Pipeline: The Transport of Oil and the Making of the Modern Middle East

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• published: 11 Feb 2015
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“Pipeline: The Transport of Oil and the Making of the Modern Middle East” with Rachel Havrelock Recorded on 01/22/15 This talk advocates for a subterranean approach to geopolitics and argues that key vectors of power lie underground in the pipelines that convey oil, gas, and water. Through the story of the world's first transnational oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa, it shows the influence of global oil companies on the creation and militarization of Middle Eastern nation-states. Rachel Havrelock is an associate professor in the Department of English and the Jewish Studies Program. Her book, River Jordan: The Mythology of a Dividing Line (University of Chicago Press, 2011), examines the long history of the Jordan as a border, as well as the moments when it was not a border. It argues for five coexistent national myths in the Hebrew Bible and examines which of these myths have had political currency and which have been repressed. River Jordan shows how biblical interpretation impacted the formation of early Christianity and Judaism and, in more recent times, the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the modern Middle East has been published in the journal National Identities and in Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion (University of Georgia Press, 2010). Havrelock is involved with efforts on the part of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) to develop a transborder ecological peace park at the Jordan River.