Colleagues: I'd like to call your attention to a special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, on the topic of "Technologies of Despair and Hope: Liberatory Potentials and Practices of CMC in the Middle East", co-edited and introduced with my colleague Fay Sudweeks: <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue2/>. To cite the opening page: The simplistic view of a monolithic Islamic world pitted against an equally monolithic West disappears quickly into much more complex local histories and politics that provide as many counter-examples to, as examples of, these broad categories. Articles in this special issue provide us with a careful, detailed, and nuanced look at the diffusion and impacts of CMC technologies in the Middle East, with reports on Afghanistan, Israel, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Somewhat more carefully, two of the articles will be of value for folks interested in gender and religion in the Islamic context, as these are affected - from a Western perspective - in liberatory ways (United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan); the third examines how CMC technologies in Israel largely replicate the inequalities of power, rather than help "liberate" or "democratize," as proponents of these technologies often promise. I hope these articles might be of use to some of you and your students. Cheers, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC 2002: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac02/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23