Croft Lecture Will Be Focusing on Mideast Violence

Photo taken from www.olemiss.edu

University of London expert to discuss role of urban violence in Iraq

OXFORD, Miss. – An urban violence expert from the University of London will discuss violence in the Mideast at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Mississippi’s Croft Institute for International Studies.

Croft visiting speaker Nelida Fuccaro is a global expert on urban violence in the Middle East. She holds the position of Reader in the Modern History of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies at UL, and leads a joint research project on that topic with the UL School of Oriental and African Studies and the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. Her lecture will focus on the role urban violence played in the 20th century history of Kirkuk, Iraq.

“Obviously, violence in Iraq very topical issue as well as oil,” Fuccaro said. “Kirkuk has been for a century or so the contested Iraqi city par excellence, claimed by both Kurds and Arabs. The city has become recently the ‘Jerusalem’ of the Kurds, a place of return as the largest Kurdish urban centre not under the control of the regional government.”“The lecture will explore some key episodes of public violence in the city before 1963 , discussing the city and urban life as shaped by these key episodes of public violence in the colonial, post-colonial and early revolutionary period.”

The lecture in the Joseph C. Bancroft Conference Room, Room 107, is free and open to the public. The topic is especially timely, said William C. Schenck, Croft associate director.

“With a civil war still raging in Syria, deadly attacks an almost daily occurrence in Iraq and conflict simmering in Egypt and elsewhere in the region, it is more important than ever to understand the history of violence in the Middle East,” Schenck said.

Fuccaro specializes in the modern Middle East and focuses on Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, Kurdish areas and also border societies. She also has an interest in cross-regional and inter-disciplinary approaches to the study of the Middle East. For more information or for assistance related to a disability, contact Brooke Worthy at 662-915-1500

—Michael Newsom, Ole Miss News Desk