Arid Empire: An Evening with Natalie Koch

A reading and Q&A will be followed by a book signing. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP here: https://fb.me/e/2eeaf6I6h.

ABOUT THE BOOK
An evocative, narrative history, Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia (Verso Books, January 2023) demonstrates that the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and United States over the past two centuries—from date palm farming and desert agriculture to the utopian sci-fi dreams of Biosphere 2 and Frank Herbert’s Dune—bound the two regions together, first solidifying the colonization of the US West and, eventually, the reach of American power into the Middle East.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Koch is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She is a political geographer specializing in geopolitics, empire, nationalism and identity politics, and resource governance. She is a Gulf and Arabian Peninsula studies scholar, having worked in the region since 2012.