Refugees and Ethiopian Migrants in the Horn of Africa.” Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL. Sponsored by the Evanston Public Library, Northwestern University’s Middle East and North Africa Program and the Colloquium on Refugees, Migrants, and Statelessness.
January
• Bernard Haykel (Princeton University), Gregory Johnsen (Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies) and Asher Orkaby (Transregional Institute, Princeton University) presented on the panel "Late Breaking: Understanding the Conflict in Yemen Through History" at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City.