The Leon B. Poullada Memorial Lecture Series

This public lecture series was established by the family and friends of Leon B. Poullada (1913–1987), a United States career diplomat whose service took him to South Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran. Mr. Poullada retired with the rank of ambassador and then earned a doctoral degree in Politics and Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Thereafter, he devoted almost two decades to teaching and scholarship. In recognition of his diplomatic and scholarly contributions, especially his long association with the peoples of Persian and Turkish languages and cultures, this public lecture series under the auspices of the Program in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, invites eminent scholars in Islamic studies, broadly defined, to present the results of their scholarship in a form meaningful to the nonspecialist.

Previous Poullada Lecturers

2018: Gülru Necipoğlu, "Transregional Connectivities: Architecture and the Construction of Early Modern Islamic Empires"; "Monuments in Dialogue: Socio-Religious Architectural Landscapes of the Ottomans and Safavids"; and "Mughal Dynastic Mausoleums and the Taj Mahal in a Comparative-Connective Perspective"

2017: Paolo Sartori, “Local Modern: The World Seen from Khiva"

2016: Nile Green, “Transborder Traffic/Afghan Imaginaries: Fragments of an Intellectual History”

2015: David Marc Baer, “Ottomans and Jews in the Literary Imagination of the Other, From the Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century”

2011: “Princeton University Symposium on Sufism and Islam in Central Asia,” published as Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th–21st Centuries, edited by Devin DeWeese, Jo-Ann Gross, by Brill, c. 2018.

2010: Adeeb Khalid, “The Making of Soviet Central Asia,” published as Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR  by Cornell University Press, c. 2015.

2009: Robert Crews, “Sacred Spaces and Profane Boundaries: Afghanistan and the World in Modern Times,” published in an expanded version as Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c. 2015.

2003:  Micheline Centlivres-Demont and Pierre Centlivres, “Afghanistan on the Threshold of the 21st Century: Changes in Values and Social Practices,” published as Afghanistan on the Threshold of the 21st Century: Three Essays on Culture and Society by Markus Wiener, c. 2010.

2002: Hamit Bozarslan, Violence in the Middle East: From the Political Struggle to Self-Sacrifice, published by Markus Wiener, c. 2004.

1999: Carter Findley, The Turks in World History, published in an expanded version by Oxford University Press, c. 2005.

1993:  Robert D. McChesney, Central Asia—Foundations of Change, published by Darwin Press, c. 1996.

1990: Oliver Roy, "Afghanistan: The Failure of Revolutionary Islam,” published as Afghanistan: From Holy War to Civil War by Darwin Press, c. 1995.