Affiliated Fulbrighters
Fulbright Scholars to Morocco (unless otherwise noted), alphabetical order:
- Mohammed A Albakry (TEFL/Applied Linguistics: 2011-12), Professor, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), click here
- George Bajalia (Student grantee, Theatre: 2011-12)
- Jonathan Curiel (to Pakistan, Journalism: 1993-94), Journalist, profiled here
- Allen Hibbard (to Syria, American Literature: 1992-94), Professor and Director of the Middle East Center at Middle Tennessee State University, click here
- Deborah A Kapchan (Anthropology: 2001-02), Professor, Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU), click here
- Nicolas K Kiessling: (Literature: 2003-04), Professor (retired), Washington State University (WSU), click here
- Shara Lange (Student grantee, Filmmaking: 2007-08), Professor, East Tennessee State University (ETSU), click here
- Lucy L Melbourne (American Literature: 2005-06/2006-07), Professor, profiled here
- Carol N Malt (Art History: 2004-05), Writer, profiled here
- Susan G Miller (History: 2004-05), Professor, University of California-Davis, click here
- Pamela M Nice (Theater: 2004-05)
- Vanessa Paloma (Music: 2007-08)
- Dwight Reynolds (Specialist grant, Music: 2008)
- George F Roberson (Cultural Geography: 2007-08), Professor and Chair of Partners for International Collaboration and Education (PICE), click here
- Aaron Sakulich (Student grantee, Arabic and Engineering: 2007-08)
- Eric Maiers Saline (Art: 2009-10)
- Rod Solaimani (Student grantee, Music: 2009-2010)
- Barry C. Tharaud (Literature: 2003-04/2004-05)
Moroccan Fulbright Scholars to US, alphabetical order:
- Akbib Abdelatif (American Literature: 2006 - Washington State University), Professor
- Khalid Amine (Theatre: 2006 - City University of New York) Professor and President of the International Centre for Performance Studies - Tangier, click here
- Redouan Ayadi (?: 2002), Professor
- Khalid Bekkaoui (Literature: 1999), Professor
- Abderrazzak Essrhir (Literature: 2005 - San Diego State University), Professor
- Younes Assaad Ryani (Literature: 2006), Professor
Corrections, additions and inquiries may be emailed to the site editor at george.roberson at fulbrightmail.org
The Fulbright program and grantee rosters available online click here (Scholars) and here (students)
Crossroads Institute
It's a four-Nations region encompassing: the Tanger-Tetuan Region (Morocco); Andalusia/Costa del Sol (Spain); Gibraltar (United Kingdom); Ceuta (Spain); and The Algarve, (Portugal). All stakeholders and interested parties worldwide are invited to join.
Join our listserve etc:
crossroads.institute at gmail.com
New "Arab-Spring" themed book project made possible by the support of Crossroads Institute (CI) and produced by: Collaborative Media International (CMI), and International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS).
No Man's Land by Mohammed KaoutiOne of the most important plays in the Moroccan artistic repertoire following independence.. --Khalid Amine, Professor, Université Abdelmalek Essaadi and President, International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) – Tangier, Morocco
"A product of Morocco's traditional “open space” for debate - the theatre, No Man's Land foregrounds and predicts the “Mouvement du 20 Février”. It shrewdly highlights the seemingly irreconcilable struggles, conflicting aspirations, and complex socio-political realities of postcolonial Morocco. As various groups vie for power in the still-unfolding “Arab Spring”, Kaouti’s No Man’s Land reminds us that we ought to be paying closer attention to artists, the voices of “insiders” and to performative powers." --George F Roberson, editor
For details, click here
Partners for International Collaboration and Education (PICE)
Institutional members (alphabetical order)
Collaborative Media International (CMI) - worldwide
Founded by George F Roberson, CMI is the publisher of academic and educational books. A book cooperative, it pioneers a new publishing model where the project contributors' intellectual capital is harnessed and directed to also help fund their work. Titles include Moroccan Arabic, 2nd Edition by Aaron Sakulich, for info click here
Crossroads Institute (CI) - bridging the trans-straits region
An interdisciplinary research and practice collaboration at the crossroads of lands, seas and cultures: the Strait of Gibraltar. For info click here
International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) - Tangier, Morocco
Founded by Khalid Amine, ICPS is best known for convening the Tangier International Conferences. The annual conferences bring together writers, artists, academics and others from around the world for dialogue and debate on issues related to community and globalization. The site of the conferences is the great world crossroads city of Tangier, Morocco. The conferences, "Performing Tangier" have been held annually since 2004, for info click here
Affiliated Fulbrighters: dozens of Fulbright participants in ICPS/CMI conference and publishing programs - for listing click here
Individual members (alphabetical order)
Khalid Amine, Phd
ICPS President, Tangier International Conference Co-convener
Professor, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, Morocco
Abderrahim El Ouahabi
