AASA at MESA 2022

AASA Events at MESA

AASA – Arab American Studies Association 

Board Meeting, Thursday, 12/1 , 12-1pm in Director’s Row G 

Business Meeting, Thursday, 12/1 , 1-2pm in Director’s Row J 

AASA Reception, jointly with AMEWS, AMECY, AMEA: MESA: Saturday, 12/1, 7:30-9:30 pm in Director’s Row H.

AASA-Sponsored Sessions:

Common Challenges, New Opportunities: Connections between the Middle East and Latin America. Session V-01, Friday, December 2 at 1:30 pm

Resonances: The Work and Legacy of Etel Adnan (1925-2021) Session X-08, Saturday, December 3 at 5:30 pm

The meeting of Middle East Center and Program Directors at MESA’s annual meeting in Denver is scheduled from 10:00am-12:00pm on Saturday, December 3 in the Plaza Ballroom A at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. – Pauline will attend

Board Meeting Agenda

President’s Report: Pauline

Welcome new Board members

Linda Sayed (appointed to replace Wessam Elmeligi who resigned before his term was finished), Rachel Norman, (who was appointed to replace Edward Curtis who resigned before his term was up), Waleed Mahdi (president elect); Layla Gouchey (secretary elect), Rania Said (member at large) ; thanks to outgoing members Amira Jarmakani (past president), Tracy Fahrenthold (member-at-large), Layla Gouchey (web coordinator)

Looking back at 2022

• Successful 2020.2 Conference in San Diego

Fall Virtual Themed Sessions

• Translation and Multilingual Arab America
• Teaching Arab American Studies

Committee to work on it?

Proposal: Start a twice a year newsletter, with message from the president and member news (e.g. new publications), and updates on AASA stuff, including advocacy letters.

Archiving AASA matters: Request for a Committee to gather information for archiving AASA matters (preferably secretary or secretary elect, plus a member-at-large, plus anyone else interested/able to help)

• Past Board members (names, years, positions)
• List of Board decisions – e.g. how to handle requests to distribute information from other orgs
• Past Board Collaborations
  • E.g. Joint Reception at MESA 2022 with AMEWS, AMECY, AMEA
• Past Sessions at MESA and ASA (including session titles, dates, and participants)
• List of past AASA conferences (dates, place, organizers, and copies of programs)
• List of AASA virtual events (dates, titles, programs)

Developing methods to keep track of recurring AASA Business:

• Website payments
• MESA fees (every other year)
• ASA and MESA session sponsorships (timelines)
• Election timelines 
• Current Board members length of tenure (from date X to date X)
• Other?
  • Can we have volunteers for a committee to develop this?

Discussion regarding timing of ASA and MESA sponsorship process 

• (see Amira’s note about )

Discussion regarding announcements: 

1. How to handle announcements that come our way. Should we limit what we distribute to 1) announcements from members only, to 2) academic/educational announcements that are clearly related to AASA, or 3)?
2. How to handle social media posts, etc.

Virtual sessions for Spring 

• Translation and Multilingual Arab America
• Teaching Arab American Studies
  • Committee?: Stacey mentioned she would help but she’s terming out. 

Journal updates: Amira

Treasurer’s Report: Ghassan

Web Coordinator Report: Rachel and Layla

Secretary Report: Danielle

…….

Business Meeting Agenda

President’s Report:

• Welcome new Board members
• AASA at MESA Events Announcements
• Looking back at 2022
• Things to look forward to in Spring 2023:
  • Fall Virtual Themed Sessions in Spring
  • Biannual Newsletter

• Journal updates: Amira

• Treasurer’s Report: Ghassan

• Web Coordinator Report: Rachel and Layla

• Secretary Report: Danielle

MEETING MINUTES (all notes in blue)

AASA – Arab American Studies Association 
Board Meeting, Thursday, 12/1 , 12-1pm in Director’s Row G 

Board Meeting Agenda 

President’s Remarks: Pauline

• Welcome new board members: Waleed Mahdi (President elect); Rania Said (Member at Large) Linda Sayed (Treasurer), Rachel Norman (Web Coordinator), and Layla Goushey (Secretary Elect); thanks to outgoing members Amira Jarmakani (past president), Stacy Fahrenthold (member-at-large), Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine (Treasurer) and Layla Goushey (Web Coordinator)

Board members present: 

Pauline Homsi Vinson, Waleed Mahdi, Rania Said, Nina Shoman Dajjani, and Linda Sayed 

During introductory discussion, the board discussed MENA/SWANA advocacy on college campuses and creating a sub-committee for advocacy on college campuses. Nina mentioned that NCORE has been a space for advocacy. 

