Dear Colleagues,
I would like to inform you about an upcoming book talk organized by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative at NYU on Friday, April 14, 2023, at 12.30 (EST). The event will be both in-person (Ettinghausen Library (255 Sullivan St.) and on Zoom. Below you can find the abstract, as well as the link to register for the talk.
Book Talk with Samuel Dolbee: Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East
Description:
In this highly original environmental history, Samuel Dolbee sheds new light on borders and state formation by following locusts and revealing how they shaped both the environment and people's imaginations from the late Ottoman Empire to the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages, Dolbee details environmental, political, and spatial transformations in the region's history by tracing the movements of locusts and their intimate relationship to people in motion, including Arab and Kurdish nomads, Armenian deportees, and Assyrian refugees, as well as states of the region. With locusts and moving people at center stage, surprising continuities and ruptures appear in the Jazira, the borderlands of today's Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Transcending approaches focused on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire or the creation of nation-states, Dolbee provides a new perspective on the modern Middle East grounded in environmental change, state violence, and popular resistance.
Karl Appuhn (NYU) will serve as the discussant. The book talk will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A session.
Link to Register: https://nyu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvc-GqpzIsHtQNAUwK29Vmd6oBcKWMapxm
Contact Email: fd2082@nyu.edu
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