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Year 2008-2009 |
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| 29 May 2009: Dr. David Harvey, "The Urban Roots of the Fiscal Crisis"
This lecture was co-sponsored with The Masters in Urban Planning and Policy and Urban Design in the Department of Architecture and Design
David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social theorist whom Library Journal called â??one of the most influential geographers of the later twentieth century,â? he earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and was formerly professor of geography at Johns Hopkins, a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, and Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford. His reflections on the importance of space and place (and more recently â??natureâ?) have attracted considerable attention across the humanities and social sciences. His highly influential books include: A Short History of Neoliberalism (2005); The New Imperialism (2003); Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003); Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (2001); Spaces of Hope (2000); Limits to Capital (1999); Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (1996); The Urbanization of Capital (1985); The Condition of Postmodernity (1989); and Social Justice and the City (1973). Among his numerous awards and honorary degrees, he was elected in 2007 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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| 29 May 2009: Dr. Alastair Crooke, Mr. Rami Khouri and Mr. Nicholas Noe, "Lebanon and the World: Darling or Dispensable State?
This lecture was co-sponsored with Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs and the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration
Rami Khouri is Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper.
Alastair Crooke is the Co-Director and founder of Conflicts Forum and former special adviser to European Union High Representative, Javier Solana. He is the author of Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution (2009).
Nicholas Noe is the co-founder of the Beirut-based news translation service Mideastwire.com covering the Arabic and Iranian media. He is the editor of the 2007 book, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.
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| 28 May 2009: Dr. Irene Gendzier, "In the Beginning Was Oil and War..."
Irene Gendzier is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University. She is currently engaged in research on the foundations of postwar U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, 1945-1949. She is the author of many articles and books including Notes From the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958; Development Against Democracy; Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study; and she co-edited the volume Crimes of War: Iraq with Richard Falk and Robert Lifton.
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| 26 May 2009: Dr. Eric Wakin, "'Rioters Shall Not Be Allowed to Furnish themselves with Arms and Ammunition': The Gun in Urban Unrest in 19th Century New York City"
Eric Wakin is a PhD candidate in U.S. History at Columbia University whose research focuses on urban history and the history of armed violence in New York City. He has advanced degrees in Political Science and Asian Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is the author of the book Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand.
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7 April 2009: Dr. Richard Bensel, "The 2008 American Presidential Election in Historical Perspective"
Richard Bensel is a Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Government at Cornell University. He is also President of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association. His primary fields are American politics and political economy, with specific interests in American political development, parties and elections, the United States Congress, and comparative state formation. He is the author of, most recently, Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic National Convention (Cambridge, 2008), The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2004) and The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900 (Cambridge, 2000). Among his other publications are Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 and Sectionalism and American Political Development, 1880-1980. Current research projects include The Material Construction of Courage: Political Violence in the American South, 1865-1900, States out of Nature: The Legislative Founding of Democracies, and The juridical Construction of Racial Identity and the Social Practice of Slavery.
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3 April 2009: Senator John Sununu, "How American Citizens Engange in the Political Process: Examples from Middle East Policy Forumulation and the Global Economic Crisis"
Senator John Sununu served as senator from New Hampshire from 2003-2009. He served as a member of Senate Banking Committee, Commerce Committee, Finance Committee, Foreign Relations committee, and Homeland Security Committee. He negotiated and wrote several Acts such as the Internet Tax Freedom Act (2007), the New England Wilderness Act (2006) and the Patriot Act Amendments (2005). Senator Sununu also served as a member of congress from New Hampshire (1997-2003). From 1993-1996, he was director of operations and CFO at Teletrol systems, Inc. Manchester, NH. He is the recipient of several awards some of which are Helen Keller Award from Lighthouse International, and the Gibran Award for Distinguished Public Service from Arab-American Institute. Senator Sununu earned his MBA from Harvard School of Business in 1991. |
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31 March 2009: Dr. Adam John Waterman, "Abd Al Qader in ElKader: Muslim Revolutionary, American Town"
Adam John Waterman is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at the American University of Beirut. In 2008, he received his Ph.D. from the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, where he was a MacCracken Fellow in the American Studies Program. He has written on topics as wide-ranging as the art of Kara Walker, the theoretical legacy of the Black Panther Party, and the political rhetoric of Jamestown minister, Jim Jones. At present, he is preparing a manuscript entitled The Corpse in the Kitchen: History, Value, and the Afterlives of Black Hawk, in which he examines the relationship between narratives of nineteenth century American Indian war and the construction of socioeconomic value on the North American land market. Before coming to AUB, Professor Waterman held appointments at the University of Virginia and Macalester College.
