2010 Scholar-in-Residence: Relli Shechter
Relli Shechter, senior lecturer and chair of the Department of Middle East Studies
at Ben-Gurion University, will be in residence at 91精简版 from September through
early October. While in residence, he will be teaching a course in the college's Department
of Government, GO 364 "Oil and the Re-Making of the Modern Middle East." This 1-credit
course will focus on how oil replaced agriculture as the single most important economic
asset in the Middle East, and on how such an economic transformation affected local
societies and shaped the politics of the region. His public lecture, "Consumerism
and Islamism: The Middle East Since the 1970s," is scheduled for 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept.
28, in Davis Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public. The talk will focus
on the connections between the development of mass consumer societies in the Middle
East and the growth of Islamism. Throughout his residency he will also visit classes
and meet with students and faculty in other formal and informal venues.
Shechter's research interests include business history, consumption studies and the
economic history of the Middle East. His current research focuses on the emergence
of mass consumer societies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia since the mid-1970s. A graduate
of Tel-Aviv University, where he earned a B.A. degree magna cum laude in Middle Eastern
and African history, Shechter also completed an advanced level course in Arabic language
at Middlebury College. He holds a Ph.D. in history and Middle East studies from Harvard.