Avuncular American

Mediterranean Regional Research Fellowship Program

We're happy to announce that CAORC, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, of which TALIM is, through AIMS, the CAORC/AIMS center for Morocco, has received funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for the 2014 Arab Regional Workshop & Fellowship Program.  Apply at the CAORC site.

All application materials must be received by CAORC by 17 March 2014.

 

- - - - - - - -

 

Purpose: The purpose of this program is to build cooperative networks among scholars from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen, working in the social sciences and allied humanities (including, but not limited to, political science, sociology, anthropology/ethnology, and history). The program will draw on the resources, facilities, and contacts of American overseas research centers located in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen to enable the recipients to further their research and to build professional networks in and among host countries.

 

Fellowships: The fellowships are intended to serve scholars who are currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program, or who have completed their Ph.D. in the past ten years. The program offers up to twenty short-term (six to eight week) research residencies with recipients affiliating with one of the following overseas research centers: American Center of Oriental Research (Amman, Jordan), American Research Center in Egypt (Cairo, Egypt), Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie (Oran, Algeria), Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (Tunis, Tunisia), American Institute for Yemeni Studies (Sana’a, Yemen), Palestinian American Research Center (Ramallah, Palestine) or the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (Tangier, Morocco). Prior to commencing their fellowship, fellows will participate in a research capacity-building workshop in Amman, Jordan.

 

Workshop: Selected fellows will participate in a research capacity-building workshop in Amman, Jordan on 18-21 October 2014. The workshop will bring together international scholars and research fellows to hone the research design of fellows’ projects. Workshop sessions will include the essential elements of research design development, grant proposal writing, and small group and one-on-one discussions of ways to incorporate these essentials to the research design.

 

Award: This two-part award funds participation in the capacity building workshop in Amman, Jordan, and a six to eight week research affiliation with an overseas research center. Round-trip travel, accommodations, and meals will be provided for the capacity-building workshop in Amman, Jordan. A stipend of $700 per week, up to eight weeks, will be provided for travel and living expenses incurred during the research residency. All research must be completed by 1 September 2015. A final report, with one page summary in English, is due no later than 15 September 2015.

Maghribi Scholars Need Not Apply

Geography lesson (image from Kidsmaps.com)

The Maghrib (or Maghreb) is the accepted term for North Africa.

The Maghrib was the birthplace of the Arab Spring (Tunisia).  Its latest blossoming of freedom was in Libya.

The Maghrib is where AIMS Maghribi Grantees come from.  Or came from.

Click on the above link, and this is what you will see:

AIMS Research Grants for North African Scholars

 Note: Due to funding, this program has been put on hold until future notice; please check this page again in the near future for updates. Thank you.

That's right.  Just when spring is breaking out all over the Maghrib, a valuable American program that has been funding dozens of North African scholars' research projects for the past ten years, is under a big funding cloud.

Actually, while the cloud is big, the amount in question is not: the program costs $25,000 annually, and allows (allowed, past tense) ten Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, Mauritanian, and Libyan scholars the chance to conduct research in each others' countries.

This $25 K program, of course, is not even worth a decimal point in the larger scheme of things, though the grants that it used to provide do (did) make a difference to the scholars concerned.  If you were a Libyan, newly able to travel to say, Morocco to conduct work in your field, wouldn't you appreciate a US Government-funded program that allows you to do so?

Conversely, might not an Algerian social scientist jump at the opportunity to look at post-revolutionary, post-election Tunisia?  These grants covered every imaginable subject, and we at TALIM have welcomed scholars in fields as diverse as fine arts and water resources.

Part of even larger cuts to international educational exchange, the Deparment of Education reaction to Congressional appropriations prompted a petition garnering thousands of signatures.  The cuts will threaten the work of TALIM and other American overseas research centers, and even such programs as Fulbright/Hays.

"Maghribi Scholars Need Not Apply."  Is that the message that the US intends to give to North African scholars?

Gerald Loftus

CLS Tangier: Language, Culture & Heritage

TALIM's Fatima Benguerch with CLS students and women's literacy group

As the State Department funded 2011 Arabic Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program in Tangier draws to a close, it's time to reflect on what makes Tangier a special place to learn Arabic.  Tangier is but one of several sites for CLS Arabic programs; there is our sister AIMS institute CEMAT in Tunis, but also programs in Fes, Muscat, and Amman, administered by CAORC, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

The flavor of spoken Arabic in each of these sites will be different, but the strength of the CLS approach is that it gets the students to use their Arabic, and perhaps worry less about distinctions between classical and colloquial.

