Launching FIGHS: The Forum for Interdisciplinary Gulf Heritage Studies
Organized by Nora Elizabeth Barakat (Stanford History) and Trinidad Rico (Abbasi Affiliate Visiting Scholar, Director of Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies, Rutgers University), the Abbasi Program is proud to launch FIGHS, the Forum for Interdisciplinary Gulf Heritage Studies at Stanford this Spring Quarter. This series is co-sponsored by the History Department and the Urban Studies Program.
The forum will convene for three seminars this quarter to ask these broad questions: who defines cultural heritage in postcolonial contexts, what are the spatial and political boundaries of heritage zones, and how should we approach the relationship between history and heritage? In Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf, particularly Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, these questions have taken on particular urgency and political salience in the past few decades due to state-led urban development, global engagement, and aggressive neoliberal nation-building projects. The Forum for Interdisciplinary Gulf Heritage Studies at Stanford (FIGHS) critically engages the politics of making and mobilizing heritage in the Gulf in the context of cosmopolitan forms of expertise that confront the legacies of colonialism characteristic of heritage preservation traditions. Three interlinked events will address questions of archives, language and the spatial elements of heritage production; urban space, architecture and modernity; and the politics of writing and publishing in the field of Gulf Studies.
We hope you will join us for the following events:
Event One: April 12, 2022
Title: Mapping Gulf Spaces: Postcolonial Approaches to Textual Heritage
Participants: Nora Elizabeth Barakat (Stanford), Mohammed Khalil (Stanford), and Rhea Kale (Stanford), with response from David Joseph Wrisley (NYU Abu Dhabi)
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Time: 4-5:30 pm
Event Two: May 3, 2022
Title: Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf
Participants: Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi (Barjeel Art Foundation), Roberto Fabbri (Zayed University), Trinidad Rico (Stanford/Rutgers) and Michael Kubo (University of Houston)
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Time: 4-5:30 pm
Event Three: May 17, 2022
Title: Writing and Publishing Gulf History and Heritage
Participants: Kate Wahl (Stanford University Press), Farah al-Nakib (Calpoly), and Todd Reisz (Rutgers)
Encina Commons 123
Time: 4-5:30 pm