Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Chronicle of Higher Education on my MESA kufiya talk

Back from the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meetings last night. And I just learned that the Chronicle of Higher Education blog covered my talk on the kufiya: "What's in a Scarf: Scholar Ponders the Meanings of the Kaffiyeh," by David Glenn. Read it here.

Here's my favorite quote: "Mr. Swedenburg publishes comprehensive-verging-on-obsessive coverage of kaffiyeh sightings on his blog."

Only "verging" on obsessive??

In that spirit, I learned awhile back that Sarah Jessica Parker appeared in a kufiya-style tanktop in an episode of "Sex in the City." I don't know which episode, so I asked a friend who owns DVD's of all the season and watches obsessively to keep an eye out. I still haven't got a report. Someone who was at my talk said that she had noticed the kufiya in an episode, and had heard that there were protests, and so the kufiya top was deleted from the DVD version. I'm on the case.

And check out the comments of the Chronicle blog article. One commenter says s/he saw "Jerry Springer: The Opera" at Studio Theatre 2ndStage in D.C. in August, and that "Satan makes his entrance accompanied by an entourage of gunmen wearing keffiyahs wrapped to cover everything except their eyes." I'm on the look out for that too.

4 comments:

John Schaefer said...

Ted, there's a really weird kufiyya pic in the latest National Geographic. It seems an antiquities looter in the West Bank chose to disguise himself with a kufiyya:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/palestine-antiquities/lange-text

Anonymous said...

Why not? It's the garb of choice for criminals, murders, hypocrites . . .

John Schaefer said...

Well, one dismisses one's enemy at one's own peril, I would think. In what ways might the criminalization of dissent have bestowed a patina of "resistance" on all criminal activity?

Anonymous said...

It's the other war round.