Ira M. Lapidus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1937-06-09)9 June 1937 (age 88) Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Professor Emeritus of History, Author |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Subject | Middle Eastern and Islamic History |
| Notable works | A History of Islamic Societies |
| Spouse | Brenda Webster |
| Website | |
| history | |
Ira M. Lapidus is an Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History atThe University of California at Berkeley.[1] He is the author ofA History of Islamic Societies, andContemporary Islamic Movements in Historical Perspective, among other works.
Lapidus was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He was born to immigrant parents, who instilled a sense of the value of education in him and his brother. He attended Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, where a history teacher helped him prepare for admissions tests and suggested he pursue Asian history studies.[2]
Lapidus went on to college and graduate school atHarvard. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he took a course in Middle Eastern history taught bySir Hamilton Gibb. He enjoyed the class and liked the instructor, who encouraged him to pursue social sciences in addition to history. Lapidus continued taking classes in Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and upon graduation entered a career in academia.[2]
Lapidus began teaching atUC Berkeley in 1965. He primarily taught courses about early Islamic history and Modern Middle East history, but also courses on the history of the Mediterranean and Islam in South and South East Asia. In graduate seminars he taught Islamic history and courses on social science concepts and methods for historians. He has trained graduate students in History, Anthropology, Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Political Science, Geography and other disciplines. Lapidus has also lectured widely to public audiences, and has frequently been interviewed for television, radio and newspaper articles.[3]
Lapidus was for many years Chairman of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley. He is a past president and director of theMiddle East Studies Association (1984), and has served on numerous professional administrative, advisory and review committees including Visiting Committees forGeorgetown andHarvard Universities, theRockefeller Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Studies. He was a member of United States Middle East Studies delegation to People's Republic of China. He has served on the editorial boards of theJournal of Urban History, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and the Journal of Early Modern Europe.[3]
Lapidus regularly visits Rome and other European cities with his wife, the writerBrenda Webster. Over the course of his academic career, he has done research in England, France, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, former Soviet Union, Pakistan, and India, and has traveled extensively in Muslim regions of North Africa, the Middle East, former Soviet Central Asia, India, Indonesia and western China.[3]
As well as his work in academia, Lapidus is a prolific fine art photographer whose work focuses on street scenes, city spaces, and reflections both literal and metaphorical. He has been exhibited at the A.C.C.I. Gallery in Berkeley, CA, the Club at the Claremont in Oakland, CA, the Fetterly Gallery in Vallejo, CA, and elsewhere. His work has been published inPhoto Metro,Women's Studies,Fiction International, and the San Francisco Chronicle. His photos are held in numerous private collections.[4]
His other notable fellowships include theSocial Science Research Council, theGuggenheim, andMellon Foundations, the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, theHoover Institution, theEcole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), and theNational Endowment for the Humanities.[3]
