Public programs facilitate dialogue between academics and professionals, informing scholarship and strengthening practice.
Multiple day conferences, year-long colloquia, individual lectures, “conversations” between individuals, hands-on workshops, and Museums at Noon talks featuring our graduate students all contribute to the remarkable richness of MSP offerings.
Video recordings of some MSP lectures are archived for viewing in our Media Gallery.
- This event has passed.
The “Calculated Frightfulness” of ISIS: Threats to Middle Eastern Cultural Heritage in Historical Perspective – Panel Discussion
November 30, 2015 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
The so-called “Islamic State” (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) proclaimed itself a caliphate in June 2014. Like any new state whose continued existence may be in doubt, this group has advanced its ideology through varied relationships to tangible material heritage. This talk will contextualize the horrifying destruction of monuments and looting of sites and museums within regional histories of “calculated frightfulness” (as one historian characterized a strategy of the ancient Assyrian empire), iconoclasm, and other episodes of looting. It will also examine western responses to these actions, from government silence, to mobilization of archaeologists, and uneven media coverage.
Presented by Geoff Emberling – Kelsey Museum/Near Eastern Studies
Panelists:
Gottfried Hagen – Near Eastern Studies
Piotr Michalowski – Near Eastern Studies
Carla Sinopoli – Museum Studies/Anthropology
