Matthew Hull- Maps and Mosques

Matthew Hull is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology from the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 2007. Mr. Hull will be speaking at Yale on November 4, 2009, giving a lecture titled, �Maps, Mosques, and Maslaks in Islamabad.� He will examine how in the late 1970s, the Islamization program in Pakistan created new demands for mosques in Islamabad. However, conflict arose over the fact that they were allocated to different sects. City planning maps demonstrated these conflicts and facilitated the takeover of land, thwarting government planning in the process. The complexity of cartography as a record of political developments is also demonstrated. Maps are important historical artifacts that can offer valuable insight into phenomenons such as this one.

Mr. Hull graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Anthropology, and received his M.A. and Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1991, 1995, and 2003, respectively. He taught at the University of Chicago from 2000-2003, and at the University of Michigan from 2003-2004. He was an Assistant Professor in the University of North Carolina’s Department of Anthropology from 2004-2007, when he returned to the University of Michigan. Mr. Hull is the recipient of many prestigious fellowships, including the American Institute of Pakistan Studies Dissertation Fellowship in 1995, and the Michigan Society of Fellows Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2003. His publications include �Ruled by Records: The Appropriation of Land and the Misappropriation of Lists in Islamabad� (American Ethnologist 2008), and he is currently working on a book manuscript called �The Government of Paper: Urban Bureaucracy in Pakistan.� Distinguished universities around the world have invited Mr. Hull to lecture, including Harvard University, Central European University in Budapest, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is fluent in Urdu and Hindi, and can read and write Persian. Mr. Hull’s research interests include semiotics, bureaucracy and governance, corporations, urban planning, and material culture.