The Tangier program has for years conducted its classes at the American School of Tangier, providing the students with a leafy campus and air-conditioning for their sessions with teachers, speaking partners, and tutors.  AST, despite its new-town location, is a venerable institution, having just celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2010.

For the students who want to go a bit further back with American institutions in Morocco, there's the American Legation in the medina: you can't get more historic than that.  We at TALIM are their local AIMS host.  Beyond helping to make logistical arrangements, the Legation provides the students unique opportunities to engage with Moroccans they might otherwise not have met, and to participate in other TALIM programs.

CLS students learn Moroccan cuisine from women's literacy participants

Last year, we took initial steps to bring TALIM's other Arabic program - our women's literacy program - into proximity with CLS.  Thanks to TALIM Associate Director Yhtimad Bouziane's efforts, this year has seen a blossoming of those linkages.  As she did last year, Arabic women's literacy teacher Fatima Benguerch (top and bottom photos), a permanent member of the TALIM staff, has used the summer break to teach American CLS students, and is a valued speaking partner.

This year, when Yhtimad and Fatima enrolled the women of the literacy program for joint sessions with the CLS students, the excitement was palpable on both sides.  Already, the medina women are "regulars" in these historic surroundings, and many CLS students appreciate the chance not just to tour the Legation during their orientation, but to return to it for a series of cultural and educational activities.

These have included the initial meeting over tea with their host families, lectures by leading Tangier experts on the city's history and the environment of the surrounding region, participation in Legation activities such as our July fundraiser and our reception for an American film maker.  We have encouraged contact between CLS students and visiting AIMS Maghribi Grantees.  Finally, a strong delegation of CLS staff, teachers, and students attended the annual Ramadan concert.

 
After this strong showing in 2011, we hope to involve even more students with TALIM's other programs next year.  Already, students have shown a great interest in our research library, and a 2010 CLS graduate has plans to return to Tangier to work intensively with our women's literacy program.  Of the 2011 cohort, one student is hoping to present a paper at next year's AIMS conference in Tangier on Berber language and culture.

When it comes down to it, that's the beauty of the CLS Tangier program: tapping into the language expertise offered by the faculty recruited specifically for this program; absorbing Moroccan culture in Tangier, a city ideally situated to offer a wide exposure to art, literature, and music; and partaking of the American-Moroccan heritage embodied in the Tangier American Legation, America's oldest diplomatic building, a symbol of its engagement with the Arab world going back to the late 1700s.

Arabic, it would seem, is in our DNA.

Gerald Loftus; Photos furnished by Tangier CLS Site Director Michael Allan

Deciphering Moroccan Arabic, 1911 - 2011

"Shnoo the Hell is Going on H'naa?" - the subtitle to Aaron Sakulich's book Moroccan Arabic (Collaborative Media International) - probably captures the bewilderment of many a foreign student of darija or Moroccan colloquial Arabic.

For modern day students trying to fathom how to transition from what they learn in Modern Standard or classical Arabic to the reality of the streets of Morocco, take heart.  This effort has been going on for at least 100 years.

Budgett Meakin, prolific turn of the 19th-20th century author (The Moorish Empire, The Moors, Life in Morocco, etc.) and former contributor to the Tangier Gazette, used to cater to "travellers and settlers" with his The Arabic of Morocco, cheap at 5 shillings or 8.5 pesetas (advert above from the Tangier Gazette).

Nowadays, American students of Arabic get both Modern Standard and Moroccan darija through the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program, a US State Department summer intensive course administered in Tangier through CAORC, AIMS, and TALIM.

TALIM lends its space for CLS orientation and occasional lectures, thereby continuing a tradition at the Legation - teaching Arabic.  Of course, we have our women's literacy program, which is going into its 13th year, teaching medina women the rudiments of Arabic reading and writing.

In its first reincarnation after ceasing (in 1961) to be the US Consulate General in Tangier, the Legation housed the Foreign Service Institute North African Arabic language program (FSI at the time had its principal Arabic school in Lebanon).  Several graduates of the first FSI Tangier class went on to become American Ambassadors in the Middle East and North Africa.

In the 70s, the Legation became the Peace Corps Morocco training center, again teaching Arabic, mostly darija, to several cohorts of volunteers.  Many of those same PCVs went on to careers in academia and government, and continue to use their Arabic language skills in their professional lives - some of them are on the boards of institutions which sponsor TALIM.

In the years before it became US practice to teach its diplomats Arabic, the Tangier American Legation employed a dragoman or interpreter.  At least one of them, Moses Pariente in the 1850s, became the Acting Consul during periods between American Consuls.  So I guess we can say that there's always been a premium on knowledge of Arabic here at the Legation.