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| 18 March 2009: Dr. Tariq Ramadan, "The US, Islam and the Relationship with Muslim-Majority Countries"
Tariq Ramadan is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Theology and senior research fellow at St. Antonyâ??s College (Oxford), Dohisha University (Kyoto, Japan) and at the Lokahi Foundation (London). He is also visiting professor (holding the chair: Identity and Citizenship) at Erasmus University in The Netherlands. Through his writings and lectures, he has contributed substantially to the debate on the issues of Muslims in the West and Islamic revival in the Muslim world. He is active in both the academic and grassroots levels lecturing extensively throughout the world on social justice and dialogue between civilizations. Professor Tariq Ramadan is also President of the think tank European Muslim Network (EMN) in Brussels. His latest book is Radical Reform, Islamic Ethics and Liberation.
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5 March 2009: Dr. Edward White, "The Semiotics of the Founding Fathers"
Edward White teaches American literature and critical theory at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Backcountry and the City: Colonization and Conflict in Early America (2005), co-editor of Beyond Douglass: New Perspectives on Early African-American Literature, and translator of several portions of Crevecoeur's Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain.
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24 February 2009: Dr. William Marling, 'How "American" is Globalization?'
Video of Lecture
William Marling is the Edward Said Chair of American Studies at CASAR, AUB. He has been a Distinguished Foreign Professor in France, Spain, Austria, and Japan. His home is Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches at Case Western Reserve University. His research focuses on American poetry, fiction, and popular culture, especially as they are influenced by art and technology. His current work concerns World Literature. He was formerly a financial journalist for Fortune and Money magazines. Dr. Marling is the author of five books, the most recent of which is How â??Americanâ? is Globalization? (John Hopkins, 2005).
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20 February 2009: Dr. Thomas Greven, "What Future for the Grand Old Party? The Republican Party after the 2008 Election
This lecture is co-sponsored with the Political Studies and Public Administration Department
Thomas Greven is Visiting Professor of Political Science at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität in Berlin where he also earned his Ph.D. in political science in 2000. His research focuses on globalization and transnational politics, national and transnational labor movements, industrial relations, U.S. and Canadian politics, and right-wing extremism. He is the author of The Clash of Globalizations? The Politics of International Labor Rights in the United States as well as editor or co-editor of eight other volumes. He has also published over twenty scholarly articles. Dr. Greven is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and has been a visiting scholar at The Johns Hopkins University, York University (Toronto), and University of California, Berkeley.
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12 February 2009: Dr. Noel Ignatiev, "The 2008 Election and the Current State of Race in America"
Video of Lecture
Noel Ignatiev is Professor of Liberal Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art. He earned his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 1994. His research focuses on issues of race and labor. He is the author of How the Irish Became White, which has just been reissued as a Routledge Classic. He co-founded and co-edited the journal Race Traitor, an anthology from which he won an American Book Award. He has also written and published several articles on Palestine and Zionism, most recently an entry in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. Dr. Ignatiev is the recipient of several fellowships including one from the Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard.
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19 January 2009: Dr. Sean Foley, "Revolution or Secular Tajdid: Islam, Thomas Jefferson, and the Rise of American Liberty"
Video of Lecture
Sean Foley is an Assistant Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University. Previously, he taught at Georgetown University where he earned an M.A. in Arab Studies in 2000 and a Ph.D. in History in 2005. Foley held Fulbright fellowships in Syria and Turkey in 2002 and 2003. He has published widely on Middle Eastern history, Sufism, Persian Gulf politics, diplomatic history, and the role of Islam in Euro-American social movements. In addition, Foley is completing a book on the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya Sufi and writing a monograph under contract with Lynne Rienner Press: The Arab Gulf States: When Oil is Not Enough.
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January 12, 2009: Dr. Saree Makdisi, "The Question of Palestine in America"
Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His primary area of academic expertise is the culture of modernity in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, though
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Dr. Saree Makdisi
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he has also published numerous articles on contemporary Arab cultural politics. He is the author of Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 1998); William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (University of Chicago Press, 2003); and is the co-editor, with Felicity Nussbaum, of The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is currently working on a new book, Radical Afterlives: Britain, 1798-1870. In addition to his scholarly work, Professor Makdisi is also a well known commentator on the question of Palestine, about which he has written extensively for a number of publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Nation, the Houston Chronicle, and the London Review of Books. His most recent book is Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (Norton, 2008), which offers what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls "a compelling account of the lives of ordinary Palestinians suffering under occupation."
