Distinguished Speaker Program: The Changing Middle East – Nov 13

You are Invited

Understanding Muslim Societies:
Political Authority in a Changing Middle East

Dr. Richard Bulliet
Professor of History, Columbia University

Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Program: 6:30 p.m.
Frist Lecture Hall, 4th Floor, Inman Bldg
Belmont University, Nashville

TNWAC members and future members are invited to join Professor Bulliet at a pre-program reception starting at 6:00 p.m.

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The “Arab Spring” and the challenge it presents to American foreign policy and interests across North Africa and the Near East has raised new and complicated questions jumping out of the headlines. There could be no timelier topic for us to discuss than the tension between America and the Arab and Islamic worlds. We seek to understand these developments and how they impact U.S. interests in these important regions.

Join us for an insightful presentation by renowned Professor Richard Bulliet as he explores “Political Authority in a Changing Middle East.” He comes to the Tennessee World Affairs Council through a grant by the Carnegie Corporation in association with the World Affairs Councils of America.

RICHARD W. BULLIET is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Columbia University where he also directed the Middle East Institute of the School of International and Public Affairs for twelve years. Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1940, he came to Columbia in 1976 after undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard and eight years as a faculty member at Harvard and Berkeley. He is a specialist on Iran, the social history of the Islamic Middle East, and the 20th century resurgence of Islam. His most recent scholarly work is Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History (2009). His earlier books include Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers (2005), The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004), Islam: The View from the Edge (1994), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (1979), The Camel and the Wheel (1975), and The Patricians of Nishapur (1972). He has also written five novels, most recently The One-Donkey Solution (2011), and is co-author of a world history textbook The Earth and Its Peoples (5ed. 2009).

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The mission of the Tennessee World Affairs Council is: To promote, on a non-partisan basis, understanding of important international issues, throughout the community and with a special focus on the region’s schools.

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