Research Seminar Series: Arbella Bet-Shlimon on a History of Kirkuk
Arbella Bet-Shlimon, Associate Professor in the University of Washington’s Department of History, gave a September 19, 2019 talk as part of the Pardee School Research Seminar Series.
Bet-Shlimon gave a talk entitled “Ethnicity and Conflict in Iraq’s Oil City: A History of Kirkuk.” The event was co-sponsored by the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA)‘s program on Muslim Studies.
Bet-Shlimon is a historian of the modern Middle East, whose research and teaching focus on the politics, society and economy of twentieth-century Iraq and the broader Persian Gulf region, as well as Middle Eastern urban history. Her first book, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), explores how oil and urbanization made ethnicity into a political practice in Kirkuk, a multilingual city that was the original hub of Iraq’s oil industry.
The Pardee School Research Seminar Series is a forum for faculty and students to discuss and receive feedback on ongoing research. The series is a mix of presentations, works-in-progress sessions, and research workshops. Faculty and students based at BU and elsewhere are invited to present and attend the Research Seminar Series. If you would like to present, please send an e-mail with your name, affiliation, and a description of your presentation, with “Pardee Seminar” in the subject line, to: Mahesh Karra (mvkarra@bu.edu) and Jayita Sarkar (jsarkar@bu.edu)