Earth Day Guest Lecture 'Treasure: Waste in the Pre-Colonial Sahara South of Morocco'

Morocco Fulbright Erragab Eljanhaoui, University of Ibn Zohr doctoral student, mines 19th-century Barbary captivity narratives to reveal that nomads of the Sahara cultivated a powerful and profound relationship with what Westerners would call waste. Through comparative and historical methods, he demonstrates that Bedouin nomads considered waste a treasure in the context of the Sahara, south of Morocco. In an environment characterized by scarcity, they used every material – none were taken for granted.