Critical Theory is pleased to present Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for her talk From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine.
This talk traces the trajectory of Naim Cotran (c.1879-1961), a Palestinian man who was at once a colonial officer and a colonized subject, a slave holder and a refugee. It is inspired by family papers that record Naim’s experiences in twentieth century Palestine, his dispossession in 1951, and his refugee condition in Lebanon. My great-grandfather eerily brought to life the accountants and colonial officials, the banks and business firms, and the experience of class and dispossession that I had documented in my book Men of Capital. He also imparted lessons on the inextricability of subjectivity and historical narration. His narrations and silences invited me to move beyond the geographic and conceptual borders to which my first book was confined. Following Naim as a ghostly teacher, I explore his trajectory as a medical doctor and his experiences of mobility across nineteenth century Baltimore and Sudan to that of immobility in twentieth century Lebanon places the question of Palestine in a global history of race, capital, slavery, and dispossession.
Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016). Her forthcoming book, From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine tells a global history of capital, slavery, and dispossession. She is the Editor of Journal of Palestine Studies, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UCSB, and co-editor of Jadaliyya.
May 15th, 2026
4:30pm-6:00pm in HG 1030