ICPS Member, Tangier International Conference Organizing Team
English Teacher, Ahmed Idrissi High School, Chefchaouen, Morocco
Abdelmajid Elsayd
ICPS Member, Tangier International Conference Organizing Team
English Teacher, M'hamid, Morocco
Andrew Hussey, Phd
Tangier International Conference co-Founder
Dean of the Institute, University of London Institute in Paris, France
Rajae Khaloufi
ICPS Member, Tangier International Conference Organizing Team
English Teacher, Tangier, Morocco
George F Roberson, Phd
PICE Chair
CMI Publisher-Director
Tangier International Conference co-Convener
Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
In observance of International Education Week, the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) Tangier, Morocco and Collaborative Media International (CMI) Amherst, Denver, Tangier, are pleased to announce the steering committee for Partners for International Collaboration and Education (PICE, pronounced peace, a.k.a. 'partners for peace'), for info click here
International experience
Countries and territories -- fifty-plus worldwide
• Africa -- Ceuta (territory of Spain), Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Melilla (territory of Spain), Morocco, The Gambia, Senegal, Tunisia, Western Sahara (territory of Morocco) (10)
• Americas -- Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, USA (7)
• Asia -- Bahrain, Brunei, Hong Kong (territory of Peoples Republic of China), India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Peoples Republic of China, Macau (then territory of Portugal, now territory of Peoples Republic of China), Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, Syria, Thailand, West Bank (occupied by Israel, administered by the Palestinian Authority) (17)
• Europe -- Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Gibraltar (territory of United Kingdom), Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom (23)
• Transit only -- Bulgaria, Greece, Korea, Libya, Qatar (5)
International research and exploration -- timeline
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F.) - December 2014
• Slovak Republic (Bratislava) - November 2014
• Austria (Vienna) - November 2014
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F.) - October 2014
• Cyprus (Nicosia, Paphos) - September 2014
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F.) - June 2014
• Peru (Lima, Cusco, Machu Pichu) - May 2014
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F., Guadalajara) - Feb 2014
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F., Oaxaca) - Jan 2014
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F., Puebla) - Nov 2013
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F.) - Aug 2013
• Costa Rica (San Jose) - Nov 2012
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F.) - November 2011
• China (Qingdoa, Fuzhou, Xiamen) - February 2011
• China (Qingdoa) - June 2010
• Morocco (Marrakech, Rabat, Fez, Larache, Tangier) - May 2010
• Mexico (Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta) - February 2010
• Mexico (Mexico City - México D.F.) - April 2009
• Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Salvador) - December 2009
• Canada (Maritime Provinces and Toronto) - August 2008
• Canada (Montreal) - August 2007
• Morocco (living in Tangier, visits countrywide) - September 2007 - July 2008
• China (Qingdoa and Hainan Island) - February 2008
• Western Europe (Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid) - October 2007
• Morocco (Tangier) - February 2007
• Mexico (Tijuana) - December 2006
• Morocco (Tangier-Tetuan Region) - January 2006
• China (Beijing and Qingdao) - Summer 2005
• Gibraltar trans-straits Region (Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto, The Algarve, Portugal; Tangier, Morocco; Andalusia, Barcelona, Spain) - Summer 2003
• Tunisia (Tunis, Gabes, Tozeur, Djerba) - January 2002
• Israel and the occupied West Bank, March 2001
• Andalusia and the Canary Islands, Spain, January 2001
• Morocco, Western Sahara and West Africa, Spring/Summer 2000
• South and South East Asia, Summer 1999
• Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Winter/Spring 1999
• Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Fall 1998
• Imperial cities, Morocco, August 1998
• Tunisia, October 1997
• Marrakech and High Atlas region, Morocco, October 1996
• Ecuador, October 1995
• Sweden and Russia (Stockholm and Dalarna; Saint Petersburg) - March 1995
• Portugal, Spain and Morocco - March 1994
• Italy (Rome, Taormina, Assisi, Venice)- March 1992
• Andalusia, Spain and northern Morocco, October 1991
• Western Europe - Summer 1986
Return to homepage: George F Roberson, PhD -- Editor, Space and Place, click here
Degrees earned
Editor, Space and Place
• PhD Geosciences. Human Geography Research Group, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Dissertation: Worlds of Tangier, Morocco: Experiential, Narrative, and Place-Based Perspectives. Concerning contestation, negotiation, and constructive engagements in Tangier, Morocco, at a great world crossroads of lands, seas and cultures. Abstract and information, click here
Committee: Richard W Wilkie, Chair; Julie Graham, Member (of publishing collaboration JK Gibson-Graham); and Elizabeth Petroff, Member (Comparative Literature).
