Category Archives: Blog

It was an absolute joy to host the first large-scale anti-racism event in the People’s Republic of China, as I wrote about in this recent article. To our shock and amazement, over 300 of our Chinese students showed up to hear directly from American civil rights legends who discussed their own brave and visionary experiences in shaping American history, as well as fostering Afro-Asian solidarity.

I am so grateful to all in China and America who made this historic night possible — and to all the students who attended and later shared their reflections on what we discussed. This unique and special evening required incredible diplomacy and sensitivity — and its success showed how liberal arts education has the power to carve out space for dialogue and connection across borders in truly radical and transformative ways.

Liberal arts education is, if done right, dialogue — with the past, present, and future. Thanks to my eclectic degrees, I’ve been able to offer a variety of courses unlike any others in China — seminars on Africa, the archaeology of death (a big cultural taboo!), playwriting, mental health awareness, and mind and machine.  On a field-trip, my adventurous students and I explored ancient Shu culture at Jinsha, a UNESCO archaeological site, where we studied Asian elephant and boar tusks, an exquisite gold mask, and the golden sunbird disc used today as the emblem of Chengdu. 

My brilliant Mind and Machine students tagged along virtually with me to attend a philosophy of mind conference I was speaking at at KU Leuven in Belgium on Posthuman Mimesis — my artificial intelligence majors in particular were enthralled with Professor Kevin Warwick’s keynote on being the world’s first cyborg and how implant and electrode technology is being developed for neural illnesses, robots, and human enhancement.  

With the help of Zoom technology, I was even able to beam into my classroom a New York Times journalist from Sudan, a cutting-edge queer Chinese playwright, a Broadway producer, an Ivy League classics professor, and a Cambridge therapist to put my students in touch with leading professionals in their fields.  My students and I even made history together — from translating Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic) to producing Sichuan University’s first playwriting festival to bring their innovative theatrical creations to life (no ghosts allowed — they’ve been banned on stage since 1963).  

What a joy to try and give them the best that American liberal arts education has to offer!  It’s been thrilling to watch our students get accepted into the best graduate schools in America: MIT, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, John Hopkins, Cornell, University of Pittsburgh, UCLA, University of Michigan, UPenn, and Carnegie Mellon. I feel honored and blessed to have had the opportunity to teach them — before they go out and change the world.

Happy to share my article on modern-day slavery in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. It’s the least I could do for the enslaved women I met in Oman and the migrant workers to whom I taught English in Beirut.

I launched my worldwide standup comedy tour in the winter of 2021 in the People’s Republic of China — after I had a medical emergency at 14,000 feet in Tibet while yak herding with Tibetan nomads (as one does). Laughter really is the best medicine — especially in a global pandemic!

I was fortunate to perform at a number of standup shows in Chengdu, where I kicked my standup tour off — including the Kafka Cultural Center which (for obvious reason) felt so right!

Then I got invited to perform in Chongqing — so I made a vacation out of it and took in all the sights in that happening city!

Grateful to all those who made my performances possible in China — and looking forward to continuing my comedy tour in Los Angeles (stay tuned)!

It was a dream come true to speak at Tehran University on Islamic law, specifically COVID-19 fatwas (religious opinions) from around the world. I really loved immersing myself in compassionate Islamic legal reasoning from around the globe to give my talk, entitled “Islamic Legal Production in the Pandemic: A Survey of Global Fatwas on COVID-19,” for the International Conference on Global Developments in the Corona & Post-Corona Eras.

I enjoyed sharing my research on the history of magic and enslavement in Malta at the Middle East Studies Association Conference. On a related note, so grateful to be intensively studying Maltese!

I am so grateful that I was invited to present my new book and research about the veneration of Rumi in Cairo through the centuries at the Exalted Spirits: The Veneration of the Dead in Egypt through the Ages conference in Cairo — many thanks to The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), The American University in Cairo (AUC) and the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA) for making it possible.

I was so honored to be invited to speak about my new Rumi book at Tehran University — very grateful to all who made it possible.

I was honored to be invited to speak at Yale University about my unique adventures around the world — very helpful as I spend my days writing my memoir about my wild pandemic experiences in China and Tibet.

Yesterday my baby chihuahua had the amazing opportunity to meet my kung fu grandmaster in China (the real Kung Fu Panda — the animation was based in part on his filmed moves) at a special taping we did on tai chi and Taoism in Sichuan.

A joy to speak on “Postliving Ontologies of the Transdeceased/Postdeceased: Existential, Legal & Spiritual Expressions of Undesired & Wrongful Life” at the Posthuman Mimesis: Embodiment, Affect, Contagion International Conference in Leuven.

https://hiw.kuleuven.be/ripple/events/posthuman-mimesis

It was an honor to speak on “Modern Slavery in Oman” at Columbia University with Persian Gulf experts and share the horrors of enslaved, raped, tortured, & murdered women to raise awareness of human trafficking & the lack of legal protections for women from Africa and Southeast Asia on the Arabian Peninsula.

It was joy to speak on Putin, Islamic law, & Russian diplomacy for the ASN International Convention hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia — our panel (https://asnconvention.com/panel-r3) discussed minorities & institutions in post-Soviet Russia. I was especially grateful for the feedback from my Russian colleagues.

Very happy to share my new chapter, “Mystics in the Movies: Sufism in Global Cinema,” in this fantastic new volume: New Approaches to Islam
in Film.  Get your copy today!

Here is a link to the hard copy book:

https://www.routledge.com/New-Approaches-to-Islam-in-Film/Petersen/p/book/9780815393221[routledge.com]

Here is the link to digital version of the book:

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781351189156/new-approaches-islam-film-kristian-petersen[taylorfrancis.com]

What a busy month!  I’m so glad a number of you caught my recent Harvard talk. I have two talks at Columbia this week followed by an EU-funded talk at Leuven University and then three of my new poems are being published at the end of the month. 

It was a dream come true to finally see the Terracotta Army in China — so spectacular in every way.