by Sarah Wenner Hidden below an urban façade but nevertheless essential for its shaping, a city’s trash was routinely used in construction processes across the Roman world. Before that occurred, both established and ad hoc frameworks dictated the lifecycles of urban waste, from its initial discard, through its sorting and storage, to its reclamation by…
by Kimberly Katz Many excellent studies have been published over the decades examining the impact of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Palestinians’ lives, in the refugee camps, on relief efforts, with human development, in camp structures, and on politics with host countries, among other topics. Legal…
by Arpan Roy Romani people in Jordan, by some estimates, are as numerous as 70,000. Present in the Arab region in some capacity since the 8th century, Romani characters appear recurrently in literary works by luminous authors from the early centuries of Islam and into the medieval period, including al-Jahiz, al-Harriri, Ibn al-Muqaffa’, and Ibn…
by Yorke Rowan Material culture provides a glimpse into the important objects that people created, exchanged, and carried with them for functional and symbolic purposes. The study of archaeology requires a suite of specializations and perspectives, but material culture remains a fundamental source of information. In his pioneering volume In Small Things Forgotten (1977), James Deetz…
by Keegan Terek From September to November 2021, I carried out a final stage of dissertation fieldwork with the support of an ACOR-CAORC Predoctoral Fellowship in Amman. My research uses theories and methods from linguistic anthropology to examine contemporary contestation over Arabic discourses around non-heteronormative gender and sexuality. In plain terms, I study how people…
by Charlotte Vekemans “Heritage is Jordan’s oil.” This statement, which I heard from heritage experts, development workers, and Jordanian government officials, has come to be the most captivating way for me to summarize my PhD project. With the support of a Harrell Family Fellowship granted by the American Center of Research, I conducted field research…
This written interview is part of a new series on Insights, “Ask A Scholar,” through which we highlight the personal experiences of fellows and other affiliated researchers. The following conversation with Kendra Kintzi (ACOR-CAORC predoctoral fellow, 2021–2022) took place by email in July 2021. Thanks for joining us on Insights! Tell us a little more about yourself…
by Christine Sargent, with Timothy Loh and Morgen Chalmiers What can ethnography contribute to our understandings of health and disability in Jordan and elsewhere? In this roundtable event, Morgen Chalmiers (University of California San Diego), Timothy Loh (MIT), and I offered provisional responses by drawing on fieldwork in Jordan and the United States while reflecting…
by Marco Dehner In my recent role as a fellow at ACOR, it was my responsibility to assist with the preparation of the upcoming final publication of the Temple of the Winged Lions (TWL) and to conduct my own research about this Nabataean- to Roman-era (1st–4th-century AD) site in Petra, Jordan, which will lead to…
This written interview is part of a new series on Insights: “Ask A Scholar,” through which we highlight the personal experiences of fellows and other affiliated researchers. The following conversation with Melissa J. Scott (ACOR-CAORC predoctoral fellow, 2019–2020; fellow in residence at ACOR winter 2020–spring 2021) took place by email in April and May 2021. Thanks…
This written interview is part of a new series on Insights: “Ask A Scholar,” through which we highlight the personal experiences of fellows and other affiliated researchers. The following conversation with former fellow Waleed Hazbun (ACOR-United States Information Agency, 1997–1998), who is now professor of political science at the University of Alabama, took place by email…
By Abbad Diraneyya لتقرأ المقال باللغة العربية هنا Under a hot October sun, from which I had nothing but a winter cap to conceal my face, the famous downtown of the Eternal City looked like a bunch of half-fallen columns emerging from a pile of rubble. “Disappointing” would be an understatement: I had patiently waited…
This written interview is part of a new series we are launching on Insights: “Ask A Scholar,” through which we hope to highlight the personal experiences of fellows and other affiliated researchers. The below conversation, with former Bikai and de Vries fellow and Islamic Baydha director Micaela Sinibaldi, Ph.D., took place by email in November, 2020….
This written interview is part of a new series we are launching on Insights, called “Ask A Scholar,” through which we hope to highlight the personal experiences of fellows and other affiliated researchers. The below conversation, with ACOR-CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow Morgen Chalmiers, who is in residence at ACOR during fall 2020, took place by email…
Kimberly Cavanagh was a Fulbright Scholar (2019–2020) residing at ACOR while undertaking research to complete her book manuscript exploring tourism development in Aqaba, with the working title “Shifting Landscapes: The Social and Economic Development of Aqaba, A Red Sea City.” Dr. Cavanagh is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina Beaufort…