Last year, the Biden Administration unexpectedly announced major revisions to its race and ethnicity standards – the first in 27 years – by including a Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) category.

While it is unclear whether this development will survive the Trump administration, the broader Middle East and especially Gaza remain at the fore of the new administration’s foreign policy. However, defining or even locating the Middle East remains a fraught endeavour, particularly in relation to notions of the “Near” East and Orient, to say nothing of semantic nuances across multiple languages. Therefore, this talk will examine the “Middle East” and particularly “Armenia” as sites of recurring ambiguity and anxiety within academic disciplines, foreign policy, legislation, cultural imaginaries, and most importantly, diaspora communities themselves.

This event will be hybrid.

About the Speaker

Thomas Simsarian Dolan received his PhD in American Studies from George Washington University, after earlier receiving degrees from Yale and NYU. Currently faculty in Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory and faculty affiliate in the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida, he is also researching and writing a new volume of history for the Armenian General Benevolent Union and a Consultant for Los Angeles County’s Anti-Racism, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative. His work has been supported by a range of national and international research institutions. He previously completed a year as a Fulbright US Teaching Scholar in the Department of History at the American University in Cairo.