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Taking a Closer Look at the Middle East............................ New materials support study of Islamic culture By Jan McCoy Ebbets ............................ |
As the headlines continue to remind us of the volatile nature of the Middle East, making better sense of the history, art and politics there is the goal of Smith's Middle East Studies program, rejuvenated thanks to a 1993 gift of $250,000 from an anonymous alumna. Inspired by the donor's deep interest in these ancient lands, the gift, which became known as the Near East Fund, has helped support Smith's involvement in the Five College Certificate Program in Middle East Studies. It now gives students the opportunity to complement their majors with a multidisciplinary look at the cultures of southwest Asia and northeastern Africa. Certificate candidates also are encouraged to spend time in this part of the world, learning Arabic and other languages and getting firsthand experience of the Islamic culture. Back in the Pioneer Valley and through the Five College program, a student may choose from some 50 courses a year, focusing on the Middle East through a variety of departmental lenses such as art, history and government, as well as from the Judaic studies course listings. This area of study brings together a strong array of Five College faculty members who are exploring a wide field of inquiry, from international relations to Islamic art to women in the Middle East. Faculty members stress that the strength of the Near East Fund is its ability to make available to students more study materials, from new volumes in the library to guest lectures and innovative course offerings. Not surprisingly, the Smith faculty has put the fund to immediate good use, says John Connolly, dean of the faculty at Smith. For example, the money has helped underwrite guest lectures, including one by noted scholar Leslie Peirce, speaking on the Ottoman Imperial Harem; a series of lectures on Islamic art and architecture; and a visit by Richard Parker, former U.S. ambassador to the Middle East and North Africa. Keith Lewinstein, who teaches Islamic history and is an assistant professor of history and of religion and biblical literature at Smith, says the money helped purchase a whole collection of volumes in Near Eastern, Arabic and Persian languages for Neilson Library. "We have increased our holdings from zero," he notes, "to a core collection of research material that can be the basis for classical Islamic studies in Arabic and Persian." The Near East Fund, with a partial grant from the AKC Fund, also brought to Smith what Connolly calls "an outstanding slide collection" of Islamic art, now housed in the Hillyer Art Library. Some 3,500 color slides depicting the finest examples of the art and architecture of the Muslim peoples were purchased from the private photographic collection of Walter Denny, a University of Massachusetts and Five College art history professor. Also an Islamist and an honorary curator of carpets and textiles at the Harvard University Museums, Denny has assembled a private collection of nearly 120,000 slides after 30 years in the field of Islamic study. When asked by John Davis, Smith associate professor of art, if he would be willing to share any of that collection, Denny said yes. In the end, not only did Smith acquire a set of 3,500 slides, but Amherst and Mount Holyoke colleges did as well, along with Princeton University, the University of Arizona, the American University in Cairo and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. "We did the whole thing at a give-away price, mainly to cover the cost of the work-study students who wrote out identifying information for 3,500 slides--by hand--and then transcribed them into the computer after all slides were given key numbers. The whole project ended up taking a year and a half," says Denny. "But I see it truly as a great Five College effort to share a marvelous resource. It really makes me proud to be in the Five College community. And it's a wonderful asset for the field of Islamic studies." To John Davis at Smith, the photographic collection is a great enhancement to the growing resources available to Smith students interested in the Middle East. "Walter Denny probably has the most extensive collection of slides in the world of Islamic art," he says. "And once some of the other colleges heard that Walter was going to allow Smith to make copies from his collection, these other institutions decided they better take advantage of this one-time opportunity." Davis, who is author of the just-published The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton University Press, 1996), is supervising the Smith students cataloging the Islamic slides. Once complete, the collection will be the basis of at least one new course on Islamic art and architecture, he says. Other courses are on the drawing board as well, including one examining Islamic art and thought through an interdisciplinary lens. During a time when newspaper headlines have put Saddam Hussein and the
Iraqi Kurds in the spotlight again, there is a recognized need to better
understand the Middle East. It is a vital field of study for students, says
Connolly, who adds, "Of course, it has to compete with a hundred other
equally vital things: Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Africa,
the sciences, the arts...But it is our job to make these topics available
to our students in a comprehensive and comprehensible form. Things like
the Near East Fund help make that possible."
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