CMES: Graveyard Of The Clerics: Islamism In Saudi Suburbia

Date: 

Wednesday, March 1, 2017, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CMES, Room 102, 38 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA

 

The CMES Arabian Peninsula Studies Lecture presents

Pascal Menoret
Renée and Lester Crown Chair in Modern Middle East Studies, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University

 

Pascal Menoret completed his PhD in 2008 from the Department of History at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He joined NYUAD in 2011 after two years as a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Pascal was a scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (2010-11 & 2013-14).

Professor Menoret's research combines urban history and social anthropology. His latest book, Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt, (Cambridge University Press, 2014) explores the relationship between urban planning and youth unrest in the Saudi capital. His new book project, entitled Graveyard of the Clerics: Religious Activism in Saudi Suburbia, is a cultural history of the Saudi Islamic movements since the mid-1960s. He has published The Saudi Enigma: A History (Zed Books, 2005) and L'Arabie, des routes de l'encens à l'ère du pétrole (Gallimard, 2010).

Pascal is also interested in literary translation from Arabic into English, urban music in the Middle East and Southern Europe, and modern architecture. He created the NYUAD Translation Workshop, a group of students and faculty who collectively translate contemporary Arabic literature into English. He edited The Abu Dhabi Guide: Modern Architecture, 1968-1992 (FIND 2014), a guide to thirty modernist landmarks of the Emirati capital written by the students of the "Modern Architecture in Abu Dhabi" class.

Before his doctoral fieldwork in Riyadh (2005-07), Pascal studied Arabic with Houda Ayoub in Paris and German philosophy with Gérard Lebrun at the Université de Provence. He wrote his MA thesis on a Saudi TV series, Tash Ma Tash, and his BA thesis on religion and politics in Hegel’s philosophy. He graduated from the Lycée Lacordaire in Marseille in 1994.

Contact: Liz Flanagan