Culture and Heritage After Palmyra, Interdisciplinary Discussion



Thursday, October 29, 2015 11:00am
Low Library Rotunda

Focusing on how notions of culture are being challenged, and maybe even redefined, through the current destruction of cultural objects and historical monuments in the war in Iraq and Syria, this event will consider alternative ways of thinking about contemporary culture and the role of heritage in it, with the hope of advancing a more critical and informed dialogue across campus. Organized by GSAPP Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation Jorge Otero-Pailos.

Participants include:
Daniel Bertrand Monk
George R. and Myra T. Cooley Professor of Peace & Conflict Studies, and Professor Of Geography, Colgate University
Daniel Bertrand Monk holds the George R. and Myra T. Cooley Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University, where he is a professor of Geography and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He is the author of An Aesthetic Occupation as well as a number of other studies on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and on strategic interaction in contested territory. Together with Mike Davis he has edited Evil Paradises: The Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (New Press, 2007). Together with Jacob Mundy he has also edited: The Post-Conflict Environment: Intervention and Critique (University of Michigan Press, 2014). Monk has been awarded a Mac-Arthur Foundation Fellowship in International Peace and Security, as well as a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for his research on the doxa of contemporary conflict.

Nicolai Ouroussoff
Columbia GSAPP, former architecture critic, New York Times
Nicolai Ouroussoff is a writer and critic living in New York. He is currently writing a book on architecture, culture and politics from the birth of Modernism to today, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is a former architecture critic of the New York Times , were he wrote widely on architecture and urbanism in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 and 2011. Previously, he was the architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times , where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for a series on the cultural decline of Baghdad. Ouroussoff’s work has also appeared in publications such as Harper’s Magazine, Art Forum, the New York Observer and Vanity Fair. He received a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 1985 and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture in 1992.

Laurie Rush
Cultural Resources Manager, US Army
Dr. Laurie W. Rush is the Cultural Resources Manager and Army Archaeologist stationed at Fort Drum, NY, and is a Board Member of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield. She holds her degrees from Northwestern University (Ph.D. and MA), and Indiana University Bloomington. At Fort Drum she manages cultural property on over 100,000 acres of military land, including nearly 1,000 archaeological sites including five historic villages and over 360 farmsteads lost during the 1941 expansion of the military base; she also manages the LeRay Mansion Historic District. Dr. Rush educates deploying personnel about cultural property protection during military operations, and also specializes in the prehistory of the Northeast and Great Lakes Region, and the local history of Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence Counties, NY. As Native American Affairs Liaison for the Garrison Commander, she manages all diplomatic relations between the Tenth Mountain Division and federally recognized tribes with ancestral ties to Fort Drum land.

Ian B Straughn
Joukowsky Family Middle East Studies Librarian, Brown University
Ian B Straun’s research and teaching interests focus on the emerging study of the archaeology of the Muslim World. His work has concentrated on understanding how Muslim societies have been shaped by the landscapes which they have constructed and conceived and by their relationship to the material world. A major aspect of his research has consisted of developing a methodology for bringing the archaeological and textual records into a productive dialogue about past societies. Additionally, his work has sought to understand the relationship of materiality to religious experience and the place of archaeology in the study of religion.

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