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| December 22, 2008: Dr. Renate Holub, "Multiculturalism in the United States: 1968-2008"
Video of Lecture (only viewed by AUB community)
Renate Holub is the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin in 1983.
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Dr. Renate Holub
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Her current research focuses on linking multiculturalism in the US to larger cultural shifts in relation to the political economy. She has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American University of Cairo, Kenyatta University (Nairobi), Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok), and the University of Auckland. She is the author of numerous articles and the 1992 volume Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism which has been translated into many languages including Korean and Farsi.
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December 11, 2008: Dr. Alex Lubin, "The Subversive Geographies of U.S. / Middle East Relations"
Text of Lecture
Alex Lubin is Associate Professor and chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. His research has focused on the part that U.S. domestic tensions have played in perceptions of, and interventions in, the Middle East, with a particular emphasis on the role of black Americans. Dr. Lubin is the author of Romance and Rights: The Politics of Interracial Intimacy, 1945-1955 (2005) and Revising the Blueprint: Ann Petry and the Literary Left (2007).
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November 25, 2008: Mr. Rami Khouri and Mr. Michael Young, "A Debate: The Middle East Policies and the Bush and Obama Administrations"
Video of Lecture
Rami Khouri is the director of the Issam fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI). He is also a syndicated columnist and frequent commentator on radio and television programs. He is the author of more than ten books and book-length reports on archaeology and public affairs. He has received numerous fellowships and awards. He was formerly chief umpire for Little League baseball in Jordan.
Michael Young is the opinion page editor of the Daily Star, to which he contributes a weekly column. Until 2000, he was the English publications editor for the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. His work has appeared in many prominent newspapers and magazines in the United States, and he regularly discusses Middle Eastern affairs on a variety of international radio and television networks.
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November 10, 2008: Dr. Peter James Hudson, "The Brazen White Sign of the Dollar: Empire, Economy, and the Practice of Diaspora"
Video of Lecture (only viewed by AUB community)
Peter James Hudson completed his PhD in the American Studies Program at New York University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Buffalo. He is currently working on a manuscript, Dark Finance: An Unofficial History of Wall Street, American Empire, and the Caribbean, 1889-1929, that recounts the early advance of New York City banking and finance into the Caribbean. Dr. Hudson has also examined twentieth-century Caribbean writing, photography and film. In addition to his academic work, he was the editor of North: New African Canadian Writing (a special issue of the literary journal West Coast Line) and has written on Caribbean, Black North American, and African diaspora arts and culture for a number of journals including Prefix Photography (Toronto), Transition: An International Review (Cambridge), Text und Töne (New York), Chimurenga (Capetown), The Stabroek News (Georgetown), and Bidoun: Arts and Culture from the Middle East (New York).
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November 6, 2008: Dr. Ozlem Altan-Olcay, "Rethinking Cosmopolitanism: Experiences of American Education in the Middle East"
Text of Lecture
Ozlem Altan is assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Koc University in Turkey. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at New York University in 2006. Her research focuses on Middle East politics and society, globalization, elite networks, and the politics of education. She has investigated the role of cultural capital among students at AUB, AUC and BoÄ?azİçİ University. She is the author of eleven articles; the latest of which are: "Gendered Projects of National Identity Formation: The Case of Turkey" ( National Identities), "Defining â??Americaâ?? from a Distance: Local Strategies of the Global in the Middle East" ( Middle Eastern Studies), and "Makan: The Right to the City and New Ways of Understanding Space" ( Arab Studies Journal).
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October 30, 2008: Dr. Patrick McGreevy, Dr. Karim Makdisi and Dr. Markus Marktanner, "Real Change? A Forum on U.S. Elections"
Video of Lecture
This forum will feature three short presentations on the U.S. elections followed by an open discussion. Marcus Marktanner (Economics) will speak about politics and economics during this moment of economic upheaval. Patrick McGreevy (CASAR) will address the prospects that this election will initiate fundamental social and political change in the United States. Karim Makdisi (PSPA) will examine the question of change in U.S. foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Middle East. | | | |
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