Water Power: Water Politics and Environmental Histories from Arizona to Arabia

From Sonoran to Arabian deserts, desert dwellers have long dreamed of discovering untapped water resources whether by drilling deep underground or drinking from the sea. These fantasies have captured the imagination of governments and corporations, engineers and lawyers, science fiction writers and real estate developers alike. These desires, projections, and plans all rely on ideas, technologies, and people transferred across borders, including from Arizona to Israel/Palestine and Saudi Arabia and back. 

Join us for a discussion examining how these regions are bound through politics, ecology, and water infrastructure with Natalie Koch, Professor, Geography and the Environment, Syracuse University, and author of Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia; Michael Christopher Low, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Middle East Center, University of Utah, and author of Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj; and Tali Keren, artist-in-residence at the Global Futures Water Institute, ASU. Discussion will be moderated by Chelsea Haines, Assistant Professor of Art History & Museum Studies, ASU.

This event is sponsored by the Global Futures Water Institute, Humanities Institute, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, and School of Art. It is supported by the Leonardo-ASU Planetary Health Research Seed Grant.

Bio

Tali Keren a multidisciplinary artist and educator born in Jerusalem and based between Brooklyn and Phoenix. Working across video, participatory installation, and immersive documentary practices, her practice is grounded in collaboration and cross-disciplinary dialogue with artists, scholars, scientists, organizers and students. She is currently the inaugural artist-in-residence at ASU’s Global Futures Water Institute, where she collaborates with hydrologists, climate scientists, and students. She is developing a research-based art project to be exhibited at MOCA Tucson and the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, focusing on Arizona’s water futures and questions about hydro-power. She holds a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and an MFA from Columbia University.   

Natalie Koch is a political geographer focusing on geopolitics, the state system, nationalism and identity politics, and environmental politics. She is Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Her research investigates how authoritarian regimes and power relations are reproduced through sites of pleasure and opportunity, rather than just violence and oppression. Empirically, she focuses on the Arabian Peninsula, where she studies the many transnational ties that bind the Gulf countries, actors and ideas to other parts of the world. Her recent book "Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia" (Verso, 2023) explores the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and United States over the past two centuries. 

Chris Low is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. Low is the author of "Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj" (Columbia University Press, 2020). In 2021, Imperial Mecca received the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Book Award and was shortlisted for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize. Imperial Mecca has also been translated into Arabic and Turkish. He is also the co-editor of The Subjects of Ottoman International Law (Indiana University Press, 2020). In 2020-2021, he was a Senior Humanities Fellow for the Study of the Arab World at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is currently working on a new book project tracing the entangled environmental histories of water, desalination technology, energy, and climate change in the Arabian Peninsula.

Chelsea Haines is a historian of global modern and contemporary art and architecture who writes on histories and theories of museums, exhibitions, and the politics of display, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East and particularly Israel/Palestine. At ASU, she incorporates into her research and teaching critical studies of citizenship, comparative borderlands, and material and ideological imaginings of land, landscape, and environment in modern and contemporary art. Her current book project explores the role of art exhibitions in Israeli nation-building from the 1940s to the 1960s. 

• For in-person attendees, a light lunch will be provided with RSVP.

• For online attendees, the event will be livestreamed on ASU Live.

   

Image: Tali Keren, Delta/Desal: A Border Ecology, 2024–, video still. Image courtesy the artist.

For a full listing of all the Humanities Institute events visit https://humanitiesinstitute.asu.edu/events