• AASA Reception, jointly with AMEWS, AMECY, AMEA, MESA: Saturday, 12/1, 7:30-9:30 pm in Director’s Row H.
  • Slideshow put together jointly by Layla Goushey and the Board

• AASA-Sponsored Sessions:

• Common Challenges, New Opportunities: Connections between the Middle East and Latin America. Session V-01, Friday, December 2 at 1:30 pm
• Resonances: The Work and Legacy of Etel Adnan (1925-2021) Session X-08, Saturday, December 3 at 5:30 pm
  
• The meeting of Middle East Center and Program Directors 
  • 10:00am-12:00pm on Saturday, December 3 in the Plaza Ballroom A at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. – Pauline will attend
    • Addendum: 2023 MESA will be entirely in-person in Montreal; 2024 will be entirely virtual

Looking back at 2022 and 2021

• Successful 2020.2 Conference in San Diego
• Website update in the works -I have someone to recommend who has been very good with my site – not the same one I worked with in the summer.
  •  Web designer needed [addendum: Rachel found one through Charlotte Karem Albrecht]
• Advocacy Letters
  • AASA Statement on Book Bans of LGBTQI+ Themed Books (2022)
  • Women, Life, Freedom. زن زندگی آزادی jointly with the West Asian Studies section of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) 
  • AASA Statement on Sheikh Jarrah (2021)
  • AASA Statement on Racism Toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (2021)
  • Open Letter from Ethnic Studies Scholars in Support of Arab American Studies Curriculum in California High Schools (2021)

Looking ahead to Spring 2022 and fall 2023

Spring Virtual Themed Sessions in planning stages- a way to keep membership engaged

• Translation and Multilingual Arab America- a lot of untranslated work in AAS and we could leave an effort on this 
• Teaching Arab American Studies, SAJALU book and the interest of pedagogy , Layla/Pauline and Danielle on the committee for this 

Committee to work on it: 

Volunteer 1: Pauline

Volunteer 2: Layla

Volunteer 3: Danielle

Volunteer 4: Rania (Teaching Arab American Studies)

MESA/ASA next year in Montreal at the same time – Nov. 2-5

• ASA: the theme is solidarity; Submissions will open 1/1/2023 and close 2/1/2023
• MESA doesn’t have themes usually; dates for submissions system will open in January 2023

AASA Conference in Spring 2024

• Putting it on the radar for a discussion about place, date, and program committee- Extensive conversation about where to have it and it is decided it will be in Dearborn but we should think about having it in other locations in the future (Chicago, Boston, Oklahoma, Morocco were all mentioned) 
• Institutional support and capacity, location, and cost all factor in as a decision about location is made 
• We need a committee, Pauline will begin exploring the options for space and collaboration in Dearborn with the AANM
• After balancing the dates for religious holidays (Easter, Passover, and Ramadan) as well as various campus spring breaks, we have settled on the weekend of April 12 – April 14 (Friday through Sunday) as the best fit.

In process:

• Website Update
• Archiving AASA matters
• Developing methods to keep track of recurring AASA Business

Proposals for a vote:

• Proposal 1: Pauline: start a twice a year newsletter, with messages from the president and member news (e.g. new publications), and updates on AASA stuff, including advocacy letters.  We can solicit information from members, President, secretary and web designer working on this. President can send a note, twice a year and include sponsorship, job opportunities and research info. Resources for Arab American students, scholarships, etc. to be shared
• Scholarship or undergrad or grad school award discussion, $1500 a year, $500 or $1000 to students 

• Proposal 2: Message from Layla: we should do something for Arab American Heritage Month.

