Dr. Laura Robson of Portland State University, will lecture on “War, Peace, & the Making of Minorities in the Post-Ottoman Middle East, 1919-1923” at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 3 in the Smittcamp Alumni House.

A historian of the modern Middle East, Dr. Robson will illustrate how the League of Nations created a new Middle Eastern politics of minority and majority through peace agreements, through refugee resettlement efforts, and through partition of territories after the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution. Her presentation will include a discussion of Armenian aspirations for statehood immediately following the end of World War I.

She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2009 and is now associate professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Portland State.

The lecture is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Leon S. Peters Foundation, the Islamic Studies Speaker Series, the History Department and the College of Social Sciences.

For more information about the lecture, please contact the Armenian Studies Program at 278.2669, or visit fresnostate.edu/armenianstudies.