Tag Archives: Middle East history

Texas A&M Today: Texas A&M-Led Humanities Project Seeks To Preserve An Endangered Language

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Texas A&M Today: Texas A&M-Led Humanities Project Seeks To Preserve An Endangered Language. “Texas A&M University historian Dr. Daniel Schwartz has devoted the last decade of his professional life to preserving the past — specifically, the culture of a 2,000-year-old language known as Syriac. He and likeminded colleagues from around the world have been working across place, time and cyberspace to safeguard Syriac cultural heritage, painstakingly creating Syriaca.org, a cyberinfrastructure to link Syriac literature to their persons, places, manuscripts and key concepts.”

Huck: The digital archive unearthing queer Arab history

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Huck: The digital archive unearthing queer Arab history. “Lebanese artist and designer Marwan Kaabour discusses his new Instagram account devoted to documenting LGBTQ+ narratives in Arab history and popular culture, which have all too often been cast aside.”

Getty: Online Exhibition Explores Palmyra in English and Arabic

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Getty: Online Exhibition Explores Palmyra in English and Arabic. “For centuries the ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra have captured the imagination–testaments to the legacy of the prosperous multicultural center of trade that once dominated the region. Return to Palmyra, a new website presented in English and Arabic, invites audiences to explore the rich history of the city, including an exhibition of rare 18th-century etchings and 19th-century photographs of the site, new scholarship, and a moving interview with Waleed Khaled al-As’ad about the modern-day experience of living and working among the ruins of this storied locale.”

Columbia University: Yarshater Center Launches New Encyclopaedia Iranica Online Website

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Columbia University: Yarshater Center Launches New Encyclopaedia Iranica Online Website. “The Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University is pleased to announce that the Encyclopaedia Iranica Online is now freely accessible… This new website, hosted by Brill, a leading academic publisher, is the only digital platform authorized by Columbia University for the Encyclopaedia Iranica content produced and curated by the Yarshater Center.”

Announcing the ACOR Digital Archive: Developing a Multimedia Teaching and Learning Resource (American Center of Oriental Research)

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American Center of Oriental Research: Announcing the ACOR Digital Archive: Developing a Multimedia Teaching and Learning Resource. “We are delighted to announce that, based on the success of the ACOR Photo Archive Project to digitize and make available online 30,000 images covering a range of thirteen countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded ACOR an American Overseas Research Center (AORC) Title VI grant for a new project entitled ‘ACOR Digital Archive: Developing a Multimedia Teaching and Learning Resource.'”

Council on Library and Information Resources: CLIR and Stanford Libraries Announce Digital Library of the Middle East Platform

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Council on Library and Information Resources: CLIR and Stanford Libraries Announce Digital Library of the Middle East Platform. “The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries today announced the release of a public, open platform for the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one of the world’s largest online archives of Middle Eastern and North African artifacts. The DLME aggregates, through an ongoing program, digital records of published materials, documents, maps, artifacts, audiovisual recordings, and more from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.”

‘Archives tell us different stories about how things were’: Inside the journey to document Modern Arab art (The Nation)

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The Nation: ‘Archives tell us different stories about how things were’: Inside the journey to document Modern Arab art. “On a most basic level, archives help establish what happened, when. For Arab art history, the problems facing a precise or exhaustive chronicle are double: existing archives are often incomplete, damaged or inaccessible, because of conflict in the region. And the analysis made by canonical art history of what was happening in the Middle East and Turkey – written primarily by US academics – views art of the region through the prism of its engagement with western art.”

The National: The Middle East Archive Project puts the Arab world in focus with no filter

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New-to-me, from The National: The Middle East Archive Project puts the Arab world in focus with no filter . “The sepia and grayscale tones of the images on the account are no filter effect. The pictures are a true snapshot of bygone era, forming Darah Ghanem’s social media archive of personal pictures from the Mena region. Ghanem, a Palestinian who lives in Dubai, started the project last year. It runs on Instagram and Facebook, posting crowdsourced material from people in the region who are willing to share old family photos, documenting the stories behind them. The project’s Instagram page has started to garner greater attention, with more than 2,000 followers and people sending in new images every day.”

