FELLOW 2021-2022 DENA AL-ADEEB
Term: 05/2021 – 08/2021
Dena Al-Adeeb holds a Doctor in Philosophy, Middle Eastern, and Islamic Studies from New York University which she completed in 2018. In 2008 she finished her Masters in Anthropology and Sociology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Her Bachelor in International Relations was received from the San Francisco State University, CA (U.S.) in 1998. Her research focuses on global war geographies and oil economies as they manifest through visual culture/material culture, architecture/infrastructure, and collective memory. She has undertaken many leading academic research positions throughout her career including her role as Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of American Studies at the University of California, Davis in 2018 to 2020. In 2014 to 2016 she taught as Visiting Instructor at the Department of Humanities & Media Studies at the Pratt School of Architecture in Brooklyn, NY.
Adjacently she acted as Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at the New York University, NY in 2015 to 2016. In the same year she took on the role of Research Assistant at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at New York University, NY; while in 2014 to 2015 she was a Graduate Student Teacher in Social and Cultural Analysis, Global Metropolitan Studies at the New York University, NY. Previously she has been a Graduate Student Teacher at the College of Art and Science for the Morse Academic Plan Program at the New York University, NY in 2012 to 2014. In 2012 to 2013 she was Instructor for the New York Speaking Freely Language Program at the New York University, NY. Prior to this, in 2008 to 2009 she was the Research Specialist at the Alexandria and Mediterranean Research Center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt. She is ethically committed to making the humanities and social sciences meaningful to communities outside the academy through long-term educational collaborations and community organizing initiatives while she positions her research and teaching within cultural sociology, urban sociology, and global sociology.
Interview with CAPAS Fellow Dena Al-Adeeb
Apocalyptic Sensibilities: Navigating the War-Climate Continuum
I suggest that our interconnected relationship to natural and material resources is critical to addressing the crises of our rapidly globalized world underscored by racialized necropolitical destruction. Our political, economic, and cultural paradigms are shaped by the significant challenge of our dependence on oil and gas, which must be reevaluated in order to address the series of interdependent crises facing humanity, such as, the war-climate continuum (the entanglements of climate change and political conflict within contemporary global relations). My research historicizes, contextualizes, and analyzes the discourse and the politics of material culture and natural resources (i.e. oil) as they relate to circuits of destruction; militarization, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism in the Middle East region; more specifically in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. My research investigates these entangled histories that have been shaped by hegemonic strategic interests, crises of capitalism, and techno-utopian projects often aspiring to omniscience and omnipotence. My research underscores my commitment to respond critically to the crisis of the war-climate continuum while utilizing an interdisciplinary methodology rooted in the communities that are impacted by the circuits of violence and destruction.