This panel invites interdisciplinary proposals that bring to attention the multiple, contradictory, and shifting approaches that encompass the studies of the Southwest Asia North Africa (SWANA) region. The overarching aim of this panel is to shed light on the theoretical and political significance of intersectionality for critical engagement with the SWANA region. We invite contributions examining how the relationalities of bodies, cultures, and cultural productions in the SWANA region and its diasporas shape discourses across nations, re(li)gions, and languages as they converge and diverge in their religious, racial, ethnic, and gender*sexuality-based identities. Equally important is mapping the intersecting power structures that mark bodies and borders at local, interpersonal, and transcultural levels. The proposals are asked to speak to the political project of intersectionality in making invisible oppressions visible and calling attention to interlocking and multiple power systems. Inquiries may include: 

• How can the definitions and studies of the SWANA region optimize intersectionality?
• How are gender*sexuality, ethnic, and racial borders erased, resurrected, or intersected by nation-states and transnational political projects? 
• How do cultural productions that speak to or stem from the SWANA region navigate intersectionalities and/or relationalities that (de)construct notions of SWANA identities and/or cultures? 
• What are the challenges in attending to relationalities that deconstruct notions of SWANA identities and/or cultures?
• What are the challenges in attending to relationality and difference within the region?
• How can transnational feminism and intersectionality join forces in the studies of the SWANA region?
• What future possibilities does the study of the SWANA region bring to the field of intersectionality studies? 

This panel invites interdisciplinary proposals that navigate, chart, and/or construct the intersectionalities and relationalities of bodies, peoples, cultures, and literary productions in the transnational SWANA region and its diasporas. 

-         All presentations must be in English. 

-         All proposals must be submitted through NeMLA's online portal. https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19919

-         Submissions are accepted between June 15 and September 30th. 

-         For further inquiry, please get in touch with the organizers of the panel, Shirin Assa shirin.assa@uni-bayreuth.de & Natalie El-Eid ngeleid@syr.edu