Archive for June, 2007

Patience, patience

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

It’s funny being back in Yemen. Nothing much seems to have changed other than the number of foreigners. They’re everywhere these days, especially at the language institutes. It’s quite a change from my first time here in 2002 when we were about six students at CALES – my school. Even though most of the passenger […]

A little story on the state of blogging and free speech in the US

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Copied from Yaman’s Amateur Ramblings:
The danger Kaplan v. Salahi poses to bloggers and activists everywhere
As a student at UC Berkeley, the center for the Free Speech Movement, I never thought I’d find myself at the receiving end of a politically-motivated libel lawsuit. I am the creator of a blog called “Lee Kaplan Watch” which focuses […]

Fear and Resistance: The Construction of Alawi Identity in Syria

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

My Master’s thesis on the Alawis of Syria was finished in February. It is fieldwork-based and focuses on ‘normal’ Alawis and how they express their identity through their construction of Syria’s other sects (abstract).
It can be found here.
EDIT: The thesis sparked some feedback on Joshua Landis’ Syriacomment blog: http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=287