The United States and the Middle East: Geopolitics, Resistance and Power

The Middle East remains a vital site where political authority, social transformation, and cultural identity are continually negotiated and reimagined. Today, these questions are especially urgent: the visibility of Israel-Palestine on U.S. campuses, the region’s role in global economic and ecological debates, and the movement of people and cultural forms across borders.

This interdisciplinary conference gathers scholars, practitioners, journalists, and artists to examine how communities in the Middle East and its diasporas reshape politics, culture, and identity—on the ground, online, and through art. By highlighting these diverse expressions, the conference underscores the intersections between struggles in the Middle East, U.S. politics, and transnational solidarities, and invites participants to imagine new possibilities for justice and collective transformation.

This event is organized by the Middle East Studies Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is cosponsored by IRIS NRC.

Free and open to the public

Info: This panel brings together analyses of imperial formations, contested sovereignties, and strategic alliances with attention to US foreign policy and global power asymmetries. It examines environmental security, resource extraction, and climate politics alongside the rise of AI technologies as new instruments of imperial governance, surveillance, and algorithmic control, highlighting how technological infrastructures reshape contemporary forms of domination.

Info: Focusing on migration, exile, and the politics of belonging, this panel examines how forced and voluntary displacement transform both sending and receiving societies. It explores diaspora formations as sites of political engagement, memory, and resistance, while foregrounding transnational solidarity networks, grassroots organizing, and digital activism. Particular attention is given to how climate-induced displacement intersects with struggles for environmental, racial, and social justice.

Info: This panel analyzes cultural production—literature, cinema, visual arts, journalism, and other creative practices—as a central terrain of resistance and counter-hegemonic narrative-making. It examines how artists and intellectuals challenge dominant discourses, mobilize memory, and imagine decolonial futures, situating cultural work within broader transnational networks of political struggle and world-making.

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Host or Publisher Middle East Studies Program at UW-Madison