Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been profound. Today, several of the world’s worst humanitarian crises are taking place in the MENA region, primarily in Gaza and Sudan. However, legacies of warfare in many other MENA countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, have also left a devastating toll, with millions of people forcibly displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance. War zones and refugee camps are especially traumatic spaces for women and children. Childbirth related morbidity and mortality, the spread of infectious diseases, sexual violence leading to HIV/AIDS, and inadequate support for those with war-related disabilities are among the consequences. Given this human suffering, it is crucial to examine the state of global health across the MENA region, and the actions that are being taken to address these global health crises. This state-of-the-art conference features the work of leading medical anthropologists, whose ethnographic case studies from the MENA region shed light on the political, socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and organizational complexity of addressing global health threats through timely interventions and programs. Because anthropology is a discipline that puts “people first,” this conference aims to explore the lives of MENA medical humanitarians, as well as the people they serve. Taken together, the fifteen case studies that will be presented advocate for the right to health for people who find themselves living in war-torn, post-conflict, refugee-serving, and resource-poor settings across the MENA region. It also issues a strong call for peace as a prerequisite for physical, mental, social, and spiritual health and well-being.
Friday, September 26
Anthropology, 10 Sachem, Room 105
Sponsored by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Council on Middle East Studies, Council on African Studies, and Department of Anthropology
9:00-9:15, Welcome and Introduction
Marcia C. Inhorn, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University
Panel I. Conflict and Health
Chair, Hani Mowafi, Yale School of Medicine
9:15-9:30, War Biology and Antimicrobial Resistance: Tracing the Ruination of Healthcare in the Middle East
Omar Dewachi, Rutgers University
9:30-9:45, Intergenerational Health Impacts of Military Violence in Iraq
Kali Rubaii, Purdue University
9:45-10:00, Changing Narratives of Cancer: Conflict and Blame in a Collapsing Beirut
Livia Wick, Associate Professor, American University of Beirut
10:00-10:15, Strengthening Public Health Surveillance in Conflict Zones: A Case Study from Sudan Kaveh Khoshnood, Yale School of Public Health
10:15-10:45, Q&A
10:45-11:00, Coffee
Panel II. Medical Humanitarianism
Chair, Salmaan Keshavjee, Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Harvard Medical School
11:00-11:15, The Making of Syrian American Medical Humanitarians
Rania Kassab Sweis, The University of Richmond
11:15-11:30, Gaza, Medical Humanitarianism, and Islamic Heroics: The Case of Mohammed Taher
Sa’ed Atshan, Swarthmore College
11:30-11:45, Prosthetic Promises: Global Health, Technological Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Aftercare
S. Can Aciksoz, University of California, Los Angeles
11:45-12:00, Genealogies of the Psychosocial: Post-Disaster Psychiatry in Turkey
Christopher Dole, Amherst College
12:00-12:15, Precarious Chronicity: Stigma, HIV, and Humanitarianism in Beirut, Lebanon
Lizzy Berk, Southern Methodist University
12:15-12:45, Q&A
12:45-2:00, Buffet Lunch
Panel III. Maternal Health in Troubled Times
Chair, Aalyia Sadruddin, Wellesley College
2:00-2:15, “It's always gender foq rasna:” The Shaping of Gendered Subjectivities through Projects of Humanitarian Reproductive Care
Morgen Chalmiers, University of California-San Diego School of Medicine
2:15-2:30, Exploring the Role of Midwives in Contraception and Abortion Care in the Middle East and North Africa: Lessons Learned from Tunisia
Angel Foster, University of Ottawa
2:30-2:45, Abortion as Refusal: Reposing the “Woman Question” in Morocco and Beyond
Jess Newman, Cornell University
2:45-3:15, Q&A
3:15-3:30, Coffee Break
Panel IV: The Fate of Children
Rijul Kochhar, Assistant Professor, Harvard University
3:30-3:45, Deafness as Global Health Concern in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Timothy Loh, Princeton University
3:45-4:00, Care and Chromosomes in Troubled Times
Christine Sargent, University of Colorado, Denver
4:00-4:15, The Fate and Future of Children in Gaza, Sudan, and Beyond
Marcia C. Inhorn, Yale University
4:15-4:45 pm, Q&A
4:45-5:00, Concluding Remarks