• MS Geography. Human Geography Research Group, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Thesis: Geographic Perspectives on Modernity, Mobility and Experience: The Fox Diary. Concerning the intersections of travel, writing, and photography; experiential learning; and situated within female, historical (1920's) and European contexts.
Committee: Richard W Wilkie, Chair; Oriol Pi Sunyer, Member (Anthropology).
• BA American Studies, Geography Minor (with additional Art History concentration). Keene State College, New Hampshire.
Return to homepage: George F Roberson, PhD -- Editor, Space and Place, click here
Biography: home, education, sporting life, professional
Editor, Space and Place
Home - shifting geographies
As with many people nowadays, I've lived in quite a variety of places. In recent years, I've been splitting my time between Amherst (Massachusetts), Tangier (Morocco), and Denver. And in my family, moving around started early. I was born in Minot, North Dakota, but we didn't stay there long. When my Dad's military commitment ended we moved south, almost 900 miles, to Kansas City. Then we spent a few years in Fort Madison, Iowa. We got more settled down much further east in Lenox, Massachusetts – corporate opportunity having knocked again. I thrived in the small-town cultural/outdoor New England life and attended college nearby in Keene, New Hampshire.
Over time I also gradually became interested in breaking out into the larger world so in the late 90's I packed a bag, bought a one-way ticket and flew to Cairo, Egypt. I spent most of the next two years overseas vagabonding around and rarely staying in one place more than a couple days. After that and during graduate school I lived in a few different places in the small towns surrounding the University of Massachusetts-Amherst – one summer I played Huck Finn: camped on an island in the Connecticut River. My primary residence is now Denver.
Education - classroom type
Primary school. I went to preschool in Johnson County, Kansas. Just about the only thing I remember is the time we had a fire drill: everyone ran outside and watched in excitement as the firemen sprayed some water on the roof. During my elementary school days, my family moved around a lot and I attended five different primary schools. My favorite teacher, whose name I've forgotten, was in the second grade; she read us the "little house" books. My favorite book in those years, however, was My Side of the Mountain.
High school. I always considered myself very lucky to have attended the full term at a six-year high school: Lenox Memorial High School in Lenox, Massachusetts. As a seventh grader, you needed to grow up quickly and I liked that. And, it was the second smallest high school in the state so you got a lot of individual attention and I thrived there. I can't imagine life without the grounding I received: especially in art with Nancy Bruno, social sciences with Mary Ann Bachiel and Bob Wiley, and humanities and literature with Jim Hurley. Key discoveries include Goya, Palladio, The Sun Also Rises, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
College. In college, I pursued a classic New England liberal arts education at Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire. This type of education gave me the chance to take courses in a great variety of subject areas, and I took full advantage: geography, history, literature, art history, design, math, management, economics, education, and a host of 'sciences' - environmental, social, health, earth, computer and physical. Besides giving me a broad-base and big-picture view of life and the world, this experience taught me how to think, learn, adapt, and engage. The most important course was a seminar on the 1930's in the USA: how never-before-seen human progress rose from disaster - and was driven by innovation, creativity, vision, and an openness to true change. The professors I had there have had lifelong impacts on me, in particular: David Leinster, History; Bill Sullivan, American Studies; Tom Havill, Al Rydant, and Klaus Behr, Geography, Anne-Marie Mallon, Literature; Henry Freedman, Art History; and Glenn Theulen, Education/Coaching. They all cared about big and important things and their passion and generosity inspired action and emulation.