• Proposal 3: Pauline: use Arabic for AASA along with our name on website and social media. Group agreed to adding Arabic to the logo: رابطة الدراسات العربية الامريكية

Discussions/Decisions:

• Discussion regarding timing of ASA and MESA sponsorship process
  • We should put out a call for papers 
  • ASA submission in January so we need to organize panels soon
  • We can have 2 sessions and a workshop at ASA and the same for MESA
  • We need a committee for MESA and ASA panels. We should follow our existing templates if we have any or create ones if we don’t. The secretary will send out a call  
  • Think of 2 panel themes and a workshop early January (For both MESA and AASA)
  • Panel Proposal Committee members: 3 people for each conference
    
  • Committee needed for conference in Dearborn 2024 planning 

• Discussion regarding policy for announcements to membership 
• Palestine Legal Request – DoE and possible adoption of IHRA definition 

Journal updates: Amira

Treasurer’s Report: Ghassan and Linda (see attached)

Web Coordinator Report: Layla and Rachel 

• Addendum: Rachel contacted 17 web developers with no luck but Charlotte has a lead that Rachel can follow up with
• From Layla – Twitter seems to attract more engagement from member and non-member accounts, and most of the non-member accounts have ties to Arab American or Middle Eastern/SWANA Studies. There is less engagement on Facebook, but that may be because it is not always easy to identify posts related to Arab American Studies by members.  It might be useful to create opportunities for members to share their successes so we can celebrate them in posts.  I do this now by noticing and sharing publications and other successes but there is no official notification process.

Secretary Report: Danielle [see attachment]

• Our diversity in the field will help us engage various disciplines (see Secretary data report on membership) 
• We need to invite/solicit institutional membership 
• From Danielle: If everyone on the board agrees, I think 2023 is the year to start reducing the membership listserv to only members.  We relaxed our requirements for conference registration and membership during COVID, but I’d like to update our membership list and send out reminders to renew in January 2023. We could also think about how to cultivate a wider membership, especially with so many graduate students doing research in the discipline.

Remarks from Members-at-Large: Nina and Rania

MEETING MINUTES (Notes in blue)

Arab American Studies Association at MESA 2022 in Denver

Business Meeting, Thursday, 12/1, 1-2pm in Director’s Row J 

President’s Report:

• Pauline started the meeting by thanking Amira for her service as President, recognized Amira’s work especially given the shift of the conference planning and her work on several advocacy letters. 
• Pauline also gave thanks to all the departing board members and congrats to new ones.

• Welcome new Board members and thanks to outgoing Board Members
  • New: Waleed Mahdi (President elect); Rania Said (Member at Large) Linda Sayed (Treasurer), Rachel Norman (Web Coordinator), and Layla Goushey (Secretary Elect); 
  • Outgoing: Amira Jarmakani (past president), Stacy Fahrenthold (member-at-large), Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine (Treasure) 
  • Remaining: Pauline (President), Danielle (Secretary), Nina (Member-at-Large)
  • Shifting Roles: and Layla Goushey (from Web Coordinator to Secretary Elect)

• AASA at MESA Events 

• AASA Reception, jointly with AMEWS, AMECY, AMEA, MESA: Saturday, 12/1, 7:30-9:30 pm in Director’s Row H.
  • Slideshow put together jointly by Layla Goushey and the Board
• AASA-Sponsored Sessions:
• Common Challenges, New Opportunities: Connections between the Middle East and Latin America. Session V-01, Friday, December 2 at 1:30 pm
• Resonances: The Work and Legacy of Etel Adnan (1925-2021) Session X-08, Saturday, December 3 at 5:30 pm

Looking back at 2022 and 2021

• Successful 2020.2 Hybrid Conference in San Diego
• Website update in the works: Rachel is looking for a web developer, the site should serve as a place for us to track things, Charlotte has a lead and will share with Rachel
  • To do: Share the website wish list with the rest of the board 
  • To do: Add the newsletter to the website once the newsletter is established. 

• Archiving AASA Board Business project in the works: This is important because we need places to house recurring business (MESA submissions, calendar of deadlines, previous meeting information, information from previous board members, preserving the institutional work overtime)
• Amira has some docs that she will share with the board so we can add them to our drive. (Amira will share with Layla)
• Message from Layla – I suggest using Google Calendar for some items.  Talk to web developer about membership plugins for site.  

