The Haifa-Kirkuk Oil Pipeline and the Militarization of the Middle East

Join us for lunch as Professor Rachel Havrelock (University of Illinois) discusses her research on the oil pipeline that once ran from Kirkuk to Haifa. She has pursued extensive research on the pipeline in the British National Archive, in Israeli and Jordanian archives, and by traveling the pipeline route and interviewing those living on and around it. Rachel Havrelock is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Trained in Hebrew Bible, Rabbinics, Folklore, and Middle East Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research concerns three distinct areas (gender and the Bible, literary and political theory, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and modern Middle East) and the overlap among them. Rachel¿s book, River Jordan: The Mythology of a Dividing Line (University of Chicago Press, 2011) examines the long history of the Jordan as a border, as well as the moments when it was not a border. Please RSVP to serena.elliott@duke.edu as lunch will be served.