Association of Middle East Anthropology is delighted to announce the results of the 2025 Suad Joseph Student Paper Award
Recipient:
Sümeyra Güneş
PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University
Honorable Mention:
Johnathan Norris
PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University
Sümeyra Güneş is the winner of the 2025 Suad Joseph Student Paper Award for her paper, titled “Passing the Vibe Check: Navigating Offense on Istanbul’s Stand-up Stages.” Thanks to her nuanced analysis and eloquent writing, Güneş successfully discusses the stand-up comedians’ efforts to “read the room” in the comedy clubs as affective spaces and the legal risks and political lynches they face when their material is shared online. Contributing to the anthropological studies on affect and humor with her excellent ethnographical research and thorough theoretical synthesis, Güneş points out the comedians’ urge to push the boundaries of political taboos, that are getting rapidly thinner, in today’s Turkish society, which are increasingly shaped by conflicts, polarizations and tensions. Güneş elaborates how the comedians use dark, and often offensive humor, in order to constitute a collective “vibe”, which is “ephemeral yet palpable”, through both sensorial and discursive means. In her paper, Güneş impeccably situates the comedy clubs within the intricately layered contexts of Istanbul, Turkey and the Middle East. Thanks to her colorful ethnographic observations, she literally takes us to a comedy club in Istanbul, where laughter, hesitations and uncomfortable silences also reflect fluid negotiations of identities, subjectivities and power dynamics within the comedy club, as well as in the country in general. Therefore, as the author beautifully demonstrates, laughter becomes an inherently political matter, which shapes the affective, sensorial and intellectual labor of each comedian in different ways and forms new vital collectivities in a social environment of oppression and (self)censorship.
The Honorable Mention goes to Johnathan Norris for his paper, “Carnivalized Play and Risky Pleasures,” which explores how young gay men (ghayat) in Amman, Jordan, navigate tensions between cultural expectations of marriage and family their own desires for fun, intimacy, and expression. Through ethnographic vignettes, the article shows how practices of “risky pleasures” constitute forms of “carnivalized play” that temporarily invert sexual hierarchies by suspending expectation of heteronormativity and masculinity. By highlighting these fleeting, subversive acts, Norris demonstrates how everyday life itself is a critical site for young men to push social boundaries and envision alternative queer futures in Jordan.