Graduate school. Thanks to casting such a wide net in college, I discovered that geography (cultural/human) was the discipline where I could best combine all my interests. To prepare for graduate school I did a lot of research and traveling around to visit programs and interview prospective faculty advisers around the USA and in six foreign countries (Austria, Canada, Norway, Slovenia, Turkey, and Jordan). It was an exciting and interesting search, but in the end, it was an easy choice: I decided to work with Dick Wilkie in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Incredibly, he was in fact the first person I met with at the beginning of the process nearly two years before. A real connection had been made. In time, he chaired both my Master's and PhD committees. We continue, great friends, to collaborate and publish together.
The most important classes I took were Wilkie's "Geographic Theory and Analysis" (grounding in the approaches, histories and development of the discipline),"Spirit of Place" (solidifying a key approach to research and life), and "Visual and Graphic Thinking" (developing crucial tools of analysis and presentation). The single most challenging and boundary-smashing experience was working with Art Keene as a Teaching Assistant and Discussion Leader in Cultural Anthropology, "Culture Thru Film" - I even volunteered for a second semester.
I'd never have made it through without the support of my many people, especially my thesis and dissertation committee members: Julie Graham (Geography) who always insisted on putting things into practice now rather than waiting until later; Elizabeth Petroff (Comparative Literature) who was always so sharp and supportive; and Oriol Pi Sunyer (Anthropology) who took such a personal interest in what I was doing and always knew just the right contextualizing references.
Another pivotal experience was an Assistantship working for the Dean of Students. Besides having the chance to help shape and implement campus policy and practice, I got to know a truly rare personality and intellect: Richard Pioli. Equally important was synergies with fellow graduate students and friends: Alan Marcus, Carlos Saurez, Don Sluter, and Chris Gaffney.
Sporting life - biking, cross country skiing, hiking
My sporting life has developed along two main tracks: generally living an active outdoor life and as a competitive sports athlete (and also as a coach which is discussed in the professional life section below).
more under construction
Working life
Beginnings. It seems like I’ve always worked, and from the beginning most of my working life has been do-it-yourself. My first paid work was picking insect larvae off the shrubbery, for a dollar per bread bag, I was eight years old. And I picked up lots of small jobs around the neighborhood like yard work, cleaning, clearing snow, and baby sitting. My first regular job was at a small guest house in the resort town of Lenox, Massachusetts. I did whatever needed to be done, mostly cleaning (especially vacuuming), weeding the gardens and carrying luggage. At age fourteen I was underage to work legally but no one seemed to mind. I was paid $2.10 per hour, well below the minimum wage, but I was happy to get that job since jobs for young people were very hard to find. I worked at several different small hotels during high school and each was an invaluable learning experience. I worked directly with each of the owners and they were real characters and had a lot of stories to tell which I eagerly digested: Mrs Vesolick, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, she seemed so old but always worked very hard to keep things going in that rambling old house built in 1780, she gave me a Swiss Army knife for Christmas; Max Kowler, an Austrian Jew who’d fled the Nazi’s, first to France and then later to the USA, he was also my German teacher; and Martin Isenberg, a wheeler-dealer, he bought and flipped Bellefontaine to the Zuckerman’s of Canyon Ranch in short order and pocketed some big cash. In college I started working maintenance and grounds for Shakespeare & Company, an acting and educational troupe founded by Tina Packer, whose home was The Mount the former estate of novelist Edith Wharton. By the time I left that “career” I had been exposed to just about every aspect of operating a business and I had worked my way up to marketing and management.
