UC Faculty Examine Iraq

WHAT: Seminar on “Iraq in Perspective”
WHEN: 7-8:15 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, 2003
WHERE: Room 308, Blegen Library
ADMISSION: Free and open to the public
SPONSOR: McMicken College of Arts and Sciences
SPEAKERS AND TOPICS: 

• Brian Rose, professor of classical archaeology
  “Iraq in Antiquity”
  In antiquity, Iraq was known as Mesopotamia and was the center of some of the great empires of the ancient Near East: the Sumerians, Assyrians and Akkadians, among others. Babylon was famous for the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and King Hammurabi produced one of the first written codes of law. Constant warring among empires gave rise to an elaborate program of propaganda glorifying dynasties and conquests. A similar iconography has been consistently used by the Ba’ath Party in Iraq, and the monuments of Mesopotamia played a major role in that iconography. Rose will explore the extent to which the Mesopotamian past was co-opted by the regime of Saddam Hussein. His triumphal iconography will be compared to that of the Shah of Iran in the 1970s.
• Jack Davis, Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology
  “Archaeology & Foreign Policy in Iraq: The Case of Gertrude Bell”
  Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), British archaeologist, explorer, intelligence officer and diplomat devoted the last quarter century of her life to the Arab peoples. Her memoirs, diaries and letters are masterpieces  of late Victorian travel-writing. She helped found the national archaeological museum of Iraq, which has just been looted in Baghdad. Even more significantly, she was a highly influential adviser to the British, shaping decisions that led to the creation of the modern state of Iraq. Many of those policies continued to guide successive Iraqi governments (including Saddam Hussein's Ba’ath party).
• Elizabeth Frierson, assistant professor of history
  “The Ba’ath Party of Iraq, Before and After Saddam Hussein”
  Ba'ath party ideology at its founding looked like a feasible and relatively benign road to socialist democracy in new Arab nation-states. By the 1970s, however, it had been hijacked by single-party despots and transformed into a basis for fascist state-society relations. Were Arab and Western observers deluded in thinking the Ba'ath party was the door to a brighter future? Does Ba'ath ideology have any legitimacy today? The future for Ba’ath in Iraq may hold anything from post-war purge and retributions, to South Africa-style truth and reconciliation movement.

INFORMATION: Brian Rose, (513) 556-1948