Desert Queen - Gertrude Bell, the Creator of Iraq
Dr. Alexis Castor, Franklin & Marshall University
Thursday, November 8, 2007, 7:00 p.m.
Rice University, Sewell Hall, Room 301

Meet the woman who drew the boundaries of Iraq, chose Iraq's first king, and created the Baghdad museum.  Linguist, archaeologist, scholar, cartographer, "Orientalist", and acquaintance of T.E. Lawrence and Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell created a ruchus wherever she went and was one of the first to make archaeology an instrument of politics.  The results of her ideas and activities continue to affect us today.  How did her archaeology and her years in the desert inform her politics.