Organized by Middle East Studies and co-sponsored by Middle East Studies, Open Society Foundations, Brown University’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brown’s Pembroke Center, Brown’s LGBTQ Center, Brown’s Sarah Doyle Women’s Center  and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown.

Brown University’s Middle East Studies will be hosting the third annual “Engaged Scholarship” conference on April 10-11, 2015, with the theme of “Sexualities and Queer Imaginaries in the Middle East.” The 2014 theme was “Embedded! Archeologists and Anthropologists in Modern Landscapes of Conflict” and the 2013 theme was “The Politics and Ethics of Knowledge Production.”

The​ primary objective is to bring together a diverse group of experts from the Middle East and around the world (academics, journalists, activists, human rights advocates, filmmakers, novelists, faith-based leaders, and others) who have contributed to either the representations of or on-the-ground development of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer (LGBTQ) movements in the Middle East.

To our knowledge, this is the first of such gatherings to take place, connecting academics and practitioners between those based in North America, Europe, and those in the Middle East. The four central questions animating the conference will be as follows: