Summary: The Middle East is known in popular culture to be a space of climatic extremes on the one hand and migration-inducing political instability on the other. We often tend to consider such phenomena separately, with no regard to their possible interlocking patterns. Moreover, we are often tempted to view the climate change of our age and the challenges it entails as unprecedented in time and space. This talk will draw connections between different historical case studies in the Middle East to shed light on some of the most crucial historical patterns and observations with respect to climate, migration, and political order throughout the region’s history. It will illustrate the ways in which recent and current events correspond with the past, and that vulnerability to environmental hazard is seldom without socio-political dimensions.

Bio: Amit Sadan is a postdoctoral fellow in the International Studies Institute at the University of New Mexico. His fields of expertise are the modern and early modern Middle East, environmental history, and Jewish Studies. Amit’s current book project examines the environmental history of twentieth-century Iran, analyzing environmental projects such as the construction of transportation infrastructures, dam building, forestry and de-desertification policies, and natural disaster management.