• Advocacy Letters
  • AASA Statement on Book Bans of LGBTQI+ Themed Books (2022)
  • Women, Life, Freedom. زن زندگی آزادی jointly with the West Asian Studies section of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) 
  • AASA Statement on Sheikh Jarrah (2021)
  • AASA Statement on Racism Toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (2021)
  • Open Letter from Ethnic Studies Scholars in Support of Arab American Studies Curriculum in California High Schools (2021)

• Things to look forward to in Spring 2023 and beyond
  • Fall Virtual Themed Sessions in Spring
  • Biannual Newsletter
  • MESA/ASA in Montreal in November
    • Message from Amira: AASA has had ongoing conversations since before the pandemic (which got waylaid by the pandemic) about sending out our own call in conjunction with the ASA cfp, so that we could proactively organize our panels there (instead of just inviting people to ask for our sponsorship.) That would need to be done in January, which is always what the challenge is and why we haven’t been able to make it happen during these frantic years. 
    • Message from Stacy: MESA has a similar timeline (deadline is always Feb 15). We and our panels will get the most out of sponsoring panels at MESA if we solicit panels in advance of their deadline, usually putting out a call in early or mid-January.
  • AASA Conference in Spring 2024 – working on securing Dearborn as a location. After balancing the dates for religious holidays (Easter, Passover, and Ramadan) as well as various campus spring breaks, we have settled on the weekend of April 12 – April 14 (Friday through Sunday) as the best fit.

Journal updates: Amira 

Treasurer’s Report: Ghassan and Linda

• Pauline shared the report and Amira provided some clarity regarding the income that came in for the conference 

 Web Coordinator Report: Rachel and -Layla

• Addendum: Rachel contacted 17 web developers and no luck but Charlotte has a lead
• From Layla – Twitter seems to attract more engagement from member and non-member accounts, and most of the non-member accounts have ties to Arab American or Middle Eastern/SWANA Studies. There is less engagement on Facebook, but that may be because it is not always easy to identify posts related to Arab American Studies by members.  It might be useful to create opportunities for members to share their successes so we can celebrate them in posts.  I do this now by noticing and sharing publications and other successes but there is no official notification process.

Secretary Report: Danielle

• Our diversity in the field will help us engage various disciplines (see Secretary data report on membership) 
• We need to invite/solicit institutional membership 
• From Danielle: If everyone on the board agrees, I think 2023 is the year to start reducing the membership listserv to only members.  We relaxed our requirements for conference registration and membership during COVID, but I’d like to update our membership list and send out reminders to renew in January 2023. We could also think about how to cultivate a wider membership, especially with so many graduate students doing research in the discipline.

Other Announcements: All

Ideas discussed:

• Logo redesign in Arabic (Pauline) – the Board agreed to: رابطة الدراسات العربية الامريكية
• Scholarships for students (we can use our funds and solicit funds)
  • The secretary is in charge of announcing the travel grants for membership – we need to develop/find a template for the Application process 
  • $250 Award. MESA, ASA, and AASA conferences 
  • We have an existing application that Matt Stiffler made, just need to edit
  • Committee needs to be created to run the application process
• Workshop on converting dissertations to books (Waleed) for conference
• Nina discussed the Pal Legal request to send in public comment to DoE re: adoption of IHRA definition 

MESA: We can sponsor three panels, including the thematic panel. Historically, we have waited until people got acceptance notifications from MESA, then we send out a call for whomever wants sponsorship and then we select from those who have submitted.  

ASA: We can sponsor 2 panels and 1 professional development/workshop session. We have been creative about how we interpret “professional development.” For ASA, we have to know who we are sponsoring at the time of submission, so we need to send out a call before submission (like right now).  I’m guessing that we put together the professional development panel ourselves.

2022 AASA Treasurer’s Report

Prepared on November 29, 2022

By Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine

Fiscal year 10/12/21-11/29/2022

Ending balances total on October 12, 2021: $25, 424.46

Assets as of November 29, 2022 = $22,248.48

PayPal= $ 16, 767.48

Comerica= $ 5,481

Income: $3,500

Memberships and Donations

Expenses:

General & Admin: 

Woo Commerce website (paid on 9/16/2022): $79.20
MESA Contribution (paid on 9/12/2022): $300
LARA (Licensing and Regulatory Affairs; paid on 9/24/2022): $20

Notes:

For some reason, we have unaccounted income totaling $1,949.01. I’m not sure where this money came from. Perhaps from the recent conference? 

