Tadween Roundup: News and Analysis in Publishing and Academia from the Arab World

 Tadween Roundup: News and Analysis in Publishing and Academia from the Arab World

Tadween Roundup: News and Analysis in Publishing and Academia from the Arab World

By : Tadween Editors

[The following is roundup of the latest news and analysis from the publishing world that relates to pedagogy and knowledge production. It was originally published on Tadween Publishing`s blog. For more updates, follow Tadween Publishing on Facebook and Twitter.]

Palestine Festival of Literature: Reading across borders
M. Lynx Qualey (Chicago Tribune)

For the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row, M. Lynx Qualey explains the difficulty that one young woman from Hebron, Walaa Alqasiya, faces in order to travel to sites of the Palestine Festival of Literature. Qualey highlights the challenges that walls and borders create for making literature accessible to Palestinians.

Can Baghdad Reclaim Its Title As Intellectual Capital of the Middle East?
By Birgit Svensson (Worldcrunch)

The US invasion of Iraq and subsequent turmoil changed more than just the balances of power. It resulted in a brain drain on a country whose capital was once hailed for its intellectual wealth. As the years pass, will Baghdad, and its bookish Mutanabbi Street, reclaim its scholarly past?

Design for Baghdad’s New Mega-library
(Arabic Literature)

The design for Baghdad’s first public library in 30 years was released in early June. Although the plans look promising, questions remain over whether or not it will fulfill its purpose of becoming a beacon of knowledge in the country.

(Part I) Debate: The Arab world is facing a publishing crisis
By Ranaa Idriss (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Ranaa Idriss, director of Dar Al-Adab Publishing House in Beirut, warns that the situation for Arab publishing is dire. Conflict in the region, particularly in Syria, has made distribution to the Arabic-speaking market difficult, and without the consumption of books in the Gulf states, the industry would be lost, she argues.

(Part II) Debate: The Arab world is not facing a publishing crisis
By Mohamed Hashem (Asharq Al-Awsat)

In a counter piece to Ranaa Idriss’s argument that Arab publishing is facing a crisis, Mohamed Hashem, director of Merit Publishing House in Cairo, argues that the real crisis is a reading crisis. Hashem claims that publishing is not the problem, but the low demand for Arabic reading material does not bode well for publishers.

A Conversation With the World Bank’s Higher Ed Leader
By Rasha Faek (Al Fanar)

Al Fanar interviews the World Bank’s head of higher education, Francisco Marmolejo, about the organization’s vision for education around the world, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Syria’s children being educated in camps (video)
By Bernard Smith (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith draws attention to the dire need for education materials in a Syrian refugee camp. With little resources, dozens of children pack into a small tent that has been transformed into a classroom, illustrating the lack of capacity that camps have for continuing children’s education amidst conflict.

Building schools for Morocco’s rural poor
Valentina Crosato (Your Middle East)

Valentina Crosato examines a new education-based NGO’s initiative to expand education to Morocco’s rural areas. Along with bringing education to hard-to-reach villages, Teach4Morroco also aims to introduce a new innovative style of education that hopes to embrace the individual talents of young students.

With Egypt in limbo, schools crumbling
By Lauren E. Bohn (CNN)

Amid political and economic woes, Egypt’s education system continues to suffer. Lauren E. Bohn explores the many challenges facing Egypt’s defunct education system and several innovative, start-up projects that are attempting to fill the void.

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Summer Readings from NEWTON

The New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) page has greatly expanded over the past year, in large part thanks to the recommendations and contributions from many of Jadaliyya’s readers. We would like to provide you with ample summer reading material by reminding you of several new texts that we have featured in recent months. This compilation of works spans a wide range of topics and disciplines by prominent authors in the field of Middle East studies.

We hope this list will be pedagogically useful for readers preparing syllabi for the fall semester, as well as those hoping to learn about new and unique perspectives on the region. To stay up to date with ongoing discussions by scholars and instructors in the field, check out Jadaliyya’s sister organization, Tadween Publishing.

Highlights

NEWTON in Focus: Thinking Through Gender and Sex

NEWTON in Focus: Egypt

NEWTON Author Nergis Ertürk Receives MLA First Book Prize

NEWTON 2012 in Review

This Year’s NEWTONs

New Texts Out Now: Mark Fathi Massoud, Law`s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan

New Texts Out Now: Ayça Çubukçu, The Responsibility to Protect: Libya and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity

New Texts Out Now: Louise Cainkar, Global Arab World Migrations and Diasporas

New Texts Out Now: Maya Mikdashi, What is Settler Colonialism? and Sherene Seikaly, Return to the Present

New Texts Out Now: Joel Beinin, Mixing, Separation, and Violence in Urban Spaces and the Rural Frontier in Palestine

New Texts Out Now: Wendy Pearlman, Emigration and the Resilience of Politics in Lebanon

New Texts Out Now: Simon Jackson, Diaspora Politics and Developmental Empire: The Syro-Lebanese at the League of Nations

New Texts Out Now: Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East

New Texts Out Now: Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam

New Texts Out Now: Adel Iskandar and Bassam Haddad, Mediating the Arab Uprisings

New Texts Out Now: David McMurray and Amanda Ufheil-Somers, The Arab Revolts

New Texts Out Now: Esam Al-Amin, The Arab Awakening Unveiled

New Texts Out Now: Rashid Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East

New Texts Out Now: Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

New Texts Out Now: Paul Aarts and Francesco Cavatorta, Civil Society in Syria and Iran

New Texts Out Now: Amr Adly, State Reform and Development in the Middle East: Turkey and Egypt in the Post-Liberalization Era

New Texts Out Now: Rachel Beckles Willson, Orientalism and Musical Mission: Palestine and the West

New Texts Out Now: Ilana Feldman, The Challenge of Categories: UNRWA and the Definition of a "Palestine Refugee"

New Texts Out Now: Jeannie Sowers, Environmental Politics in Egypt: Activists, Experts, and the State

New Texts Out Now: Dina Rizk Khoury, Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance

New Texts Out Now: Na`eem Jeenah, Pretending Democracy: Israel, An Ethnocratic State

New Texts Out Now: Sally K. Gallagher, Making Do in Damascus

New Texts Out Now: Natalya Vince, Saintly Grandmothers: Youth Reception and Reinterpretation of the National Past in Contemporary Algeria

New Texts Out Now: January 2013 Back to School Edition

New Texts Out Now: John M. Willis, Unmaking North and South: Cartographies of the Yemeni Past, 1857-1934

New Texts Out Now: Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism

New Texts Out Now: Madawi Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics, and Religion in Saudi Arabia

New Texts Out Now: Noga Efrati, Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present

New Texts Out Now: Nicola Pratt, The Gender Logics of Resistance to the "War on Terror"

New Texts Out Now: Lisa Hajjar, Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights

New Texts Out Now: Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq

New Texts Out Now: Marwan M. Kraidy, The Revolutionary Body Politic