The Miriam Emerson Peters Speaker Series in Global Understanding had its inaugural speaker on campus Tuesday, November 3rd. Mary Wilson, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, spoke to students about the Middle East, focusing on clothing and religion in her lecture.
Dr. Wilson has taught Middle East history at the University since 1989. Her first book, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge University Press, 1987 and 1990) looks at the end of the Ottoman Empire and the expansion of British imperialism in the Middle East through the lens of state formation. It has been translated and published in Arabic. She co-edited The Modern Middle East, which is a collection of path breaking articles on the 19th and 20th centuries (I.B. Tauris, 1993 and 2004). At present she is writing a history of Syria for a general audience under contract with Cambridge University Press.
The inaugural event was made all the more poignant for the fact that on Thursday, October 29th, speaker series honoree Miriam Peters passed away at the age of 100.
The Miriam Emerson Peters Speaker Series was established this year in honor of the former associate head and co-principal of the Mary A. Burnham and Stoneleigh-Burnham Schools. She was honored this past summer at the alumnae reunion weekend in June.