New Generations Conference
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2026 Conference: Rethinking the Middle East: Body, Power, and Memory
March 25, 2026, 8am-4pm Panels || 5:30pm Keynote speaker: Dr. Sara M. Omar, Georgetown University
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Student Organizer Contacts: Feras Altwaim, Saman Javaherian, Scott Price
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Download the conference overview here.
Photo Credit.
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin are delighted to announce the 15th Annual Graduate Student Conference, New Generations. We invite applicants from all disciplines researching various topics relating to the study of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Islamic world. Interdisciplinary approaches are very welcome. New Generations aims to provide an accessible forum for young scholars, spread across a variety of disciplines and fields to come together, share ideas and research, and give new, and experienced, graduate students an opportunity to present at a conference. Against the background of current events impacting the body, the use of power, and memory in the Middle East, this conference encourages researchers to rethink established assumptions and methods of analysis within our discipline.
New Generations Conference 2026 Panels | Weds Mar 25, 8am-4pm | WCP 2.120
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Panel 1: Islamic Intellectual Traditions (9am-10:30am) |
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Chair: Hina Azam |
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Decline, Bribery, and Chess: Al-Shurunbulālī’s Reinvention of Moral Corruption as a Legal Reasoning (Sezer Durak) |
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Islamic Philosophy and the Specter of the Secular (Riad Alarian) |
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Between Migration and Pilgrimage: Hajj Hamlas and the Reframing of Spatio-Religious Mobility in the Arab Gulf (Mamdooh Abdul Fathah) |
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Panel 2: Cultural Memory in the Middle East Across Media (10:30-12pm) |
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Chair: Karen Grumberg |
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The Blessed Old Days: Reimagining Ancient Persia in the Poetry of Akhavan-Sales (Saman Javaherian) |
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The Nightingale and the Rose: The Bridge Between West and East (Bita Takrimi) |
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Simulating Ottoman Memory in MMORPGs (Scott Price) |
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Panel 3: Identity and Political Imagination in the Modern Middle East and Diaspora (1pm-2:30pm) |
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Chair: Ahmad Agbaria |
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Arab American Identities and Capitals: A Historic Approach to Understanding the Development of Financial, Social, Cultural, and Political Capitals of the Arab American Community in Greater Detroit (Nicholas Xavier Kolenda) |
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Themes Shaping the Constitutional Role of Islam in Modern Egypt (Feras Altwaim) |
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Martyrdom, Political Power, and Public Memory in Post Revolutionary Iran (Gracie Springette) |
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Panel 4: Language, Cognition, and Pedagogy in Middle Eastern Contexts (2:30pm-4pm) |
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Chair: Jeannette Okur |
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Gender Inclusivity in the Arabic Language Classroom (Maryah Converse) |
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Rewriting Time: The Influence of the Ottoman Script on Spatiotemporal Cognition in Historical and Modern Contexts (Onur Can Öz) |
Keynote Address | Weds Mar 25, 5:30-7pm | RLP 1.302B
The conference will welcome Dr. Sara M. Omar as the keynote speaker. Dr. Omar is an Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. Focusing on the first six centuries of Islamic history, her research uncovers the legal and social genealogies of words, concepts, and the practices they encode, with particular attention to gender, sexuality, power, and authority. Her forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press traces the historical genealogy of sex between men in early Muslim discourses. Omar's scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including Islamic Law and Society, the Journal of the International Qur'anic Studies Association, and the Journal of the American Oriental Society.