Join us Wednesday, October 2 at theFirst Congregational Church of Old Lyme, for a presentation by Emma Sky, Jackson Institute at Yale University, titled, “In a time of Monsters – a Middle East in Revolt,” based on her book of the same name. A reception begins at 5:30 p.m., with the presentation starting at 6:00 p.m.
This event will be our Quarterly Colloquium. Following the colloquium, dinner will be at Old Lyme Country Club (optional $35 meal with additional Q&A with the speaker).
The story of one woman’s journey throughout the Middle East during the Arab Spring, in a quest for hope, humanity, and home in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
Returning to the UK in September 2010 after serving in Iraq as the political adviser to the top American general, Emma Sky felt no sense of homecoming. She soon found herself back in the Middle East traveling through a region in revolt.
In A Time of Monsters bears witness to the demands of young people for dignity and justice during the Arab Spring; the inability of sclerotic regimes to reform; the descent of Syria into civil war; the rise of the Islamic State; and the flight of refugees to Europe. With deep empathy for its people and an extensive understanding of the Middle East, Sky makes a complex region more comprehensible.
A great storyteller and observational writer, Sky also reveals the ties that bind the Middle East to the West and how blowback from our interventions in the region contributed to the British vote to leave the European Union and to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
Emma Sky is a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute. She worked in the Middle East for twenty years and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services in Iraq. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Copies of Sky’s book will be available after her presentation.
Join us in March 2020 at Connecticut College for a presentation by Dean Accardi titled, “India, Pakistan, and the War over Kashmir.” A reception begins at 5:30 p.m., with the presentation starting at 6:00 p.m.
Accardi is an Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College. Accardi is a historian of gender and religion in South Asia and the Islamic World. He is interested in the connections between religious and political practices, institutions and discourses in the early modern and modern world. His research focuses on the gendered ascetic practices of saints revered by both Hindus and Muslims and their use to establish and articulate religious and political power.
His research and teaching highlight how historical and religious narratives constantly reconstruct and deploy the past to serve particular socio-political agendas. His research and teaching also reexamine notions of mutually exclusive religions, hybridity, and syncretism and reconceptualizes relationships between religions and other social and cultural phenomena.