Gender in the Muslim Middle East

Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Margot Badran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 352 pp.
Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State. Sondra Hale. Boulder, CO. Westview Press, 1996. 294 pp.
Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions. Marcia C. Inhorn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. 441 pp.     

Visual Revolutions in the Middle East

Five years ago images from the Arab uprisings revealed a renewed investment in political visibility. Despite the brutal outcome of most of these revolts, the centrality of seeing for understanding the dynamics of political vision and struggle in the region remains salient. Images serve as important touchstones around which political narratives emerge and cohere. In this special issue on Visual Revolutions in the Middle East, seven scholars— Diana K. Allan, Zeynep Devrim Gürsel, Alisa Lebow, Peter Limbrick, Anjali Nath, Peter Snowdon and Mark R. Westmoreland—bring interdisciplinary attention to the generative possibilities of image-making in sites of political contestation. Whether through archival remnants, mobile screen technologies or the lens of a camera, the contributors to this collection explore the image as an agent of expression, engagement and critique, operating at the interface between political desires and evidentiary forms of visuality.     

Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond; New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere

Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond. Walter Armbrust. ed. Berkeley. University of California Press, 2000. 378 pp.
New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere. Dale Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson. eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. 213 pp.     

New taxa described in Zoology in the Middle East

Abstract

The region between Mersin and ?skenderun was selected for studying marine turtles in the Turkish waters of the Mediterranean sea, as the most important nesting grounds of Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the Mediterranean are situated there. In the 1995–96 fishing season, the 5 trawl boats taking part in the project reported that nets in the Eastern Mediterranean trapped 160 Green Turtles and 26 Loggerhead Turtles (Caretta caretta). In the following trawling season (1996/97), 306 Green Turtles, 116 Loggerhead Turtles (Caretta caretta) and 437 Nile Soft-shelled Turtles (Trionyx triunguis) were found to be trapped as a by-catch in the trawling nets. 87% of these turtles were captured by mid-trawling nets, the rest by bottom-trawling nets, mostly at depths of 11–30 m. 95% of all turtles were caught alive and healthy, and were usually released back into the sea immediately after capture by the fishermen. Training measures were given to local fishermen in order to raise their awareness of the threats to marine turtles.     

Windborne moth migration over the Middle East

Abstract.

• 1 From 10 years' records of moths caught in a light trap at Eilat, Israel, eleven selected occasions with sudden increases in catch involving seventeen species were related to accompanying changes in wind.
• 2 At all times of the year examined, sudden increases in catch of all species were associated with winds changing direction to blow from the Nile Delta or from the Levant.
• 3 All seventeen species are inferred to be windborne over at least several hundred kilometres.
• 4 The results are consistent with huge plumes of moths streaming downwind each night from the Delta and the Levant, sometimes crossing Eilat, sometimes crossing the Mediterranean, but more often passing into the deserts.
• 5 Plumes are produced throughout the breeding season of each species.
• 6 The results are probably representative of migration elsewhere from the southern limits of breeding on rain-fed vegetation, with inferred widespread adult mortality and renewed breeding most likely after migration on brief spells of southerly winds.

     

The genomic history of the Middle East

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