CAP: A talk by Farah Al Nakib “Destructive Development”

Monday, 22 October 2012 at 7.00pm

This talk comes among a series of public lectures led by Arts specialists and Academics from the UK and Kuwait. It is an element of Out of Britain public campaign called Landscapes Expanded, which consists of Out of Kuwait as well as an educational programme for schools and an online art competition.

The talk analyzes the role that both the demolition of the urban landscape and the creation of sites of national heritage play in the destruction and forgetting of Kuwait’s past. It focuses on the current erasure of Kuwait’s modern era (1950s-1980s), and discusses possible reasons behind—and potential consequences of—this forgetting. It also identifies emerging cultural reactions to this process as attempts to remember Kuwait’s modern past.

Farah Al-Nakib is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Gulf Studies at the American University of Kuwait. She obtained her PhD in Near and Middle East History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2011. Her research focuses on the urban history of Kuwait City before and after oil, including current urban trends in the Gulf in the 21st century.