more under construction
Return to homepage: George F Roberson, PhD -- Editor, Space and Place, click here
Sense of Place
(to download in pdf, see link below)
SENSE OF PLACE
In a myriad of approaches to sense of place, a key strand begins with the individual. Each person brings her/his own personality, background and previous experiences into the process of forming a sense of place. Each person draws on their own use of human senses and their own sense of aesthetics, and their own intellectual and emotional responses they’ve developed in regards to places; these are based on their experiences and perceptions, and the development of cognitive understandings of places. One’s reactions and responses are not static, however, and the way a person looks at places continues to evolve as their life cycle develops and as the landscapes and places around them are transformed. Through those processes, it can be argued that people develop [on varying levels of sophistication] their own landscapes of memory and previous experiences. In some cases this leads to bonding with places - love of place (Tuan 1974), while in others cases it can lead to ambivalence, disinterest and/or rejection; i.e., the placelessness of interchangeable superficial identities that can be found anywhere (Relph). Furthermore, in invoking sense of place, many humanist geographers and others from the humanities are attempting to understand non-reductionist uniqueness of individual responses, as well as distinctiveness that different places possess, and to open the minds of people to the richness of the world through place-based approaches and specifically to think about the role that places play in their lives.
Many individuals share a sense of place with others in a subgroup or across broader social and cultural lines. Within other social and behavioral sciences, and for some geographers as well, there are attempts to understand psychoanalytical aspects of subgroup perceptional and behavioral approaches to sense of place (i.e. Walmsley and Lewis). Some group studies of places come out of the humanities and the cultural landscape school of geography, and they usually involve historically tracing an understanding of places at local and regional levels (Jackson), or through folklore and hand-me-down stories (Ryden).
In contrast, other geographers and some space/environment disciplines tend to look more at the role specific places play in that process, including studying the character of places themselves and why particular places evoke a sense of awe or attachment. Thus the shift is away from studying humans toward a concern for the qualities or attributes of places that move the individual; this has been called genius loci, or the spirit of place (Wilkie 2003). Along this line, most humans have their favorite places [often stemming from their early experiences] as well as a memory bank of their own special landscapes (i.e. Wilkie 2006). Most people are searching ultimately for a place to live that “feels right” to them, and that they can call home (i.e. Buttimer). Some studies of sacred and indigenous places have focused on the concept of the power of place that in some cases has existed through time and many generations (i.e. Abram, Basso).
This focus on the character of special places resonates with many writers (i.e. Stegner, Lopez), poets, filmmakers, artists and others including most people, and the kinds of places they are attracted to range in scale from micro-settings in the natural or cultural landscapes to neighborhoods, lake or river regions, mountain ranges, cities, or even states, nations, and global geopolitical regions. However, the more one moves away from direct experiences and memories involving close human contact with places into a larger generalized framework [especially with how large numbers of people share their thoughts about places] the result is a more general and reductionist perspective. In going well beyond direct gaze, they attempt to factor in a larger cultural milieu involving both natural and cultural landscapes as places of meaning [i.e., a knowledge of climatic, ecological, natural interconnections and built environments] adding layers of depth into the cognitive world of sensing a place.
A particularly apparent and accessible sense of place arena lies in the representations of place; they act to capture and convey senses of place via various media. Imaging places in the visual arts makes powerful use of sense of place [i.e. Robert Capa’s war photography and the 19th century American landscape paintings of the “Hudson River School”]. Similarly, many writers feature sense of place in literature, poetry and metaphors of place [i.e. Pocock]. As evocative as these may be the media production of place in digital news, entertainment and advertising, through their shear volume and ubiquity, trumps all [i.e. senses of place of – current warzones like Iraq; inaccessible places like North Korea’s capital city Pyongyang; places of desire like television’s “Bay Watch” series; and purpose-built resorts like those in Cancun, Mexico].
Accordingly, sense of place is fertile ground not only for representing and imagining places but for creating and contesting it. Thus, the making of place (Tuan 1991), resistance and place (Creswell), visualizing and performing place (Roberson), designing & building places (i.e. Saarinen) and geopolitics and place (i.e. Hayden) ―to name just a few― are all examples of how geographers and others have sought to employ sense of place to better understand certain spheres of human action and interaction. Furthermore, sense of place, owing to the betweenness of place (Entrikin) can also act as a mediator between a host of analytical binaries, like transposing conservation with profit; evocative sense of place not only pleases it is also good business. Even as an ever increasing placelessness has been identified, new senses of place are also emerging due to human dynamism and creativity. The idea of a global sense of place (i.e. Massey) has been proposed and everyone who’s ever e-mailed, blogged, networked or instant messaged with personal computing and the internet is acquainted with cyberspace - a burgeoning world of new virtual senses of place. Clearly sense of place can be viewed from many different entry points from which individuals can enter into or continue previous intellectual journeys in their studies of place.