Al-Fanar Media: Oral History, Which Records Once-Silenced Voices, Gains Ground in the Arab World

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Al-Fanar Media: Oral History, Which Records Once-Silenced Voices, Gains Ground in the Arab World. “In the Arab world, where official histories often reflect political viewpoints, oral history has taken on an increasingly important role, scholars say. Rosemary Sayigh, a retired faculty member at the American University of Beirut who has used oral history to record the stories of dispossessed Palestinians, says oral history has particular value in recording the status and experiences of women, agricultural and industrial workers, linguistic minorities, colonized societies, immigrants, refugees, and gypsies.”

Treasure trove of UAE: Free Gulf Archives now online (Gulf News)

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Gulf News: Treasure trove of UAE: Free Gulf Archives now online. “When people think of the UAE, the images that frequently come to mind are the nation’s impressive feats of modern architecture, rapid modernisation and technological development. The Arabian Gulf Digital Archive — a major new digitisation project between the UAE and the UK — provides a fascinating insight into the early stages of this transformation. It provides details of specific projects undertaken, of the political interests that lay behind many of these plans, and of local reactions to the changes that were taking place.”

The Art Newspaper: Arab photography archive releases 22,000 historic images online

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The Art Newspaper: Arab photography archive releases 22,000 historic images online. “The Arab Image Foundation, Beirut’s pioneering non-profit archive of Middle Eastern photography, has launched an online platform that makes 22,000 images from the collection accessible and searchable for the first time.”

Muftah: A Free Online Photo Archive Explores the Middle East’s Pluralistic History

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Agh, this article is from last December, but the archive looks great.. I love photography collections. From Muftah: A Free Online Photo Archive Explores the Middle East’s Pluralistic History. “In September 2017, the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan published an online archive of historical images from across the Middle East. The project is being supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Whilst working as an archivist, I helped start this ambitious project to digitize and publish 30,000 photos over four years.”

UCLA: UCLA Library to host digital archive of ancient Arabic and Syriac manuscripts

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UCLA: UCLA Library to host digital archive of ancient Arabic and Syriac manuscripts. “The UCLA Library and Early Manuscripts Electronic Library have partnered with St. Catherine’s Monastery to digitize and publish online on an open access basis some 1,100 rare and unique Syriac and Arabic manuscripts dating from the fourth to the 17th centuries.”

Albawaba Business: CLIR Releases a Prototype Proof of Concept for the Digital Library of the Middle East

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Albawaba Business: CLIR Releases a Prototype Proof of Concept for the Digital Library of the Middle East. “Created with funding from the Whiting Foundation, the current prototype includes some 135,000 objects. The DLME will ultimately encompass text, video, photographs, archives, manuscripts, 3-D data, and maps illuminating the region’s history over 12 millennia, curated by scholars, specialists, and members of the living and vital cultures it represents. The platform, developed by Stanford Libraries, allows for the display of information in Romanized or Arabic forms.”

MENAFN: National Archives, NYU Abu Dhabi create online library of historic Arabic-language materials

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MENAFN: National Archives, NYU Abu Dhabi create online library of historic Arabic-language materials. The National Archives in this case are for the United Arab Emirates; that is not immediately clear upon reading the story. “The National Archives has joined NYU Abu Dhabi, NYUAD, and six other major universities, to digitise its holdings of historic Arabic-language materials to be included in a digital library available to the public. Arabic Collections Online, ACO, is an open-access initiative sponsored by NYUAD, and has set a goal of reaching 20,000 digitised Arabic books provided free of cost to a global audience. ACO is sponsored by NYUAD in partnership with Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, American University in Beirut, American University in Cairo, and, now, the National Archives, who will support with the digitisation of materials.”