Dartmouth faculty member to participate in international workshop
The American University of
Kuwait and the Legacy Project
are co-sponsors of a workshop taking place Aug. 20 through 24 on liberal
education in the Arabian Peninsula. The meeting, held at the Rockefeller
Foundation's Study and Conference Center at Bellagio, Italy, brings
international scholars and educators together with their counterparts in the
Arabian Peninsula to consider how Gulf nations are introducing liberal arts
traditions and techniques into existing and new institutions of higher
education. Dale
Eickelman, the Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of Anthropology and
Human Relations, will participate in the workshop. Eickelman coordinates
Dartmouth's relationship with the American University of Kuwait.
Participants will assess the success of these efforts in the context of
local demand for liberal education, and discuss how best to foster their future
growth. Questions considered will include the state of schooling in the Arabian
Peninsula, Islamic humanistic scholarship in the region, the relevance of
liberal education to the global economy, incentives and obstacles to public
acceptance, and faculty development.
The American University of Kuwait was established in 2003 as the first
private, liberal arts institution in that nation. It works closely with
Dartmouth to provide a wide-ranging liberal education to students from across
the Gulf nations, grounded in the region's culture and based on the American
model. The Legacy Project brings scholars, artists, authors, and others
together to explore society's shared inheritance of loss stemming from the many
traumatic events of the 20th century. The Project fosters global dialogue
through exhibitions, publications, programs, and an extensive Web site.
The Bellagio conference is also a planning session to lay the groundwork for
a subsequent conference in the Arabian Peninsula. By providing space for
framing debates on major international issues, the program offers a venue for
translating theory into action and for devising creative responses to some of
the most pressing issues of our time.
LAUREL STAVIS
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