Richard Wilkie and George F. Roberson
Article citation, in slightly different format:
Roberson, G and R Wilkie (2010) “Sense of Place” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4. To download in pdf, click here
Readings:
Abram, D. “The Ecology of Magic.” In The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, New York: Pantheon Books, 1996, pp3-29.
Basso, K. “Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on Western Apache Landscape.” In Senses of Place, S. Feld and K. Basso, eds., Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996, pp53-90.
Buttimer, A. “Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place.” In The Human Experience of Space and Place, A. Buttimer and D. Seamon, eds., New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.
Cresswell, T. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Entrikin, N. The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Hayden, D. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995.
Jackson, J.B. A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Lopez, Barry. “The American Geographies.” In About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory, New York: Random House, 1999, pp130-43.
Lowenthal, D. “Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology.” In Annals of the American Association of Geographers, v51, n3, (1961), pp241-60.
Massey, D. “A Global Sense of Place (1991)” In Reading Human Geography: The Poetics and Politics of Inquiry. T. Barnes and D. Gregory, eds. 1999. London: Arnold, pp315-23.
Pocock, D. “Geography and Literature.” In Progress in Human Geography, v12, n1, (1988), pp87-102.
Relph, E. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited, 1976.
Roberson, G. “Tangier: Visualizing the City.” Performing / Picturing Tangier, K. Amine, ed., Tetouan, Morocco: Abdelmalek Essaâdi University and Aberystwyth, Wales: University of Aberystwyth, 2007, pp41-51.
Ryden, K. Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993.
Saarinen, T. Environmental Planning, Perception and Behavior. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
Stegner, W. Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier. New York: Viking Press, 1962.
Tuan, Y. Topophilia: a Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
______. “Language and the Making of Place: a Narrative-Descriptive Approach.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, v81, n4, (1991), pp684-96.
Walmsley, D. and Lewis, G. Human Geography: Behavioral Approaches. London: Longman, 1984.
Wilkie, R. “’Sense of Place’ and Selected Conceptual Approaches to Place.” CRIT, v55, n1, (2003), pp29-31.
______. “Dangerous Journeys: Mexico City College Students and the Mexican Landscape, 1954-1962.” Bloom, D. ed., Adventures into Mexico. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006, pp88-115.
Wright, J. “Terrae Incognitae: the Place of the Imagination in Geography.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, v37, n1, (1947), pp1-15.
New initiative: international publishing program
ICPS / CMI: a case study
(To download full text in pdf, see below)
For more information, including how to order books, click here
[Editor's note: this paper was given on 23 May 2010 at the Annual Tangier International Conference - Performing Tangier 2010: New Perspectives on Site Specific Art in Arabo-Islamic Contexts]
First a little bit of context: my name is George Roberson. I am a cultural geographer with the Human Dimensions Research Group in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
I was in Tangier on a year long Fulbright Scholar research grant in 2008[1] with the International Centre for Performance Studies[2] (ICPS for short – and the producer of these annual conferences). My chief collaborator is Khalid Amine; ICPS Founder, President and Conference Convener. The focus of my ongoing work is international collaboration and education, and more specifically, on theory and praxis of intercultural engagement and processes of change. In a fundamental way, it’s one of the reasons we’re all here at the conference.[3] The world is in another period of great upheaval and reconfiguration, digital communications have even reoriented our sense of the local-global spectrum, and once again Tangier is at the crossroads. Putting theory into practice has never been more important so some of the things we’ve been focusing on include developing these conferences, communications, technology, outreach, mentoring and publishing.[4]
SWOT analysis. Indeed, in applying a SWOT analysis to the situation —that is: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats— the ICPS publishing program is among its greatest strengths. Due to Khalid’s leadership and the contributions of so many volunteer partners —authors, artists, translators, editors, granters, printers, designers, readers, etc— the ICPS library has grown to include many multilingual offerings in a range of genres: drama, literary criticism, conference proceedings, and translations.
