Qifa Nabki
Qifa Nabki
Report on Syrian Students in Lebanon
There’s a report out about the situation of Syrian students in Lebanon, authored by a specialist team of researchers affiliated with the University of California at Davis, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Institute of International Education. I know a couple of the authors very well and vouch strongly for their knowledge of the region’s politics, societies, and … Continue reading
Translating Disney’s Frozen into Arabic
See below for an excerpt from my latest piece for The New Yorker, on Disney’s translation of its hit musical Frozen into Modern Standard Arabic. We’ve discussed this subject before on this blog. If you’re interested in reading earlier discussions, check out the following comment sections: The Death of Arabic is Greatly Exaggerated Divided Societies After reading the New … Continue reading
The Lebanese Presidency, Twenty-Five Years after Ta’if
Lebanon failed to elect a president this week, but the failure was rather dignified by recent standards. Unlike the 2008 election — preceded by twenty months of government paralysis, public demonstrations, a parliament building locked by its Speaker, and several high-profile assassinations — it was a relief to watch 124 parliamentarians show up at the Chamber of Deputies last Wednesday and cast their votes. Most … Continue reading
Interview with Bassam Haddad for Guernica Mag
A couple of months ago, I caught up with my friend Bassam Haddad, Director of Middle East Studies at George Mason and a co-founder and editor of Jadaliyya, and interviewed him for Guernica Magazine. The introduction is below, followed by a link to the main body of the piece. Also, here’s a crowdsourcing challenge to the Lebanese expatriate readers: I’m … Continue reading
Orientalism and Encyclopedism
Just a note about a talk I’m giving tomorrow evening at Brown, in the Medieval Studies lecture series. It’s at 5:30pm in Providence, in case any Boston-area medievalists are interested. And here’s an essay on a related topic (“Why was the 14th century a century of Arabic encyclopedism?”) that just came out a few months … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…