Gerald Loftus

Rebranding TALIM Starts With Its Logo

Some people, when confronted with terms like "branding" and "logo" think crass commercialism.  Well, there is an aspect of that in what I am trying to accomplish: I would like the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies to better "sell" its "products."  Here they are:

- Only US National Historic Landmark outside the United States
- Oldest American diplomatic building, and the first ever in an Arab, Muslim, or African country
- Research center in Morocco of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), with an 8,000 volume library
- Teaches Arabic literacy and life skills to women in Tangier's medina
- Organizes State Department-funded CLS Arabic for American students, administered by CAORC
- Hosts American and Maghribi scholars under AIMS grants
- Museum collection of Moroccan, American, and European artists, plus historic maps and engravings

The latter function gave its name to this place for years, the "Tangier American Legation Museum,"  TALM, with its corresponding private foundation in the United States, TALMS ("S" for Society).  The people of Tangier tend to call it the American Consulate (which it ceased to be exactly 50 years ago) or the "Old Legation."

TALIM, meaning education in Arabic, is of course much more than a museum.  Our mission is education in all its forms.  Cultural diplomacy, citizen diplomacy - we do that too, on the ground in a particularly important way: we are among and surrounded by Moroccans: our neighbors, our employees, our public.

That public now needs to identify logo with Legation with TALIM.  With the help of Abdel Latif, master plaster artisan at Tangier's official handicrafts center, we now have a fitting reproduction of our emblem for display.  Frank D'Astolfo of Rutgers University, whose TALIM logo design won the 2004 Logo Award, has combined Moroccan and American flags, the Legation's medina street and mosque, Tangier's sea blue and the Rif mountain green in a symbol of everything that links TALIM and the United States to Morocco and Tangier.

Migrating from TALM and TALMS to TALIM did not please everyone, but I think the move was a wise one.  Now we want to embrace it, and show the world our logo and what it means.

The Legation has a museum, but we are not just a museum.

TALIM - meaning education.

Gerald Loftus

Wired, Wireless, Haywire: Legation's Trimlines Get Sidelined

Twenty years ago, in the magical Belgian film Toto le héros, we saw a glimpse of the future: walking down the street, you're confronted with wiring, plumbing, and tubing coming out of the most unexpected places.  It's the Centre Pompidou effect, but without the discipline.

I've seen the future, and it's here in the medina. The Wired Effect.  It's even crept into the historic Tangier American Legation.  So I've declared the War on Wires.

That pile of tangled telephone line you see (only a representative sample) used to be on our walls.  Not "in" but "on."  Same principle applied to electricity.  Need a new plug for that stove?  No problem.  We'll just drill a hole in this nearby wall, string the cable through the 19th century courtyard, then drill another hole to get it back inside. Presto!

The impetus for this War on Wires has been twofold.  Thanks to funding from institutional sponsors AIMS and CAORC, TALIM has been able to retire its venerable Trimline™ phones.  For those who don't remember, here's the Collectors Weekly blurb:

The Trimline, like the Princess phone, was one of the Bell System's best marketing innovations. First introduced in 1965, the idea was to create a stylish, easier to use telephone. A huge success, the Trimline was copied by most other major telephone manufacturers. The Trimline's dial was located in the handset itself with the ringer and electronics inside the telephone's base.

Yes, and when combined with vintage 110v Radio Shack® intercoms (and lots of transformers), you had a means of paging Monsieur le Directeur through many parts of this sprawling place.  "M. le Directeur, Mr. Ben Shismu is calling," the intercom would announce, to all within earshot, including the caller.  "Who?" the Directeur would respond.  "Mr. Ben Shismu..." followed by information that one hoped the caller himself did not overhear.  Our new phones have an intercom function, but the caller doesn't get to listen in.

And the wiring is either in the wall or in a relatively unobtrusive track.

I'm going to have to flog the old phones on eBay.  They'll be treasures to someone.

The other trigger to our anti-wiring crusade has been our State Department funded roofing project, which has waterproofed selected - stress on selected - roofs and walls.  Somehow the application of fresh paint makes these eyesores even more visible, and also leads to new discoveries: many of the wires, long since superseded, were simply left to dangle in the breeze, snipped at one end.  Away they go.

In the bargain, we've not only installed new phones and additional extensions, but extended WiFi to most parts of the Legation.  Thanks to Morocco's excellent high speed ADSL and 3G coverage, it is the envy of most countries on the African continent in terms of internet access.  We still have a long way to go, but phone-wise and internet-wise, we have moved from the '60s to at least the mid noughts.  Not bad.

