TALKS
(selected)
2023
Everywhere a Village: The Experiments of A.E.S. Alcock and IBEC in Designing the Global Rural Home, European Architecture History Network (EAHN) International Meeting, Athens, Greece, June 19-23.
Mud, Bricks, and Homes: Cinva-Ram and the Global Desire for Housing the “underdeveloped” world, American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) Annual Conference, Denver, CO, USA, April 3-7.
Everywhere a village: US empire, environmental orientalism and the making of a productive landscape in the Levant, c. 1930-1960, LMU Munich/Global Dis:connect, Munich, Germany, March 18-19.
PAST
Architects, Engineers, Firms: Building Kuwait’s Architectural Modernism, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter in collaboration with Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, supported by by Johanna Quandt Young at Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Exeter, UK, November 16-17.
Building the Pan Arab Dream: The Arab muhandis and the Building of Kuwait’ Architectural Modernism, Center for Historical Studies, Kuwait University, November 14.
“The Chicken of Tomorrow” and the Farm of the World, American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) 2023 Annual Conference, Boston, MA, USA, March 25.
Petroleum’s Suburb: Architecture & the Environmental Imaginaries of the Aramco Compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia 1933-1976, Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) 19th Biennial National Conference on Planning History, Harlem, NY, USA, October 22.
Environments, Bodies, Homes: The Home Ownership Program (HOP) & Aramco as a “Partner in Progress” in the Saudi Kingdom, The Profession’s Extensions: Architecture Beyond Architects in the Modern Middle East, Fung Hybrid Symposium, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) and the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities, Princeton University, NJ, USA, May 13-14. Organized by Wesam Al-Asali.
Architecture, Environment, Development: US Agencies and the Architecture of Development, 1949-1961, The Profession’s Foundations: Architects and Architecture in the Modern Middle East, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, April 30. Organized by Nadi Abusaada.
Panelist, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Unit, Launch of the Design Development &Research Lab (DDRL), College of Architecture, Kuwait University, November 8.
Pan-Arab Modernism in Kuwait: The Untold Story of Arab Architects Building an Arab City [with Ricardo Camacho], European Architectural History Network (EAHN) Sixth International Conference, University of Edinburgh, UK, June 2-5, 2021
Anywhere, U.S.A.: Oil, Domesticity, and Dissent in the Aramco Suburb in Saudi Arabia, 1933-1976, Convened by Samia Henni, Preston Thomas Memorial Lectures 2020, Department of Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, October 19, 2020
Suburbanizing the Desert: USA, Oil, & Aramco’s Dhahran Compound at the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) 73rd Annual International Conference, Seattle, WA, USA, April 30-May 1, 2020 [VIRTUAL CONFERENCE IN LIEU OF IN-PERSON MEETING]
Curating Democracy: Domesticity, Modernism, and the “Good Life” in American Trade Fairs, 1953-1961 at the 2019 Buell Dissertation Colloquium at Columbia University, NY, USA, May 4-5, 2019
TVA in the Desert: Infrastructures of All-American Development in Jordan at the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) 72nd Annual International Conference, Providence, RI, USA, April 24-28, 2019.
Displaying America Abroad: Petroleum, Environmental Imaginaries, and Trade Fairs during the Cold War at the PhD Talks, Department of Architecture PhD program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, March 29, 2019.
Of Homes & Environments: American Architecture, Environmental Imaginaries, & the Making of Modern Landscapes & Subjects in Jordan at FORUM Rights of Future Generations: Environment and Ecology, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah, UAE, March 15, 2019. [link]
Domesticity: America’s Soft Power Arsenal in the Middle East During the Cold War at the Architectural Association (AA), London, UK, November 30, 2018.
Constructing Arabia/Displaying America during the Cold War: Representation, Environmental Imaginaries, and Modern Architecture at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference “Without Borders: The Global Middle East, Then and Now,” San Antonio, TX, USA, November 15-18, 2018.
Environment, Domesticity and the Politics of Postwar American Aid in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan at the Sixteenth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), “The Politics of Tradition“ Organized by University of California, Berkeley and Hosted by the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal, October 4-7, 2018.
Importing the “Rural” and “Urban”: The Architecture of Postwar American Aid in the Middle East at the Town & Country: Architecture Between Dichotomies PhD Symposium at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, May 5, 2018.
Sand and Mud to Grass and Concrete: Environmental Imaginaries and the Making of a Modern Kuwait at the Delfina Foundation, London, UK, March 13, 2018. [link]
American Aid and the Modern Middle East: Architecture, Development, and Resistance, 1949-61 at the Mellon Foundation Program on Humanities + Design + Urbanism Colloquium at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, January 12, 2018.
Utopian Dreams in the Making of Kuwait: From Sand and Mud to Grass and Concrete for the Modern Architecture of Kuwait Volume II Book Launch and Conference at Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah Amricani Cultural Center, Kuwait City, Kuwait, December 8-10, 2017.
Landscapes of Development: Aramco’s Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for “Building Knowledge Exchange in the Middle East” at Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA, February 21, 2016.
Observations, Optimizations, and Exchanges: Tropical Design Manuals and British Expertise, 1953-74 at the Fifteenth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), “Legitimizing Tradition” Organized by University of California, Berkeley and Hosted by Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait, December 17-20, 2016.
Experts in the Desert: American Aid, Environmental Imaginaries, and the Making of Modern Arabia, 1949-61 at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, September 30, 2016.
Hidden Space | Social Space: Landscapes of Servitude & Migration from the Philippines to the Arabian Gulf, and back as part of the Mapping, Migration, Identity, and Space Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA, September 26-28, 2015.
Landscapes of Petroleum, Company Towns, Representations and Their Impacts on Urbanism And Society: The Case Of Abadan, Iran as part of the Mapping Cultural Space Across Eurasia Symposium, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasia Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, May 15, 2015.
Hidden Space | Social Space: Landscapes of Temporary Migration in Defining Us and Them at The 15th Annual Southwest Graduate Conference, University of Arizona, AZ, USA, March 26-28, 2015.