Naseeb Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series

About The Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series

The Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series was established after the death, in 2009, of Dr. Naseeb Shaheen, who was a professor in the English Department at the University of Memphis for many years. Dr. Shaheen wrote extensively about early modern literature, chiefly Shakespeare. His books on biblical references in Shakespeare's plays (1999, 2002) and Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1976) remain the definitive work in this field. He also published a two-volume Pictorial History of Ramallah (Palestine) (1992, 2006). In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Shaheen was a noted philanthropist and collector of pre-King James English Bibles.

The Eleventh Annual Naseeb Shaheen Memorial Lecture

Fall 2021 Lecture Series: Slow Violence and Environmental Justice in 2021

Rob Nixon // Princeton University

Thursday, November 18th, 2021 6:00-7:30pm

How does the campaign for environmental justice inform the most urgent issues of our time? Nixon will look, in particular, at Black Lives Matter, the Climate Crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. What can we learn about the crossover concerns that connect them? How have artists sought to bring life and energy to these struggles for justice? And how does slow violence manifest in these social movements? Rob Nixon holds the Barron Family Professorship in Environment and Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author most recently of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. He writes frequently for the New York Times and his essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Aeon, Boston Review, and elsewhere.

Past Shaheen Lecturers

10/3/2019	Stephanie Burt, Harvard University "Shipping Containers"
10/4/18	Hannibal Hamlin, Professor of English, Ohio State University "Seven Types of Allusion: Texts Talking with Texts from Shakespeare to the Present"
11/2/17	Yolanda Pierce, Professor and Dean, Howard University School of Divinity "I have shaken rivers out of my eyes: Black Poetry and Prophetic Rage"
10/20/16	William J. Maxwell, Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis "Born-Again, Seen-Again James Baldwin: State Surveillance, Afro-Pessimism, and the Literary History of Black Lives Matter."
10/22/15	Nicholas Watson, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English, Harvard University "The Word of God in the Mother Tongue, or Why most of what we assume about the history of Bible translation is wrong."
10/2/14	Paul Stevens, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern Literature and Culture, University of Toronto "Churchill's War Horse: Children's Literature and the Pleasures of War"
11/21/13	Achsah Guibbory, Ann Whitney Olin Prof. of English, Barnard College "British Israelism: Three Centuries of a Forgotten History"
10/18/12	Katherine Bassard, Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University "Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible"
11/10/11	Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew Language and Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley "The King James Bible and the Question of Eloquence"
9/21/10	Debora Shuger, Distinguished Professor of English, UCLA "The Girls of Little Gidding: The Forgotten Masterpiece of Radical Feminism"

PAST SHAHEEN SYMPOSIA

10/26/17 "Conversations Across Concentrations"

10/14/16 "Reading Resistance: Bodies, Lessons, Movements"
10/16/15 "Keepin' it Real: The Languages of Authenticity"
9/26/14 "Producing Heroes"