June 2, 2005: Ms. Stacie Pettyjohn, "The Politics of Blame: The Failure of Camp David II and the Bush Administration's Role in the Peace Process"

Stacie Pettyjohn is a graduate student at the University of Virginia. She is the recipient of the Lansing Lee Fellowship and the DuPont Fellowship at the University of Virginia and the Excellence in Scholarship Award from the Arts and Sciences Honors Program at

Ms. Stacie Pettyjohn

May 30, 2005: Dr. Talbot Brewer, "Two Pathologies of Liberal Democracy"

Talbot Brewer is Associate Professor at the Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.  Professor Brewer earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His research focuses on ethical theory and its history. He is the author of The Bounds of Choice:

Dr. Talbot Brewer

Unchosen Virtues, Unchosen Commitments (2000), as well as numerous scholarly articles.  He is currently working on a book entitled Envisioning the Good.  Dr. Brewer is the recipient of the Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities at Harvard University and a Research Fellowship at the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of Virginia.

May 26, 2005: Dr. Peter Balakian, "The Armenian Genocide and The America’s Philanthropic Engagement"

Prize-winning memoirist, poet, and scholar Peter Balakian earned his Ph.D in American Civilization from Brown University in 1980. He is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English and Director of Creative Writing at Colgate

Dr. Peter Balakian

May 24, 2005: Mr. Marcel Worms, "Lecture-Recital: New Blues for Piano: A Lecture-recital on the International Blues project with Musical Examples from America and Beyond"
co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department at AUB

Dutch pianist Marcel Worms graduated in 1987 from the Sweelinck
Conservatorium in Amsterdam.  He specializes in 20th-century piano and chamber music. His 1992 program, “Jazz in 20th-Century Piano Music,” was broadcast nation-wide by Dutch radio.  He has performed

Mr. Marcel Worms

Melani McAlister is Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and has been a fellow at Harvard University’s W.E. B. Du Bois Center and the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion. She is the author of Epic Encounters:

Dr. Melani McAlister

Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (selected as one of the Village Voice “Favorite Books of 2001”).  In recent years, Dr. McAlister has analyzed U.S. perceptions of the Middle East in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, as well as in interviews with CNN, BBC, Voice of America and NPR.

Scott Lucas is head of the Department of American and Canadian Studies, the director of the Center of US Foreign Policy, Media and Culture, and the director of the History, Film and Television Program at

Dr. Scott Lucas

Dr. John Munro earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from Washington University. He served as the Associate Dean, Acting Dean and professor of English at the American University of Beirut (1965-1987). Dr. Munro has broad experience in higher education including positions in the U.S., Canada and Egypt as a teacher and administrator. He has also worked in journalism and public relations.

Dr. John Munro

Currently he is working as an independent media and cultural consultant, and his recent activities include promotional work for the Egyptian Government’s Industrial Modernization Program and assembling a group of education experts to advise on the establishment of higher education institutions. He is the author of many articles and books including: A Mutual Concern: A History of AUB (1982), and Lebanon: Theater of the Absurd (1989).

March 29, 2005: Dr. Murray Milner, "American Teenagers, Consumerism, and "World" Culture"

Dr. Murray Milner Jr. is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University and has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology and Associate Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia.  Dr. Milner has received numerous fellowships, grants and awards including the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellow from Cambridge University (2001). He is the author of many articles and books. Status and

Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture (1994) won the American Sociological Association Distinguished Publication Award. His latest is Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption (2004). Dr. Milner is currently working on two projects, (1) a general model of elites and non-elites and (2) the stratification of objects: status rankings from high art to garbage.”

Dr. Moustafa Bayoumi is an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is co-editor of The Edward Said Reader and has published widely on topics ranging from jazz to architecture, and religion to literature. His essays have appeared in Transition, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Souls, Interventions, Amerasia, Middle East Report, The Village Voice, and many other journals and

Dr. Moustafa Bayoumi

February 24, 2005, Dr. Djelal Kadir, "Terrorism: A Plea for the Willing Exercise of Disbelief"
(This lecture is sponsored by CASAR, the Anis Makdisi Program for Literature (AMPL) at AUB, and the humanities division at LAU)

Djelal Kadir is the Founding President of the International American Studies Association. He holds the Edwin Erle Sparks Professorship of Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania

Dr. Djelal Kadir

State University, University Park, PA, USA. Former Editor of the international quarterly World Literature Today, he has also served on the editorial board of PMLA and continues to serve on the editorial board of a number of scholarly journals. Some of the books he has authored include: Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe's Prophetic Rhetoric As Conquering Ideology (University of California Press, 1992); The Other Writing: Postcolonial Essays in Latin America's Writing Culture (Purdue University Press, 1993); Questing Fictions: Latin America's Family Romance (University of Minnesota Press, 1987). He has authored numerous articles, essays, and reviews in the field of American Studies, globalization, and comparative cultural studies. He is a Senior Fellow of Synapsis: The European School of Comparative Studies.

Djelal Kadir is the Founding President of the International American Studies Association. He holds the Edwin Erle Sparks Professorship of Comparative Literature at the PennsylvaniaState University, University

Dr. Djelal Kadir

Park, PA, USA. Former Editor of the international quarterly World Literature Today, he has also served on the editorial board of PMLA and continues to serve on the editorial board of a number of scholarly journals. Some of the books he has authored include: Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe's Prophetic Rhetoric As Conquering Ideology (University of California Press, 1992); The Other Writing: Postcolonial Essays in Latin America's Writing Culture (Purdue University Press, 1993); Questing Fictions: Latin America's Family Romance (University of Minnesota Press, 1987). He has authored numerous articles, essays, and reviews in the field of American Studies, globalization, and comparative cultural studies. He is a Senior Fellow of Synapsis: The European School of Comparative Studies.

Dr. Manar El Shorbagy is the academic director at the Prince AlWaleed Bin Talal Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She is a specialist in American government, with an emphasis on domestic American politics. Her PhD thesis, at Cairo University, was the first ever in Egypt on the US congress. She has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as Al Mustaqbal Al Arabi, She'oun Arabeyya and Al Syassa Al Dawleyya, as well as political commentaries and analyses in major Egyptian and Arab newspapers including Al Ahram, Al Ahram Weekly, and Al Hayat. Dr. Shorbagy is the author of The US Congress: The Arab's Forgotten Institution (Cairo: Al Ahram, 2002). Her most recent book is Constrained Democracy, The U.S. Presidential Election (Cairo: Masr el Mahroussa Publishing House, 2004).

January 27, 2005: Dr. John Borneman, "American Secularism: An Anthropological Approach"

Dr. John Borneman, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and Senior Fulbright Professor at the University of Aleppo, Syria, received his Ph.D. in 1989 at Harvard University, and he has done fieldwork in Germany, Central Europe, and currently in Syria. His research focuses on the symbolic forms of political identification and authority, and on issues of accountability, justice, and violence.

 Dr. John Borneman

He has written widely on issues of kinship, sexuality, nationality, justice, and political form. His publications include: Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation (1992), Settling Accounts: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Post socialist States (1997), and Subversions of International Order: Studies in the Political Anthropology of Culture (1998), and The Case of Ariel Sharon and the Fate of Universal Jurisdiction (2004).