Reclaiming My (Our) Regional Identity (ies)

Few days ago, I asked my students to search for the origins and use of the ‘Middle East’ expression and identify the most common stereotypes of the ‘Middle East’ and ‘Middle Easterners’. Following the plenary session where they presented their findings, we discussed the importance of deconstructing 100+ year old taxonomy and theories. By deconstruction, […]

How I re-discovered Feminism

I             It was a Wednesday afternoon, a day before the weekend started. But, it was also my third consecutive year walking the same campus grounds. It started to feel like a routine to me more than anything else; weekdays are not but mere anticipation for the weekends and the weekends are spent dreading the […]

Celebrating Women in our Families – International Women's Day (American University in Dubai)

Writing history – and defining our identity, individually and collectively – is linked to memory and memorialization, which never seem to be complete. Someone is always forgotten. Pieces of the puzzle are always missing. I tend to agree with Napoleon or whoever said “History is but a fable agreed upon”. In the history – or […]

A visit to the Women's Museum in Dubai

Amazing fieldtrip with my ‘Women and Gender in the Middle East’ students (American University in Dubai, Middle Eastern Studies Division)! We explored a unique cultural space in the Arab world where UAE women’s lives and achievements are celebrated. The Women’s Museum was established by the Emirati professor Rafia Ghubash in 2012 in order to preserve […]

More than Ebola or ISIS (Da3ech), the Past would become “the Lash with which Yesterday flogs Tomorrow”!

500 students’ narratives of war and visions of peace were collected during storytelling sessions and art workshops from 2007 till 2014 in my classrooms at Holy Spirit University (USEK), St Josef University and Notre Dame University in Lebanon. This qualitative research with young people born in the 1990s, from different religious/sectarian, political  and social-economic affiliations, […]

Peace Education

The following article was published by the American University in Dubai: http://www.aud.edu/arts_and_sciences/en/page/3610/peace-education-dr.-pamela-chrabieh Dr. Pamela Chrabieh In An Agenda for Peace (1992), the former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduces to the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding as “an action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid […]

Why we must teach/learn Peace

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. (Nathaniel Branden) Following the analysis of several documents tackling the issue of war in the Middle East, a student of mine asked this morning: “How can there be Peace in this bloody chaotic no man’s land?”  This particular question settled in my mind […]

Our history is not drawn linearly, it is a braid of stories!

I started to be interested in the war and peace issues in Lebanon when I left my home country to pursue my studies at the University of Montreal (QC, Canada). While living abroad, I learned that once the war grabs hold of you, it never loses its grip; it shapes one’s emotions, thoughts, attitudes and […]

Thank you for teaching us Life Lessons

On the 9th of March, Lebanon celebrated Teachersa�� Day. During my early years, every year, I used to get my mother a small gift on that day; we were taught in school that mothers are the greatest of all teachers. How do we feel about teachers nowadays? For some reason, university professors arena��t counted as […]

Lebanese Youth needs to receive specific attention: the generation that inherits the experience of violence as still living memory!

“You cannot erase everything and start again … We need to continue (…). Suffering is everywhere here, there, everywhere. Life is everywhere here, there, everywhere. Ignorance kills it (…). We must not drown. Dig in and come out alive. Write while I am still alive”.[i] The war in Lebanon, especially since the 1970s, had – and still has – an impact on individuals and communities. It inflicted psychological and physical harm, and undermined social relationships, […]