Visit the Arabian Peninsula (2014 - 2015)

Kennesaw State University examined the Arabian Peninsula during the 2014-2015 academic year. The university hosted a series of events, lectures, conferences, and other activities throughout the year designed to promote a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the Arabian Peninsula.

Comprised of seven countries - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen - the Arabian Peninsula is a diverse region, with each country possessing a unique history, economy, political structure, and culture. Arabia is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world and is the birthplace of Islam. It is also where open-water sailing and global trade first began. It is this rich history of continuous global trade and relations that makes the Arabian Peninsula such a perfect choice to be the focus of KSU’s renowned “Year Of” program.

As in previous years, the university teamed up with key international and domestic partners to organize events that provide attendees with unique, fascinating insights about real life in the region. For example, for the Year of the Arabian Peninsula, KSU worked closely with Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center Oman and the Alif Institute in Atlanta.

year of home View Photo Gallery
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Exhibits & Performances

One of the best ways to truly learn about another culture’s perspective is to study its art. Throughout the Year of Arabian Peninsula, a variety of art exhibits were on display around campus. These exhibits told the unique stories of artists with vastly different backgrounds, but who are all united by the Arab experience.

  • Patriots and Peacemakers: Arab-Americans in Service to Our Country

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  • This festival, organized in partnership with Alif Institute, featured traditional music and dance, henna hand painting, fashion, food, and more!

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  • Learn about the significance of the Muslim hijab, or head scarf. Female guests were invited to participate in Hijab for a Day, which asked them to wear a hijab for 24 hours in order to gain insight into another culture.

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  • Religious freedom is a core value for the people of Oman. This exhibit featured 24 displays of text and graphics revealing how people of all religious faiths are free to actively participate in modern Omani society.

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  • These performances, part of the Women of Oman International Conference, featured traditional Omani music. The Oud is a traditional Arab lute, which has long been a source of pride for kings, princes, and poets. Al Najoom performed traditional Omani music with a trademark energy that makes every performance special.

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  • Each film explores a different facet of life in the region, and provided the perfect opportunity to learn about global culture while experiencing world-class cinema. Guest speakers were also on-hand after the films to help put them in a broader cultural context. Learn about the Arabian Peninsula through its cinema.

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Arabian Peninsula Film Festival

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KSU Global Education invited all members of the Kennesaw State University community to learn about the rich culture of the Arabian Peninsula through its films.

The Year of Arabian Peninsula Film Festival ran from February 9th through 13th, 2015, with screenings held in different locations around campus. Each film explored a different facet of life in the region. For example, 20 Years in the Middle East illustrated how the fall of Saddam Hussein affected the culture of Middle Eastern young people, while A New Day in Old Sana’a provided viewers with a whimsical look at love, marriage, and tradition.

Each screening also featured a guest speaker following the film. These brief discussions helped viewers better understand what the films say about Arabian culture.

The Year of Arabian Peninsula Film Festival was the perfect opportunity to learn about global culture while experiencing world-class cinema.

Film Schedule

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Al-Boum (2006)

Speaker: Dr. Dan Paracka

Oman’s first-ever feature film is a charming tale set in a picturesque fishing village where traditional life and the seafaring economy are threatened by a local Shaykh’s development scheme. Nour, the female protagonist, organizes fishermen to oppose the plan. “Could this be the destiny of our village—just a museum for tourists?” ponders a villager. The film addresses the growing tension between tradition and globalization in the region, and among the outsiders driving change and their insider allies.

  • Dan Paracka is director of academic initiatives in the Division of Global Affairs and Professor of Education in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department. He has previously served as Chair of Region VII NAFSA: Association of International Educators and has presented widely at the state, regional, national, and international level. With more than 20 years of international education experience, Dr. Paracka’s scholarship focuses on intercultural learning and global engagement. He regularly teaches courses aimed at helping students develop strategies to internationalize their college experience and reflect on today’s complex interdependent world. Since 2004, he has coordinated KSU’s signature annual country study program. In this role, he taught a Year of Arabian Peninsula course last fall semester and has been intensely engaged in learning more about the region.
"A New Day in Old Sanaa A New Day in Old Sana'a" movie cover art

A New Day in Old Sanaa A New Day in Old Sana'a (2005)

Student Panel Led by Autumn Cockrell-Abdullah, M.A.

Yemen’s first feature film is a light-hearted yet message-laden tale of the struggle between true love and tradition. We get to be insiders in women’s spaces and conversations, filmed among the walled gardens, narrow alleyways and latticed tower homes of the old city. The narrator, an Italian photographer, provides a framework for the tale of a stolen wedding dress, the bumbling police officers who try to solve the crime, and a girl dancing alone at night on a dark street.

  • Autumn Cockrell-Abdullah received her M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Georgia State University and is currently a doctoral student in the International Conflict Management program at KSU. Focusing her research in the expressive cultures of the Middle East, Autumn has taught at KSU in the Department of Geography and Anthropology since 2009.

    Recently she was invited to submit articles on Cinema, Material Culture and the Performing Arts for The Islamic World: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Society, forthcoming from M.E. Sharpe Publishers. Traveling regularly within the Middle East, she has conducted research in Egypt, the U.A.E., Lebanon and Northern Iraq where she has examined the performance of folklore.

