Professor to Share Insights Into Life of Britain’s Greatest Orientalist
Contact: George Markowsky, (207) 581-3940; Aimee Dolloff, (207) 581-3777
ORONO, Maine – In the 1800s, Edward William Lane was Britain’s greatest orientalist. His “Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,” one of the most influential and widely-cited works in Middle East studies, has never gone out of print.
Jason Thompson, who began his teaching career at the University of Maine at Orono 20 years ago will share his insights into Lane’s life and work at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, at UMaine’s Donald P. Corbett Hall, room 105. The presentation is titled “I Felt Like an Eastern Bridegroom.”
Thompson, a visiting associate professor at Colby College also will share the scholarly adventures and misadventures he experienced during his long-term study of Lane
Throughout his research, Thompson has published more than a dozen articles and two book-length publications over the years, which will culminate in his biography of Lane later this year.
Thompson is a historian who specializes in the Western encounter with the Middle East, ancient and modern. His first book, “Sir Gardner Wilkinson and His Circle” (1992) was a collective biography of the first cohort of British scholars to work in Egypt in the early 19th Century. His “Edward William Lane,” to be published later in 2009, is a comprehensive study of Lane and his social and intellectual milieu. Thompson’s most recent published book is “A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present” (2008).
The professor has taught at universities in the United States and the Middle East, is a member of the Dakhleh Oasis Project in Egypt’s Western Desert, and now is engaged in writing a comprehensive history of Egyptology.
Next week’s lecture is sponsored by the UMaine Classics Club, the Department of Modern Languages and Classics and the History Department.