This annual lectureship was established in honor of Farhat J. Ziadeh, whose contributions to the fields of Islamic law, Arabic language, and Islamic Studies are truly unparalleled.
The Ziadeh fund was formally endowed in 2001 and since that time, it has allowed MELC to strengthen its educational reach and showcase the most outstanding scholarship in Arab and Islamic Studies.
Past Lectures
- 2025: 16, April; "The Past Continuous: Recurrence and Renewal in Modern Palestinian Poetry" presented by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, poet and translator. Click here to view the lecture.
- 2024: 8 February; "Enslavement in Botany and Agriculture: Black Stewards of Early Islamic Lands" presented by Professor Kristina Richardson, University of Virginia.
- 2022: 5 June; "A New Era of the United States and the Middle East with Vali Nasr'' presented by Vali Nasr, Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. Click here to view the lecture.
- 2019: 8 April; "Looking for the Qur'an in America'' presented by Professor Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Director of National and International Outreach at the Library of Congress and President Emeritus, Bryn Mawr College. Click here to view the lecture.
- 2018: 26 April; "The United States through Arab Eyes, 1876-1914" presented by Nabil Matar, University of Minnesota. Click here to view the lecture.
- 2017: NO LECTURE HELD THIS YEAR
- 2016: 7 April; "Extreme Ethnography: France and the Exploration of North Africa" (PDF), presented by Edmund Burke III, University of California - Santa Cruz. Click here to view the lecture.
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2015: 10 March; - PDF NOT AVAILABLE - "Revolutions & Counter-Revolutions: An Update from Inside the Arab World's Turbulent Reconfiguration," presented by Rami G. Khouri, American University of Beirut
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2014: 22 April; - PDF NOT AVAILABLE - "Regimes of Censorship in the Arab World Before and After the 2011 Revolutions," presented by Juan Cole, University of Michigan
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2013: 29 April; "How Ecumenical Was Early Islam?" (PDF), presented by Fred M. Donner, University of Chicago
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2012: 30 April; "Authorizing Moral Crusades to Save Muslim Women" (PDF), presented by Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University
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2011: 2 May; "The Quandaries of Emulation: The Theory and Politics of Shi'i Manuals of Practice" (PDF) presented by Roy Mottahedeh, Harvard University
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2010: 6 May; "Demystifying the Orient: Arab-American Christian Scholars and Study of the Middle East" (PDF), presented by Yvonne Haddad, Georgetown University
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2009: 22 April; "Rethinking the 'Muslim World' Paradigm" (PDF), presented by Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland
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2008: 6 May; "Shari'a as Law and Legal System: Changing Perceptions" (PDF), presented by Frank E. Vogel, Harvard Law School
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2007: 3 May; - PDF NOT AVAILABLE - "Making the City of Cairo through Motion," presented by Irene Bierman-McKinney, University of California, Los Angeles
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2006: 20 April; "The Novel, the Novelist, and the Lebanese Civil War" (PDF), presented by Elias Khoury, Editor-in-Chief of Lebanon's Annahar Newspaper
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2005: 19 May; "Resurrecting Empire: The End of Year II of the Occupation of Iraq" (PDF), presented by Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University
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2004: 8 May; "Naguib Mahfouz: A Retrospective" (Part 1 PDF, Part 2 PDF), presented by Roger Allen, University of Pennsylvania
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2003: NO LECTURE HELD THIS YEAR
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2002: 30 April; Gibran Kahlil Gibran, "Between Two Millenia" (PDF), presented at the Inaugural Farhat J. Ziadeh Distinguished Lecture in Arab and Islamic Studies by Irfan Shahid, Georgetown University