The Quilting Point Team
Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program and Associate Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, and is Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011). Bassam is currently editing a volume on Teaching the Middle East After the Arab Uprisings, a book manuscript on pedagogical and theoretical approaches. His most recent books include two co-edited volumes: Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (Pluto Press, 2012) and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal a peer-reviewed research publication and is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the critically acclaimed film series, Arabs and Terrorism, based on extensive field research/interviews. More recently, he directed a film on Arab/Muslim immigrants in Europe, titled The "Other" Threat. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and serves on the Editorial Committee of Middle East Report. He is the Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute, an umbrella for five organizations dealing with knowledge production on the Middle East and Founding Editor of Tadween Publishing.
Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist and translator. His poems and essays (in Arabic) have appeared in as-Safir, al-Adab, al-Akhbar, al-Hayat, Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, Masharef and (in English) in TheNation, Middle East Report, Al-Ahram Weekly, Banipal,Journal of Palestine Studies, The Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, Washington Square Journal, and the New York Times.He has published two collections of poetry; Mawshur Muballal bil-Hurub (Cairo, 2003) and Laylun Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun (One Night in All Cities) (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2010). His novels include I`jaam (2003), which has been translated into English as I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights, 2006) as well as Norwegian, German, Portuguese, and Italian, Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman (The Pomegranate Alone) (Beirut: al-Mu'assassa al-`Arabiyya, 2010 and al-Jamal, 2013) was translated by the author and published by Yale University Press in 2013 as The Corpse Washer and was longlisted for the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction. It won the 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Literary Translation. His third novel, Ya Maryam (Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2012) was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (The Arabic Booker) and was translated to Spanish by Maria Luz Comendador and published by Turner Libros in May 2014 under the title Fragments de Bagdad. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s last prose book In the Presence of Absence, was published by Archipelago Books in 2011 and won the 2012National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). His co-translation (with Peter Money) of a selection of Saadi Youssef's late poetry was published by Graywolf in November 2012.
His academic works include articles on Mahmoud Darwish and Sargon Boulus and a book based on his doctoral dissertation; The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf (PalgraveMacmillan, 2013).
Sinan is a member of the Editorial Review Board of theArab Studies Journal. He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School, New York University and co-founder of Jadaliyya and co-editor of its culture page.
Maya Mikdashi received her PhD from Columbia University's Department of Anthropology. She is Co-Director of the documentary film About Baghdad. Maya is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University. She is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya E-zine.
John Warner is the Research and Development Manager at the Arab Studies Institute. He received his MPhil in cultural anthropology from the City University of New York Graduate Center and his MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. He has taught anthropology and Middle East studies at several different institutions, including Queensborough Community College, Hunter College, and New York University. He is currently a co-editor of Jadaliyya’s Arabian Peninsula page and formerly a co-editor of the Findings section of the scholarly journal Anthropology Now. He has also worked as an assistant director and field producer for Quilting Point, a documentary film collective.
Dirar Hakeem is a networking engineer who works as a senior consultant in the Washington DC area. He manages the translation and subtitling process at Quilting Point and serves as an assistant editor for special segments. Dirar is co-producer of this documentary series.
Ziad Abu-Rish is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Ohio University. His research interests focus on state formation, economic development, and social mobilization in the mid-twentieth-century Levant. Abu-Rish is currently working on a book manuscript entitled "Making the Economy, Producing the State: Conflict and Institution Building in Early Independence Lebanon," which explores the changing nature of state management of the economy and the shifting patterns of alliances and conflicts that sought to shape that management. Abu-Rish earned his PhD from the Department of History at the University of California Los Angeles, and his MA in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He serves on the editorial teams of the Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya e-zine. He also directs the Arab Studies Institute's Lebanon Project. Abu-Rish's publications include "Garbage Politics" (Middle East Report, Winter 2015) and “Protests, Regime Stability, and State Formation in Jordan,” as well as two co-edited volumes: The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (Pluto Press, 2012) and Critical Voices On and From the Middle East (Tadween Publishing, 2015).
Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and writer. She is currently an Assistant Professor at George Mason University. She has taught International Human Rights Law and the Middle East at Georgetown University since Spring 2009. Prior to joining GMU's faculty, Noura was a Freedman Teaching Fellow at Temple University, Beasley School of Law. She is a member of the Legal Support Network for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. She served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, chaired by Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich. Noura has helped to initiate and organize several national formations including Arab Women Arising for Justice (AMWAJ) and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN). She is a board member of theInstitute for Policy Studies, the Arab Studies Institute, Trans-Arab Research Institute (TARI); a Policy Advisor of Al-Shabaka; a founding member of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival; the development consultant for Legal Agenda; and a contributor to IntLawGrrls. Noura has appeared on MSNBC's "Up With Chris Hayes," Fox’s “The O’ Reilly Factor,” NBC’s “Politically Incorrect,” Democracy Now, BBC World Service, PBS News Hour, NPR, and Al-Jazeera Arabic and English and published extensively in mainstream press media. Her scholarly publications include: "Overlapping Refugee Legal Regimes: Closing the Protection Gap During Secondary Forced Displacement," in the Oxford International Journal of Refugee Law; "New Imminence in the Time of Obama: The Impact of Targeted Killing on the Law of Self-Defense," in the Arizona Law Review; and "Whiteness as Property in Israel: Revival, Rehabilitation, and Removal," forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Ethnic and Racial Justice. She is a Co-Editor of Jadaliyya.com.
Tareq Radi is a Palestinian-American organizer based in Washington, DC. He is currently the Public Affairs Coordinator at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Tareq is leading an initiative to mine historical and contemporary documents related to the Palestinian solidarity movement in the U.S. The work will culminate in a series of databases aimed at studying the U.S.-based movement and offering researchers and advocates alike a critical resource. He holds a B.S in Finance from George Mason University, where he was a founding member of their Students Against Israeli Apartheid.
Adel Iskandar is an Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. He is the author, co-author, and editor of several works including "Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution" (AUCP/OUP); "Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism" (Basic Books); "Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation" (University of California Press); and "Mediating the Arab Uprisings" (Tadween Publishing). Iskandar's work deals with media, identity and politics; and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His most recent publication is the co-edited volume "Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring" (Palgrave Macmillan). Prior to his arrival at SFU, Iskandar taught for several years at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC. He is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and associate producer of the audio journal Status.
Nour Joudah has a MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and wrote her MA thesis on the role and perception of exile politics within the Palestinian liberation struggle, in particular among politically active Palestinian youth living in the United States and Occupied Palestine. She has taught at American University and is currently Associate Producer of Status Hour and Grants Officer for the Hassib Sabbagh Foundation. Nour is planning to pursue a PhD in Geography with a research focus on the spatial relations of decolonization in former settler colonies. She writes for Electronic Intifada and on her own blog (isdoud.wordpress.com). You can follow her on Twitter: @nsdoud.
Tamar Ghabin works at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation as the Government Affairs Associate. She is currently working on distribution for Quilting Point's Gaza in Context. Tamar holds a B.A. in International Affairs from Northeastern University.
Adrian Tafesh is about to pursue is his Masters at the University of Washington, and has a B.A. in English from James Madison University. He is currently working on Quilting Point and Status Hour.