Call for Applicants: Library Archival Research Fellowship at the Archives of AUB's Jafet Library (June - August 2015)

Call for Applicants: Library Archival Research Fellowship at the Archives of AUB's Jafet Library (June - August 2015)

Call for Applicants: Library Archival Research Fellowship at the Archives of AUB's Jafet Library (June - August 2015)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The Arts and Humanities Initiative Mellon Grant and The Archives and Special Collections at Jafet Library At the American University of Beirut Announce a call for applications for

Library Archival Research Fellowship

At the Archives of Jafet Library:
June 15th- August 21st, 2015

The American University of Beirut Libraries and the Arts and Humanities Initiative (Mellon Grant) at AUB are offering a short-term Summer Archival Research Fellowship to encourage scholarly engagement with one of two of the following AUB Libraries’ Special Collections: The AUB Libraries’ Arabic Manuscripts Collection, and the Constantine Zurayq’s Archival Papers (around 18.4 linear feet).

The fellowship seeks to support the production of scholarly work around these collections and enhance their cataloging and accessibility, as well as promote the community’s knowledge of the AUB Library Archival holdings in general.

The Research Fellow will be given access to our Library collections, as well as a space to work, in addition to a stipend of 2,000 USD. For international fellows, an additional stipend to cover the costs of travel will be provided. All applicants, local and international, will be responsible for booking their own lodging, airline tickets, and securing their visas, if needed. The Fellowship will cover six to eight weeks any time between June 15th and August 21st. Expected outcomes, description of tasks, research priorities and required documents for applying are further detailed below: 

Research Priorities & Description of Collections and Tasks

Collection A: The AUB Manuscripts Collection:

The University Libraries owns approximately 1,400 manuscripts in several languages, the majority of which are in Arabic. The core clusters were acquired from the prestigious private libraries of the Syrian Society for the Arts and Sciences (1847- 1852); the distinguished linguist and scholar Nawfal Nimatallah Nawfal’s (1811-1887) and the prominent Lebanese historian Issa Iskandar al-Ma’luf (1869-1956). The manuscripts cover a wide range of subjects, e.g. theology, Arabic language and literature, history, geography and the various sciences, and attract researchers from all over the world. For a detailed description of our collection please refer to the catalog compiled by Dr. Yusuf Khoury.

Prospective Fellows working on this collection are expected to spend six to eight weeks at the Libraries, and depending on their research interest and the Libraries’ priorities, will be required to perform one or more of the following tasks:

  • Conduct an in-depth scholarly description of the collection, or a section thereof, highlighting its scholarly value for the research community;
  • Conduct a critical assessment of the physical condition of the manuscript collection;

  • Focus on a subset of the manuscript collection, or on one or several items and write a thorough description, a critical paper, or a codicological description of the item(s) in question;

  • Contribute to re-cataloging part of the collection, by contributing a more in depth description of the items of interest.

Collection B: The Constantine Zurayq Papers:

A leading intellectual, historian, diplomat, educator, and among the earliest Arab nationalists, Dr. Zurayk was a prominent AUB Faculty member (1930-1977). He served as AUB’s Acting President between1946 and1950, and as Dean of Faculties between 1952 and 1954. He was also the Rector of the University of Damascus between 1949 and 1952. An international figure, he was First Counselor at the Syrian delegation in Washington DC in 1945-46 and served as Minister of Syria in Washington for two years (1946-47), and was also a delegate to the United Nations Between1965 and 1977, Dr. Zurayk held several visiting professorships at Columbia and Georgetown Universities and the University of Utah. The collection of his personal papers, which was donated by his family to the AUB Libraries, comprises around 55 archival boxes (18.4 linear feet).

  • Prospective Fellows working on this collection are expected to spend between six and eight weeks at the Libraries, and depending on their research interest and the Libraries’ priorities, will be required to perform one or more of the following tasks:

  • Assist in archiving, describing and arranging a section the collection related to the Fellow’s area of interest and research;

  • Conduct research part of the collection with the aim of producing an academic paper related to one or several historical and scholarly aspects of the collection (highlighting and taking into account the archival component| of the collection as compiled by Dr. Zurayq);

  • Assist in organizing potential outreach efforts around the Zurayq Collection (help in the curation of a related exhibit)

Eligibility & Application

Faculty, Graduate Students, Librarians, and/or researchers/ adjuncts, and independent researchers are encouraged to apply. The required documents for the application are as follows:

  • An up-to-date resume;

  • A cover letter clearly indicating which collection you’re interested in;

  • A research proposal (500-1,000 words) describing the applicant’s research interest and its relevance to one of the collections at hand;

  • Two recommendation letters from an academic referee to be sent directly to the email below;

  • A proof of Arabic proficiency (or other languages relevant to the manuscript(s) to be tackled).


Applications must be received no later than Sunday May 31st, 2015, and must be submitted electronically to the Archives and Special Collections at the following address: asc@aub.edu.lb, with the subject line “Library Archival Research Fellowship”. 

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412