<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 27px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);"><b>Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History </b></span></div><div class="elementToProof" style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 27px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);">February 2 & February 9, 2024</span></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 24px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);">2:30-4:00 PM</span></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 24px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);">Hybrid Event</span></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 24px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);">MIT Campus, E51-095</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 24px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><img src="cid:6BCFD338-A677-4D4D-8FBA-F5A7C01D839C" alt="Feb 2024 SEAH.jpg"></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="caret-color: rgb(36, 36, 36); color: rgb(36, 36, 36); text-align: center;"><b>February 2, 2024: </b></span></font><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">“<i><b>Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East”</b></i></span></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-size: 14px;">Samuel Dolbee , Vanderbilt University</font></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" style="font-size: 14px;">Hybrid Event, <a href="https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvcuCsrTgiH90Af8Gm7Gn8p6fJA3V6Dc0v#/registration">register here </a></font></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In this highly original environmental history, Samuel Dolbee sheds new light on borders and state formation by following locusts and revealing how they shaped both the environment and people's imaginations from the late Ottoman Empire to the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages, Dolbee details environmental, political, and spatial transformations in the region's history by tracing the movements of locusts and their intimate relationship to people in motion, including Arab and Kurdish nomads, Armenian deportees, and Assyrian refugees, as well as states of theregion. With locusts and moving people at center stage,surprising continuities and ruptures appear in the Jazira, the borderlands of today's Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Transcending approaches focused on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire or the creation of nation states, Dolbee provides a new perspective on the modern Middle East grounded in environmental change, state violence, and popular resistance.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b style="caret-color: rgb(36, 36, 36); color: rgb(36, 36, 36); font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: center;"><font size="4">February 9, 2024:<i> "</i></font></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><font size="4"><i><b>Indigenous turn and environmentalism in the </b></i></font></span><span style="text-align: center; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><font size="4"><i><b>last decades of the USS</b></i></font></span><span style="text-align: center; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><font size="4"><i><b>: rethinking colonial amnesia</b></i></font></span><font face="Times New Roman, serif" size="4" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>”</i></b></font></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times" style="font-size: 14px;">Linda Kaljundi</font></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="text-align: start; font-size: 14px;"><font face="Times">Estonian Academy of Arts / Fulbright Visting Professor at MIT</font></span></div><div style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">Hybrid Event, </span><a href="https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEscO2grTwtH9cDlJUYADkVha4BmVylORq0#/registration" style="text-align: start;">register here</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 15.693334px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;">The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a boom of interest in indigenous peoples living in the territories of the </span><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;">erstwhile Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. This rediscovery of the indigenous took various forms ranging from expeditions and (artistic) research to various forms of cultural representation. In analyzing the practices and works of late Soviet Estonian writers, filmmakers, artists, conservationists, etc., I will focus on two sets of questions. On the one hand, why did they take such a serious, scientific interest in the indigenous people, and why did their works have such a great appeal to a wider audience? On the other hand, what was left unsaid? How much did these more privileged authors reflect on the environmental problems faced by indigenous communities? How did their projects relate to the legacies of Russian colonial expansion? Today, when the invisibility of Russian colonial history has become particularly acute, the borderlands of the former empire offer perspectives for thinking through the roots of this colonial amnesia as well as the strategies of unlearning. </span></font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For more information please visit : <a href="https://history.mit.edu/lectures-and-seminars/seminar-on-environmental-and-agricultural-history-seah/">https://history.mit.edu/lectures-and-seminars/seminar-on-environmental-and-agricultural-history-seah/</a></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div>
<meta charset="UTF-8"><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div>Kathleen Lopes <br>Administrative Assistant III<br>MIT History Section <br><br> <br>Schedule<br>On-site: Tuesday, and Thursday </div><div>Remote: Monday, Wednesday and Friday<br><br></div></div>
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