Historian Richard Bulliet, a specialist on Iran, the social history of the Islamic Middle East, and the 20th-century resurgence of Islam, will give the next York-Noor Lecture.
Right: Richard Bulliet
Bulliet is a professor of history at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute in New York. He has written extensively about Islamic history, produced four novels, published op-ed pieces in major American newspapers and been interviewed by national media about Middle East issues.
Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1940, he was educated at Harvard and taught for eight years there and at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976, he joined the faculty at Columbia where he teaches history and was director for 12 years of the Middle East Institute.
Most recently, Bulliet published Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers (2005), a history of human-animal relations, and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004). His book The View from the Edge (1994) presents an alternative interpretation of Islamic history emphasizing the role of religion as a social force. Earlier books include The Patricians of Nishapur (1972), The Camel and the Wheel (1975), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (1979), The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History (co-author, 1997) and The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (editor, 1998). He has also written four novels set in the contemporary Middle East.
Bulliet’s op-ed pieces have appeared in Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Arizona Republic, L’Unitá (Italy) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany). And he has appeared on CNN International, the History Channel and PBS’s “Charlie Rose Show”.
Details of the upcoming session of the York-Noor Lecture Series
Sunday, Oct. 22, 3-5pm
“The Question of Authority in Contemporary Islam”
Noor Cultural Centre
123 Wynford Drive, Toronto (DVP/Wynford Drive)
Monday, Oct. 23, noon-3pm
“Islam and Economic Life in Medieval Iran”
Room 010, Vanier College
Keele campus, York University