This is how I calculated the unaccounted income. 

$25, 424.46 (ending balances total on October 12, 2022) + $3,500 (income from memberships and donations) = $28,924.46. 

$28,924.46 minus $8,624.99 (total expenses) = $20,299.47. 

Instead of assets totaling $20,299.47, they total: $22,248.48 (PayPal= $16, 767.48 and Comerica= $ 5,481). 

$22,248.48 minus $20,299.47 = $1,949.01.

2022 AASA Conference:

4 travel stipends ($250 each)	$1,000 (4 total checks)
Tech/Zoom support ($300 each)	$900 (3 total checks)
Food and supplies/Amira Jarmikani	$735.99 (1check)
Food/Nina Shoman	$444.73 (1check)
Food/Tahini Street (Saturday lunch)	$641.12 (debit card)
Food/United Women of East Africa (Saturday dinner)	$680 (debit card)
Food/Blackmarket Bakery (Sunday brunch)	$148 (debit card)
Food/Asmaa Kheir Allah (Friday night reception)	$450 (1check)
Friday opening panel/Centro Cultural de la Raza	$300 (PayPal)
Honorarium for opening panel/ Roberto Hernandez	$500 (1check)
Hotel and parking for 3 guests/Hampton Inn	$895.95 (debit card)
Program design/Aya Krisht	$1,230 (1check)
Entertainment/Omar Offendum	$300 (1check)
Total Cost	$8,225.79

Total Expenses: $8,624.99

Note: There’s an $18 monthly deduction from our Comerica account to pay for Google workspace. 

I suggest the following changes to the form: 

1. Combine Dr. and Professor into one category
2. Combine Mr. and Ms. into the following nongendered categories: graduate student; independent scholar; and maybe instructor (for those faculty that do not hold PhDs; or other ideas?  Do we want to know how many tenured, tenure-track, contingent faculty, lecturers, and adjuncts we represent?  Would that feel hierarchical when filling out the form; or would it better help us understand and represent our membership?)

This graph demonstrates a drop in membership, but only because we stopped collecting this data/fees over COVID.  I think a membership renewal/drive would boost numbers.  We have 22 regular members (2022); only 4 regular members (2022-2023); and 60 student members.  But that doesn’t represent our membership. My email list has 140 people.

Our membership includes the following fields of specialization (the recent research request from an education department makes me think this could expand significantly):

Literature

Anthropology

History

American Studies

Ethnic Studies

English

Sociology

We also include a section for areas of specialization, and I wonder if we couldn’t rename fields as “Disciplinary Field” and then keep this category:

Theory

Syria Studies, Gender Studies

Arab American Literature

Middle East

Theology

Creative Writing 

History

Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication

Arab Americans, Palestinian Americans

Overall, I think we should consider what kind of information we would like to collect about our members and if this form adequately covers that.

Joint Reception with AMEWS, AASA, AMECY, and AMEA

Saturday, Dec. 3, 7:30-9:30 pm in Director’s Row H

Reception Committee

AMEWS: Rasmieyh, Louise, and Jennifer

AASA: Pauline

AMECY: Tory

AMEA: Angie, Farha

Ceremonial starts at 8 pm

AMEWS

8:00 – 8:10

President’s Address: Jennifer (5 min)

Book Award: Rasmieyh (3 min)

Grad Students Committee Rita? (2 min)

AMECYS

8:10-8:15

Book Award Winner: Tory (2 min)

Grad Paper Winner: Tory (3 min)

AASA

8:15-8:25

Introducing the organization: Pauline (10 min)

Celebrating 10 years of AASA – with slide show

AMEA

8:25 -8:35

Farha introduces the organization and the chairs of the committees of the AMEA’s awards (4 min)

Anne Meneley will introduce the winners of the book award (3 min)

Peter Habib will introduce the winners of the photo contest (3 min)