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Speaker: Prof Tariq Elyas, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah

All welcome.

In this lecture Professor Elyas will examine the ‘Winter at Tantora’ festival in AlUla (Saudi Arabia) and discuss how it operates as a site of cultural translation in which heritage, ritual, and global spectacle come together. Rather than viewing Winter at Tantora simply as an entertainment event, he approaches it as a discursive space in which meanings are actively produced, reframed, and legitimized. Winter at Tantora produces competing readings of the same site: as a place of moral caution, as heritage, and as global spectacle. Among these, the institutional and celebratory frame is clearly privileged. In conclusion, this study argues that heritage literacy in the context of Winter at Tantora is not simply about knowing the past. Rather, it is about learning how to read the same place through different authorized lenses where power, discourse, and global cultural flows shape what kinds of heritage become visible and legitimate. In contemporary Saudi Arabia, such processes are closely entangled with global tourist economies, as well as language and heritage education.

Tariq Elyas is Professor of Applied Linguistics at King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia). He is also a Research Fellow at Prince Sultan University (Saudi Arabia) as well as an AHSS Global Research Fellow at Queen’s University (UK). He holds an MA in English Literature (USA), a PhD in Applied Linguistics (Australia), an LLM in International Law and Human Rights (UK), and a Post-Doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Newcastle University, UK.