Insights

Welcome to Insights! Long our quarterly e-update, beginning in 2020, Insights is now a revised platform to host all of ACOR’s blog posts, web-based articles, recorded lectures, and other digital products. Everything at Insights is free and open access. Please share widely!

ICHAJ 15 and the Value of International Collaboration in Cultural Heritage

Nov 16, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with ACOR projects, Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, department of antiquities, ICHAJ, internships

by Danielle Wolfson I am an emerging professional in cultural heritage, chosen by the United States Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) to participate in their International Exchange Program (IEP), an honor that brought me to Amman for the summer of 2022. At the American Center of Research, I worked on…

Animal Lives at Petra

Nov 15, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with Archaeology, CAORC Fellow, environment, fauna, Petra, zooarchaeology

Dwarf dog humerus (upper forelimb) from the Petra North Ridge Project

by Kathryn Grossman I have been in Jordan for two months now, and Tom Parker’s presence is everywhere—in my work, in conversations with colleagues, on the stiff breeze at Petra. Despite twenty years in Near Eastern archaeology, this is my first time working in Jordan; I had just imagined he would be here when I…

Traversing the Landscape

Sep 30, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with agriculture, Archaeology, early bronze age, environment, NEH Fellowship

by Amy Karoll I am currently a visiting professor in the Writings Program at New York University-Abu Dhabi and was an NEH Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Center of Research from March to August 2021. I arrived at the American Center in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and fresh from receiving my doctorate in…

Analyzing Petra’s Small Finds

Aug 23, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Fellowships, Insights, Named Fellowships, Petra, Research Tagged with named fellowship

Example of beads from the Petra collections, 2022.

by McClean Pink I am a master’s student in the Anthropology Department at East Carolina University. Throughout the months of June and July 2022, I held a Pierre and Patricia Bikai Fellowship at the American Center of Research in Amman and, while resident there, used their resources to complete the data collection for my master’s…

Jordanian Women and the Digital Economy During COVID-19

Jun 21, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, CAORC, Fellowships, Insights, Research Tagged with CAORC Fellow, economics, labor, Women

by Allison J. Anderson Jordan’s low female labor force participation rate has long confounded policymakers, researchers, and activists. Despite achieving progress on several determinants of female labor force participation over the last decade, including increasing levels of female educational attainment, higher ages of marriage, and lower rates of fertility, less than 15 percent of women are…

Ammonite Kings and Gods in Stone: Reading the Iconography in Its Broader Near Eastern Context

May 10, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Fellowships, Insights, Named Fellowships, Research Tagged with named fellowship, Pottery, Tell Abu Sarbut

by Joel S. Burnett A visit to the Jordan Archaeological Museum on the Amman Citadel or the Jordan Museum in Ras al-Ayn brings you up close with multiple examples of stone statuary from Iron Age Amman (ca. 1150–550 BCE). These impressive sculptures include miniature statues of standing anthropomorphic figures and life-size and nearly life-size sculpted…

Speaking SOGI Asylum: Humanitarian Discourses of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Amman

Apr 13, 2022 Posted in ACOR, CAORC, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, insights, politic, Research Tagged with ethnography, gender studies, LGBTQ studies, linguistics, political science, refugee studies

Bilingual "You Are Safe Here" poster (Arabic and English)

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…

Exploring the Political Economy of Cultural Heritage

Mar 30, 2022 Posted in ACOR, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, insights, Named Fellowships, politic, Research Tagged with Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, ethnography, Madaba, political economy, political science, research

Sign at a heritage site under development in Madaba.

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…

Ethnographic Research on Graffiti/Street Art, Youth, and Urban Space in Amman

Feb 10, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, CAORC, Fellowships, Insights, Research Tagged with Art History, CAORC Fellow, CAORC Fellowship, Urban Studies

A graffiti/street art wall in the Jabal Al-Luweibdeh neighborhood

by Kyle Benedict Craig With support from an ACOR-CAORC Predoctoral Fellowship, I conducted dissertation fieldwork on Amman’s graffiti/street art scene from May to August 2021. During this period of on-site fieldwork, I attended art exhibitions, observed graffiti/street art painting sessions, participated in walking tours of Amman’s public art scene, and conducted semiformal interviews with artists,…

Analysis of the Early Islamic Pottery from Tell Abu Sarbut, Jordan (700–1000 CE)

Dec 16, 2021 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Fellowships, Insights, Named Fellowships, Research Tagged with named fellowship, Pottery, Tell Abu Sarbut

Katarína Mokranova in a workroom at The American Center of Research.

by Katarína Mokránová I remember well the time when I was learning how to write. It took years for my first crooked letters to become the handwriting that, admittedly, I am still not quite so proud of today. When I get tired, the text that I write transforms into an indecipherable sea of wavy lines….

Sustainable Tourism and the Cross at Umm el-Jimal

Nov 15, 2021 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, CAORC, Faculty Development Seminar, Insights, Petra, SCHEP Tagged with Architecture, Art History, Bert de Vries, Byzantine, Petra, Petroglyphs, Sustainable Tourism, tourism, Umm el-Jimal, wadi rum

by Elizabeth Ursic, PhD In 2020, ACOR hosted a two-week faculty seminar in Jordan called “Sustainability at the Margins,” co-sponsored with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). The seminar explored the opportunities and challenges Jordan is facing as one of the most water-poor countries in the world, with a growing population and a…

“Ask A Scholar” with predoctoral fellow Kendra Kintzi

Sep 9, 2021 Posted in AskAScholar, CAORC, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, Life@ACOR, Profile, Research Tagged with Amman, daily life, ethnography, infrastructure, renewable energy

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…

The Challenges and Benefits of Preservation: Reflections on “Human Heritage”

Jul 7, 2021 Posted in ACOR Interns, ACOR Projects, Insights, Lecture, Petra, Photo Archive, Research Tagged with getty, palmyra, preservation, Syria

by Carly J. Cormier The most recent ACOR virtual lecture event, “Human Heritage: Preserving Palmyra, Petra, and Hatra,” was cohosted with the Getty Research Institute (GRI) to commemorate the launch of the Getty’s new interactive online exhibition, Return to Palmyra. The presenters discussed the unique set of challenges regarding preserving the cultural and physical remains of…

Faculty Development Seminar Alumna Aimee Samara on “Peace-building and Conflict Transformation through a Humanitarian Lens” (Forthcoming Study-Abroad Program in Jordan)

Jul 1, 2021 Posted in CAORC, Hostel, Insights, Life@ACOR Tagged with community college, FDS, peace, peace and conflict, SCHEP, seminar, students, study abroad, USAID SCHEP

by Aimee Samara Krouskop Instructor Aimee Samara Krouskop, an alum of the “Sustainability at the Margins” faculty development seminar (jointly coordinated by ACOR and CAORC in January 2020), discusses an in-person study-abroad program she has developed and is offering for students through Portland Community College in the coming academic year: Peace and Conflict in Jordan:…

Wellbeing and Living Well: Ethnographic Approaches to Health and Disability

Jun 27, 2021 Posted in Fellows, Fellowships, Hostel, Insights, Lecture, MESA, NEH, Research Tagged with care, disability, ethnographic, ethnography, health, language, medicine, refugee studies

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…

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