A presentation by Cal Margulis
Wednesday, May 31, 20171:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Bunche 11372
During the long nineteenth century, the people of the Middle East lived through a tremendous amount of social, economic, and cultural change. Although every individual society experienced this change in a different way, their geographical, cultural, and economic connections meant that certain common effects could be seen across the region. During the twentieth century, however, the academic study of this period became divided along linguistic lines (Arabic–Persian), regional lines (nation-state boundaries), and cultural lines (the high culture–low culture divide), and its historical unity was lost. This dissertation aims to reconstruct a common history of the region by looking at changes in racial demography and racial representation in both high and low theater in the cities of the northern Nile Delta and the western Iranian Plateau, from the mid-nineteenth century through World War I. I will show how race became a common language used by people throughout the region to navigate the changing sociopolitical structures that they found themselves in.
Sponsor(s): Program on Central Asia