Richard Bulliet
{{Short description|American historian (born 1940)}}
{{Infobox writer
|name = Richard W. Bulliet
|image =
|caption =
|birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1940|10|30}}
|birth_place = Rockford, Illinois
|death_date =
|death_place =
|occupation = Author, university professor
|nationality = American
}}
Richard W. Bulliet (born 1940) is a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Columbia University who specializes in the history of Islamic society and institutions, the history of technology, and the history of the role of animals in human society.{{Cite web |title=Interview with Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University {{!}} IMPACT |url=https://sites.bu.edu/impact/previous-issues/impact-summer-2021/interview-with-richard-w-bulliet/ |access-date=2024-12-24 |website=sites.bu.edu}}
Early life and education
Bulliet grew up in Illinois. He attended Harvard from which he graduated with a BA as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1962. He later earned both an MA in 1964 and a PhD in 1967 from Harvard as well.{{Cite web |date=2016-11-09 |title=Bulliet, Richard |url=https://history.columbia.edu/person/bulliet-richard/ |access-date=2024-05-15 |website=Department of History - Columbia University |language=en-US}}
Work
Several of his books focus on Iran but also deal with the larger Muslim world.
His book The Camel and the Wheel (1975) brings together his interest in the histories of technology, animal domestication, and the Middle East, dealing for example with the significant military advantage early Muslim armies gained from a slight improvement in the design of cloth camel saddles.{{Cite book |last=Bulliet |first=Richard W. |url=https://archive.org/details/camelwheel0000bull/mode/2up?q=saddle |title=The camel and the wheel |date=1975 |publisher=Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-674-09130-6}}
He would return to the history of animal domestication with his Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005). In it, he presents the four stages of human-animal relationship history: separation (when humans began to consider themselves as fundamentally separate from animals), pre-domestication (rich in symbolic expression of animals), domestication (exploiting and taming animals for human use), and post-domestication (our current industrialized consumption and separation from domestic animals).{{cite web|url=http://blogs.lt.vt.edu/erica/2013/02/03/deep-historical-perspectives-hunters-herders-and-hamburgers|title=Deep Historical Perspectives: Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers, a Virginia Tech student review|date=3 February 2013|accessdate=December 21, 2019}}
He has also written several novels which draw on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and is a promoter of the validity of comics as an art form.{{Cite web |date=2008-11-14 |title=Bulliet Juggles Controversy, Comic Books [on Richard Bulliet] |url=https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/bulliet-juggles-controversy-comic-books-on |access-date=2024-09-12 |website=Middle East Forum |language=en-US}}
Bulliet's commentaries and opinion pieces on the Middle East have appeared in The Guardian,{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/us-fear-muslim-brotherhood|title=Time to End US Fear of the Muslim Brotherhood|work=The Guardian|date=February 3, 2011|accessdate=December 21, 2019}} New York Times International Edition,{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12iht-edbulliet12.html|title=With or Without Mubarak, the Generals Flourish|work=The New York Times International Edition|date=February 12, 2011}} and Süddeutsche Zeitung.SZ, 4.6.2004, "Whose Theocracy?"{{Cite web |last=Bulliet |first=Richard |date=2024-12-24 |title=Page from a Memoir - What I've Published |url=https://www.academia.edu/8794709/PAGES_FROM_A_MEMOIR_WHAT_IVE_PUBLISHED |archive-date= |website=www.academia.edu}}
It was through the connections of Bulliet to the Iranian U.N. Ambassador that Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University on September 24, 2007.{{Cite web |title=In the Eye of the Storm |url=https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/eye-storm |access-date=2024-09-12 |website=Columbia Magazine |language=en}}
Personal life
He is the grandson of Clarence Joseph ("C.J.") Bulliet, an art critic and journalist.{{cite web |title=Columbia University Faculty CV |url=http://www.columbia.edu/~rwb3/Bulliet/Richard_W._Bulliet.html |accessdate=December 21, 2019}}
Books
= Non-fiction =
- The Patricians of Nishapur: a Study in Medieval Islamic History (1972)
- The Camel and the Wheel (1975)
- Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (1979)
- Islam: the View from the Edge (1994)
- Under Siege: Islam and Democracy (1994)
- The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (co-editor, 1996)
- The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History (co-author, 1997)
- The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (editor, 1998)
- The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004)
- Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005)
= Fiction =
- Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973), nominated for an Edgar Award for "Best First Mystery"
- Tomb of the Twelfth Imam (1979)
- The Gulf Scenario (1984)
- The Sufi Fiddle (1991)
- The One-Donkey Solution (2011)
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20130901135415/http://www.unesco.org/dialogue/en/bulliet.htm Bulliet's address to the Dialogue among Civilizations], United Nations, New York City, 5 September 2000
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Category:Columbia University faculty
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:American historians of religion
Category:American medievalists