HSMT Guest Lecture – Prof. Magnús T. Bernhardsson, Ph.D.: HISTORY BE DAMMED

The Promise and Peril of Big Dams in Africa and the Middle East, 1955-1970

This lecture will evaluate the experience of big dams across the Middle East and Africa in the decades following World War II.  Situated at the nexus of intellectual, political, and environmental history, the talk will consider the comparative and global dimensions of dam building between 1950-1970 as well as the impact of these major works both locally and globally. Unlike many environmental or dam histories that often focus exclusively on the experience of one nation or project, this lecture will assess the shared rhetoric of progress and modernity, of industrialization and centralization, and the specific administrative ordering of nature and society that lies at the center of big dam building. Furthermore, it highlights how the quest for an electrified future and modernity resulted in large populations becoming displaced and historical sites and local cultures decimated and submerged.

Magnús T. Bernhardsson is Brown Professor of History and Chair of the Global Studies Program and Director of the Global Scholars Initiative at Williams College. An author of several books on Middle Eastern history in both English and Icelandic, he is currently invovled in two major research projects: a) a comparative study of big dams in the MIddle East and Africa in the 1950s-1970 and b) as the co-prinicipal investigator in a large research project on the integration of Iraqi and Syrian refugee children in Iceland (2011-present).

Sponsored by the History Department’s Track in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, Axinn Center for the Humanities, and Fund for Innovation