Faculty Fellow Lecture Series: Zachary Davis Cuyler

The Institute for the Humanities presents the Faculty Fellow Lecture Series with Zachary Davis Cuyler, assistant professor of history, “Fossil Lebanon in U.S. Empire: Pipeline Politics and the Making of the Lebanese State” on April 8 from 4-5:30 p.m.

As Lebanon secured its formal independence in the aftermath of the Second World War, it passed from French colonial control under a League of Nations Mandate to a novel form of informal and infrastructural U.S. empire. As neighboring Palestine faced partition and nakba, and Syria experienced the postwar era’s first U.S.-backed coup, Lebanon became a terminal for a major U.S.-owned oil pipeline that moved Saudi crude to Western Europe to fuel postwar reconstruction. This lecture will examine the role played by Lebanon’s postcolonial elite in the process of making Lebanon into a conduit for oil within this imperial assemblage, the porous boundaries between this national elite and US corporate and state power, and the long-term consequences of this moment of postcolonial state-formation for Lebanon’s political and economic history.

Zack Cuyler is an assistant professor of history at UIC. His scholarship focuses on the historical and contemporary politics of energy, infrastructure and the environment in the mashriq. His book project, “Fossil Lebanon,” examines how Lebanon’s relationship to the oil industry shaped the country’s politics, economy, and built environment across the mid-20th century.

Contact huminst@uic.edu for accessibility requests.