However, jumping ahead to threats, we must be realistic: we’re not as well-know as we need to be and building up new institutions and practices upsets the status quo and also competes with differing visions of the future and backlash can result.
Threats notwithstanding and though support has been broad-based, the greatest weakness is a lack of sufficient and stable financial resources to enable ICPS to blossom to full potential. A prime example, although the current publishing program is robust, it is not cheap and so book distribution has always been limited to only within Morocco, plus, whatever our partners have been able to hand-carry home to other places.
A call to action. In short, this paper is a call to develop multiple strategies to move forward: both to begin to shore up ICPS’s fiscal/future viability and also to make sure the dialogue here has staying power and the international reach it deserves.
So I encourage all to think about what opportunities we have. And we'd be happy to hear from you: george.roberson (at) fulbrightmail.com
One opportunity, already being developed, is to extend the publishing program to the international level. By doing so, we hope to generate some income, but much more importantly, with your help we’ll expand our international presence, make Morocco and Moroccan concerns more accessible to outsiders, and make Moroccan works more widely available (which still remain underrepresented at the world level). Equally important, I believe an international oriented publishing program will be crucial in improving our ability to win significant grants to support all the good things that ICPS is doing.
Next I’ll tell you a bit about what we’re doing to develop the program, show you our first three titles, and then conclude by asking you to get involved and support this effort and I’ll give some specific suggestions.
New technology, new systems. Last year ICPS formed a strategic publishing partnership with Collaborative Media International (CMI), that’s my new academic NGO founded specifically to do this work. We’re also working with the largest book distributer in the world: Ingram Books. This gives us access to the largest networks and latest technologies to efficiently and effectively reach readers worldwide. And we bypass only-for-profit publishers entirely so we retain full rights and control.
Rigorous, transparent, democratic processes. In putting together a book, partners volunteer their time, talent and intellectual capital and proceeds go ICPS and to produce more books. Bookstores anywhere can stock the books on their shelves, but as I mentioned at the outset big changes are happening all over the place in how things work and a new reality is that specialty items, like our books, reach their target market best via the internet. So to buy one of our books, most people will order it online from any one of the many online book sellers (Amazon.com has been incredibly successful) and the book is automatically printed and quickly sent anywhere in the world directly to the customer. However, to be clear, this new model should in no way reduce the existing publishing program which has done such a great job of making books available all over Morocco at really great prices.
Testing the system. In selecting our first book to test this new global publishing model, we carefully searched for a book concept with a good chance to succeed. Fortunately both a real need for a new book and a draft book were quickly identified. Here’s how it went. Some Fulbright colleagues who were studying Moroccan Arabic in 2007-2008 told me about the need for more user-oriented resources for learning the language. Furthermore, Aaron Sakulich, one of the Fulbrighters, already had a book-length draft that he had written for his own use. To make a long story short, Rajae Khaloufi and Khalid joined in the project and the first copies of Moroccan Arabic started shipping in August 2009.[5]
You can see here the cover of the book and the members of the collaborative team.
Since it is hoped that this a model that others might emulate, I’ll briefly recount some aspects of the book concept that gave it good potential:
1) people were already saying a book like this was needed;
2) it brings together crucial resources into one inexpensive book (like side-by-side English, transliteration and Arabic);
3) non-fiction always has the best sales potential especially how-to books;
4) we already knew who the main users would be (ourselves and our students, Fulbrighters, Peace Corps, other students, travelers, etc); and importantly,
5) ICPS would claim a stake and some rewards in teaching Darija.
And the back cover with some quotes from the team. There are lots of little details woven in here (i.e. the cover photos were taken here in Tangier and were specifically chosen to reflect the rapid urbanization taken place all over Morocco and also to challenge the typical outsiders visualization of Morocco as just camels, sand and palm trees.)
And the book on Amazon.[6] Note the price: $20 and on sale for $18. A domestic edition could also be done to better reach the tourist market.
