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Tag Archives: Middle East
Middle East Prospects
A talk about the history behind the headlines in Middle Eastern politics and culture.
The Public Muse
Steven Caton discusses how poetry works as a political force in the Middle East in ways that Americans would not understand. Janet Wondra reads from her work and discusses performance poetry in America.
An Islamic Primer
Gordon Newby provides an Islamic primer, an overview of politics and culture in the Middle East.
Earth’s Treasures
Robert Connor discusses the importance of the liberal arts in the United States today. Carol and Eric Meyers discuss the Sepphoris Project, an archaeological program they have conducted in Israel since 1970.
Yemeni Music and Tradition
Philip Schuyler is an ethnomusicologist who has worked for many years in the Middle East. During a fellowship year at the National Humanities Center, he is at work on a study entitled The Politics of Tradition: Music and Musicians in the Yemen Arab Republic.
Moral Judgment in History
According to Hedva Ben-Israel, moral judgment in writing of modern history nearly disappeared during the second half of the 19th-century, replaced by an ideal of absolute objectivity. But under the stress of the great political revolutions of the first half of the 20th-century, together with the impact of World War II, historians are now re-evaluating the role and importance of moral judgment in modern historical scholarship.
Multi-Ethnic Societies
The ideal of a harmonious order–as old as Plato’s Republic and as modern as the United Nations–remains elusive, as much today as ever, with the emergence over the last 200 years of multi-ethnic societies. These are cultural and political combinations of race, language, religion, and culture in nations such as South Africa, Canada, and Israel. How did multi-ethnic societies originate, and how do historians measure their impact upon modern international politics?
Forgotten Hostages
Jerry Levin served as bureau chief of the Cable News Network in Beirut, where he was kidnapped and held hostage for eleven months, escaping in February, 1985. According to Mr. Levin, much of the credit for his freedom from political captivity goes to his wife, Sis Levin, who lobbied politicians, military and cultural leaders in the United States, Lebanon, and Syria. At the time this edition of Soundings was taped, five U.S. citizens remained in political captivity in the Middle East. According to Mr. and Mrs. Levin, these men are pawns in a battle of silence and pride waged by American and Middle Eastern participants.
Lebanon: Emblem of Captivity
Present-day Lebanon is an emblem of cultural and political captivity, a country in which Christianity shares an uneasy balance with a growing Muslim population. A central issue is the direction that Lebanese society will take, become Europeanized or by contrast become part of the Muslim world. The growth of religious fundamentalism and the equally important backdrop of the Israeli/Arab conflict add to the complexity of Lebanon’s social options.
Islamic Economics
Central to many political, economic, and social questions about the middle east are ways in which the nations of that region view money and commerce. The concept of an Islamic economics, for example, is relatively new, but has ancient cultural origins. Where are the roots of Islam’s commercial connections to western societies, and why is an understanding of Islamic economics today important?
The Art of Literary Translation Part 4; Social and Political Considerations in Translation
How successfully do translations of world literature into English convey the cultural, social, and political underpinnings and assumptions of the original work? Should translation enjoy the status of creativity itself? Does definitive translation, to paraphrase one Latin American writer, belong finally either to religion or exhaustion? The Art of Literary Translation concludes with a commentary by another scholar currently in residence at the National Humanities Center. Professor Shaul Bakhash reflects on translation of English and American literature into his native Iranian, and on the general inadequacy of American knowledge of Iranian literature translated into English.
Feminism, East and West
Where do western notions about women in the Middle East and the Islamic world come from? Are these perceptions accurate? What is the status of feminism in the Middle East? Must women in the Middle East choose between cultural and sexual identities?
Iran and the Middle East
With attention to the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran in 1976, Herbert Bodman argues that Wilfred Thesiger’s 1959 travel narrative, Arabian Sands – which the Oxford Companion to English Literature calls “a solemn epitaph for traditional Arabia” – is a call for a nuanced and humanistic understanding of the Arabian Peninsula and the complex relationships between Islam and everyday Iranian political and cultural life.
At the time of this interview, Bodman was professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leader of a 1980 summer institute for North Carolina citizens, “Voyages of Discovery: On the Literature of Travel and Exploration” held at the National Humanities Center.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.