by Sarah Islam For historians of the Middle East, medieval documents and manuscripts are integral resources to better understand the social and intellectual milieu of their objects of study. Islamic manuscript archives and repositories are often quite challenging to access; an even greater challenge is the ability to read and analyze the documents themselves. For…
by Benjamin V. Allison In November 1980, the Arab League met in Amman, Jordan, for a summit aimed at promoting Arab unity, particularly against Israel and Egypt, which had concluded a peace treaty the previous year. But the summit rapidly fell apart, as members of the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front (جبهة الصمود والتّصدي) — Syria, Algeria,…
by Nicolas Seth Reeves The former capital of the ancient Nabataean Empire, the city of Petra serves today as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s most popular tourist destination. Tourism constitutes the lifeblood of three tribal communities that live in and around Petra Archaeological Park: the Bidul of Umm Sayhoun, the Layathna of Wadi Musa, and…
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…
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 Jessica Holland On 21 October 2020, ACOR participated in the Middle East Librarians Association Annual Conference (MELA) for the first time, presenting on how our library and archives adapted to the changing conditions of the pandemic, alongside panelists from institutions across thirteen different time zones spanning from California to Qatar. Below is a text…
“ACOR Photo Archive: A New Visual Resource for Middle and High School Teaching about Jordan and the Region. ” This Arabic presentation was delivered as part of the Jordan School Librarians Conference in November 2019 to introduce the ACOR Photo Archive project and its work to preserve endangered photographic heritage from Jordan and the region….
ACOR Proudly Presents:“Nabataeans on the Shores of the Dead Sea”An ACOR Public Lecture by Dr. Konstantinos D. Politis on March 10, 2020 About the Lecture: Ancient sites that have recently come to light on the Dead Sea littoral reveal what life was like for the average Nabataean some two thousand years ago. Ancient texts also…
للتنويه: هنا يتوفر محاضرة توجيهية عن أرشيف أكور باللغة العربية ACOR Proudly Presents:“The ACOR Photo Archive: Mobilizing Digital Tools to Preserve Visual Heritage”An ACOR Public Lecture by Dr. Jack Green and Jessica Holland on February 11, 2020 About the Lecture: The ACOR Photo Archive contains rich collections of tens of thousands of photographs, but its…
ACOR Proudly Presents: “Religious Change in Southern Jordan in the Byzantine and Islamic Periods” An ACOR Public Lecture by Dr. Robert Schick on December 10, 2019 About the Lecture: In the first centuries AD, everybody in the area of Jordan south of the Wadi Mujib were devotees of some Nabataean or Roman religion or another….
Kimberly Katz was an ACOR-CAORC post-doctoral fellow for summer 2019, and she will return in summer 2020 to complete her fellowship. She was also awarded the ACOR-MESA Travel Award for 2019. She is the Professor of Middle East History at Towson University in Maryland. Her research interests focus on legal history in Jordan and the…
Josephine Chaet is a doctoral candidate in the anthropology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and an ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellow for the summer and fall of 2019. Prior to her current fellowship at ACOR, Josephine was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Jordan during the 2018-2019 academic year. Her research while at ACOR…
Kimberly Katz is an ACOR-CAORC post-doctoral fellow for summer 2019 and Professor of Middle East History at Towson University in Maryland. Her current research interests focus on legal history in Jordan and the West Bank. She is analyzing the transition from the British Mandate-era Penal Code to the Jordanian Penal Code that followed the Unification…
Julia Gettle is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Brown University and an ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellow for spring 2019. Her research while at ACOR focuses on the social and intellectual history of popular politics in mid-20th century Greater Syria, particularly centering on Pan-Arab nationalist, nation-state nationalist, and Marxist political mobilization in the 1950s and 1960s….
Bridget Guarasci is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Fellow at ACOR for spring 2019. During her fellowship Dr. Guarasci is completing a book manuscript on the wartime restoration of Iraq’s marshes, preliminarily titled Warzone Ecologies: Iraq’s Marshes on…