Now the reality is that most books published these days don’t sell too many copies. But the initial the response has been good so we are already preparing for a second edition (and we know there are some errors in the original text). So it’s our first international book (and some proceeds are supporting this conference) and it is hoped that it will be just the first in a series of international educational resources.
So the logical next step was to try several international editions of some existing ICPS books and, thinking strategically and looking to the future, to begin to group them into topical series. The first two are:
A Contemporary Voices Series: Shakespeare Lane, by Zoubier Ben Bouchta.[7] Soon we’d like to do the other two plays in the trilogy: The Red Fire and Lalla J’mila (a Moroccan national drama prize winner).
And the back cover. Featuring original production photos and a quote from Marvin Carlson (our conference closing keynote speaker).
“Shakespeare Lane is a most welcome addition to new translations of world drama, not only because the important contributions of Moroccan dramatists are still much under-represented among those translations but also because this play provides a fascinating and moving example of how the European dramatic tradition, here represented by Shakespeare, is today being reworked and given new life and relevance by artists from non-European cultures. It is especially fitting that the play is set in Tangier, so long a crossroads of multiple cultures.”
And for fun, here’s the book on Amazon Japan.[8] Note the price: 2,159 yen – about $15
And the first in an International Collaboration Series: Bowles / Beats / Tangier, edited by Allen Hibbard and Barry Tharaud.[9] This is the conference proceedings from Performing Tangier 2008. And like the Shakespeare Lane cover, these editions incorporate aspects of the graphic designs done by Altopress, the ICPS publishing partner here in Tangier.
And the back cover features a quote from Khalid about the goals of ICPS and these conferences.
“The Tangier conferences are a forum that aims at bridging the gap of difference and connecting cultures, as well as reaching across the divide to the Other. The setting of Tangier makes a perfect home for new intercultural encounters that celebrate and honor our essential humanity. It offers a glimmer of hope during a dark time marked by the hegemony of the post 9/11 discourses of horrorism.”
I’ll conclude with some ideas about how you can help:
- Buy the books
- Use the books as required reading in your classes
- Do a book review, on Amazon.com for example – rate it five stars
- Recommend to your networks: students, colleagues, professional organizations
- Donate money
- Reference in your scholarly work
- Write a grant linking your work to ICPS and vice-versa
- Propose a manuscript
- Recommend an author
author, editor, translator, peer reviewer, grant writer, talent scout, committee member, promoter, technology expert (who knows about ebooks, Paypal, or can help us with online audio for Darija text?)
And to quickly recap:
- Build up a strategic international publishing program
- Keep the domestic publishing program going
- Sustain and grow our reach a wider / international audience
- Move more contributors and collaborators are needed to come forward
- And together we’ll improve the position to win significant grants
Our partners Margie Kanter, Jose Delgado, Jeffrey Miller, Barry Tharaud and Andrew Hussey who all had invaluable input on publishing.
And to Saadia Maski and MACECE (the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange) for their support.
This paper and visual elements are available online at:
http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2010/05/pt-2010.html
Follow CMI on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Collaborative-Media-International/194579233009
Article citation:
Roberson, G (2010) “Local-global shifts, research reform, emerging technologies, positioning for growth: creative-performative opportunities for academics, NGO’s, and community advocates” in Performing Cultural Diversity / Critiquing Postcolonialism. B Tharaud, J Manuel Goñi Pérez and G Roberson, eds. Tetouan, Morocco: Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi, p157-62. Download in pdf, click here
Notes
[1] http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/12/contribute.html
[2] http://www.icpsmorocco.org/
[3] http://icpsmorocco.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=178
[4] http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/05/tangier-conference.html
[5] http://collaborativemedia.blogspot.com/2009/03/darija-text.html
[6] http://www.amazon.com/Moroccan-Arabic-Practical-Learning-Dialect/dp/0982440901/
[7] http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/02/shakespeare-lane.html
[8] http://www.amazon.co.jp/Shakespeare-Lane-Zoubeir-Ben-Bouchta/dp/098244091X/
[9] http://www.amazon.com/Bowles-Beats-Tangier-Allen-Hibbard/dp/0982440928/
[10] http://iew.state.gov/events/common/popup_event.cfm?event_id=35458