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20 Years Old in the Middle East (2003)

Speaker: Dr. Jesse Benjamin 

Filmed after the fall of Saddam Hussein, this documentary takes the pulse of young people in Jordan, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. “There are big games being played in the region. Great strategies are decided for the Middle East. We are powerless. All people can do is suffer,” notes an Iranian theology student and aspiring mullah who sings in a heavy metal band. It’s a feeling echoed throughout the region. “We lack ideals,” says a university student in Beirut. “The Arab myth is fading. We don’t know where to look for references. We are lost.” Wary of the future, these university students crave freedom and want to feel pride in themselves and their cultures. For many, dreams and hopes coexist with hopelessness and despair. This is an indispensable snapshot of youth who desire liberty over extremism.

  • Jesse Benjamin received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2002, and his MA in Cultural Anthropology in 1996, at SUNY Binghamton. He completed his BA in Interdisciplinary Social Science, with a focus on Social Change, from Friends World College, an international, experiential, global college, in 1992. His teaching and research interests include: East Africa, Israel/Palestine, the Middle East, Social Theory, Critical Race Theory, Nationalism, the Global South, Pan-Africanism, Multiculturalism, Whiteness Studies [especially Jewish whiteness], Swahili Civilization, Subaltern Consciousness, Anti-Colonial Movements, Epistemology and Political-Economy, the Power/Knowledge nexus, forced Bedouin resettlement in Israel, and Kurdish human rights.

    He is currently the Coordinator of African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) at KSU, and is a past editor of the ACAS [Association of Concerned Africa Scholars] Bulletin. He was on the Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora, edited by Dr. Carole Boyce Davies and Babacar M’bow. He is the past Chair of the KSU President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Racial and Ethnicity Dialogue (CORED). He is also a Board Member, on the Walter Rodney Foundation, based in Atlanta.

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Wadjda (2012)

Speaker: Dr. Mona Damluji

Wadjda is a 10-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Although she lives in a conservative world, Wadjda is fun loving, entrepreneurial and always pushing the boundaries of what she can get away with... Watch Trailer

  • Mona Damluji is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian & Islamic Art History and Visual Culture at Wheaton College. She received her PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. She is a member of the Arab Council for Social Science working group on space and has published work in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review and the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.

    Dr. Damluji's ongoing research traces intersecting cultural histories of oil extraction, global media, and urban development in Iraq, Iran and other oil-producing countries in the Arabian Gulf during the mid-twentieth century. She examines how British oil companies engaged in the production and circulation of visual media, including documentary films and photography, as part of a cultural project to transform the image of oil exploitation from a colonial and extractive practice to a productive and necessary mechanism for national development, progress and modernity in the Middle East.

    Dr. Damluji teaches undergraduate courses in architectural history, urban studies, film studies, and Middle Eastern studies. She is committed to developing engaged and creative educational platforms for high learning and public outreach. She has organized events and exhibitions for the Arab Film Festival, Berkeley's International House, and Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

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Linda and Ali: Two Worlds Within Four Walls (2005)

Speaker: Dr. Maia Carter Hallward

Linda is American, Ali is Qatari. She grew up Catholic, he Muslim. They live in Doha, have been married 20 years and have seven children. This documentary by a Belgian filmmaker candidly portrays the joys and challenges of a long-term marriage. Many of the issues are universal—she wants more attention, he wants more freedom—but others are specific to Muslim families in a Gulf state, such as hesitancy over letting one of their daughters participate in gymnastics. Yet Linda and Ali Saigal’s enduring devotion and friendship have sustained them over the years, proving that love can be greater than cultural differences.

  • Maia Carter Hallward is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at Kennesaw State University and is jointly appointed to the PhD in International Conflict Management. Dr. Carter serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development and began a three-year term on the Executive Committee of Friends Association of Higher Education (FAHE) in June 2011. With Volker Franke, she is co- program chair for the 2012 Peace Studies Section of the International Studies Association. She received her PhD in International Relations from American University’s School of International Service, with concentrations in Peace and Conflict Resolution and Critical Geopolitics. Dr. Hallward worked for four years in the Middle East, including teaching and research positions in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman. Dr. Carter co-led an Interfaith Peacebuilders delegation of 17 members to Jerusalem in July 2006 to speak with Israelis and Palestinians about the conflict and led a group of 19 MS Conflict Management students on a one-week study abroad to Jerusalem in March 2011. She is the author of Struggling for a Just Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Activism in the Second Intifada (University Press of Florida, August 2011) and co-editor of Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada: Activism and Advocacy (Palgrave Macmillian, Fall 2011). Her articles have appeared in journals including Journal of Peace Research, International Political Sociology and Critical Middle Eastern Politics.

Conferences

Event Schedule

A wide variety of events are planned for the academic year, spread across the fall and spring semesters. Click the links below for full event details.

Please Note: Lectures held in Social Science 1019 every Thursday from 12:30-2:00 pm unless otherwise noted. 

International Community Partners

Strategic partnerships are a critical element of the Year of the Arabian Peninsula's success. Without these partnerships, many of the world-class lectures and events offered by the program would not be possible.

Click below to learn more about the organizations partnering with Kennesaw State University to make the Year of the Arabian Peninsula a success. 


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