Online Resources for Middle East Studies
The Near East Collection at Yale University a link to selected Internet resources.
Al-Musharaka, an initiative to develop online curricular offerings and inter-institutional collaboration for teaching Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, was developed by the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education ( NITLE). A multifaceted initiative to help its constituent colleges build curricular resources in these areas. Its Arab Culture and Civilization website, an extensive set of online multimedia course materials on the language and cultures of the Arab world, is open to students and faculty of the liberal arts colleges served by NITLE, and to the public at large.
Words Without Borders undertakes to promote international communication through translation of the world's best writing—selected and translated by a distinguished group of writers, translators, and publishing professionals—and publishing and promoting these works (or excerpts) on the web. It also serves as an advocacy organization for literature in translation, producing events that feature the work of foreign writers and connecting these writers to universities and to print and broadcast media.
Arts and Letters Daily links to newspapers, books, magazines, blogs and columns.
BBC Middle East Page, listings and links to news items about the Middle East. The website also has country profiles, many of which have links to local newspapers, radio programs, and other resources.
New Tork Times Middle East Page, listings and links to news items about the Middle East. The website also has a pull down menu providing links to country profiles from the newspaper's almanac.
National Public Radio's Middle East coverage. NB NPR's coverage of poetry of the Middle East.
Al-hakawati covers a wide range of topics in Arab Culture. According to the "about us" page, al-hakawati is the Arabic word for “the Storyteller”. The website, which is the creation of Leila K. Barclay, Bryn Mawr A.B. 1982, tells the story of Arab culture through regional folktales and fairy tales, through biographies of Arab personalities ancient to modern, men and women, artists and the arts they produced, architecture, countries and their cities and the civilizations of the past that left their mark on the present, nature and the environment, and through the traditions of the Arab World. The content of al-hakawati covers the 22 Arab states, which extend from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. The website's mission to provide a source of information and a reference for those who are students in their classrooms and universities, for people who want to read Arabic material for their own enjoyment, and for people newly interested in Arab culture. Al-hakawati is building a content base of materials from ancient to modern times, in both English and Arabic. Its content is updated weekly.
The website Refdesk.com links to international newspapers.
The website of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia links to Israeli and other international newspapers, to think tanks and lobby groups, from the perspective of advocacy for Israel.
The Middle East Studies Association's website provides links to a very wide array of resources (including study abroad programs, research organizations, journals and publications, online language study, an online newsletter.
Al-Ahram's Weekly On-Line publication, an independent English-language newspaper issued by Al-Ahram Organisation. As described by its editor Hosny Guindy: "Since it first hit the newsstands on Thursday 28 February, 1991, it has rapidly established itself as the leading English-language newspaper, not only in Egypt, but also ... throughout the Arab world ... From the start, Al-Ahram Weekly set out to provide the English-language reader with objective, in-depth coverage of the Egyptian and Arab scenes: politics, economy, culture and society. The challenge we set ourselves was to do this from 'an Egyptian perspective'. As we hope our readers will have realised over the past years, this has never meant whitewashing or propaganda, but rather providing as honest and objective a look at contemporary Egyptian and Arab reality as possible -- as seen through Egyptian and Arab eyes. . . . Al-Ahram Weekly has also sought to provide, through guest columns and in its opinion pages, an open platform for the free expression of a wide range of different views and analyses . . . no other English-language newspaper from the Arab world provides as comprehensive and wide-ranging a picture of the manifold ideological, political and cultural currents which characterise the region today."
On Knowing Arabic, link to a blog by Mary Beard from the Times on Line, "On Not Knowing Arabic." And do read the comments.
On Teaching Arabic, Mahmoud Al-Baral, "Facing the Crisis: Teaching and learning Arabic in the United States ...," ADFL Bulletin, Winter-Spring 2006 [-2007]