With all this modernity, we haven't forgotten our roots.  In fact, our newest acquisition is this vintage phone, purchased at a nearby antique shop for use as a prop in our budding "Legation Room," an attempt to recreate an office in our museum to illustrate that this was once a working American diplomatic post.

And we got it for a bargain.  Not trusting the price quoted to me, the Foreigner, we had our undercover shopper Yhtimad go there a few days later (she was already known to the shopkeeper as a customer) and get it for half the price.  Foreigner price, Moroccan price.

This antique dealer doesn't know me yet.  I once negotiated for two years with an Alexandrian mashrabiya dealer over a beautiful antique picture frame.  I was a good customer, and we became friends in the bargain, chatting politics etc. for long periods over mint tea.  In the end, my Egyptian friend just gave me the frame.

I'm going to have to sip some tea with my Tangier antique guy...

Gerald Loftus

Enchanting Book On America's Legation

It's out.  Diana Wylie's book Enchantment: Pictures From the Tangier American Legation Museum.  And it's a beauty.  At left, Diana shows me a chapter on Tangier's International Zone era, from the galley proof of her book.

In the book world, you shouldn't judge solely by covers.  Not only is Boston University Professor Wylie's book full of crystal-clear full-color illustrations, but her text is an education about the world's only living Legation, and its place in the history of American-Moroccan relations.

I say crystal-clear photography, thanks to Spanish photographer Manuel Valdivieso, even down to the unfortunate spots caused by our ultra-high humidity.  And here is the link: Diana Wylie's book sales will help preserve the very art that it describes so well.  All proceeds will go to the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, with its museum, research library, conferences, and Arabic language programs.

Diane's pro-bono labor of love was made possible by the generosity of donors Brett Phaneuf and Gregg Cook of the John Brown Cook Foundation, supplemented by a grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, CAORC.

Until Amazon gets the book in its stock, the only place it will be available will be at the TALIM bookshop.  Sorry, we don't have mail order.  You'll have to visit us in the medina of Tangier, where we have been since 1821.

Gerald Loftus

From Mexico to Mongolia: The CAORC World

What do Ulan Bator, Tangier, and Mexico City have in common?  Great weather?  Safe water?  The best pizza?  Some of the above, certainly, though not all the time.

Staffers from Bangladesh (AIBS), Jordan (ACOR), Mongolia (ACMS) and Pakistan (AIPS)

No, what joins us with places like Tunis, Amman, and Phnom Penh is our membership in CAORC, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.  This geographically disparate group with much in common met last week in Istanbul, Turkey, and it was by all accounts a phenomenally successful conference.

What serves as the common ground among the centers is a dedication to scholarship, hosting American researchers and host country and third country scholars, in areas as widely apart as archeology and zoology.  Through CAORC, several also administer US government language scholarships, and all compete for grant money from governmental, private, and charitable institutions.

Bobby Parks (Director CEMA-Algeria) and Mary Ellen Lane (CAORC Executive Director)

At TALIM, we come to CAORC through the American Institute of Maghrib Studies.  AIMS has three centers in North Africa: TALIM in Tangier, Morocco, CEMA in Oran, Algeria, and CEMAT in Tunis, Tunisia.  All three differ somewhat in history and scope, but again, the common ground is scholarship.

Staffers from Tunis (CEMAT), Washington (PARC), and Tucson (AIMS)

Usually my blog posts are of the content-rich or, as old Foreign Service hands would say, "substantive," variety.  Here I've decided to go for the photo ops.  Istanbul was beautiful in the pre-Ramadan evening air, and the Bosphorus was full of festive Turks and foreign visitors absorbing the beauty of one of the world's great cities.

A fitting end to a serious discussion of grants, reporting, accounting, and tax filing.  The nuts and bolts of scholarship.

Gerald Loftus

Arabic: Speaking 5, Reading 0

Imagine this: you reach the age of, say, 35, and you’re driving down the expressway with the kids in the back seat.

You get hopelessly lost a half hour from home.  You decide, then and there, to sign up at the program offered by the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, TALIM.

The course?  GPS navigation?  No.  Map reading?  Not quite.  Reading, period.  And writing.  Our lost housewife is among the new illiterate, and she has decided to join the ranks of hundreds of women from the medina who have gone through a program that garners little publicity, but which has become a cornerstone of this institution.

The woman speaking above is Fatima Benguerch, who has taught the program for several years.  She and TALIM Associate Director Yhtimad Bouziane (standing in the background), know the life-changing value that readin’ and ritin’ can bring a person.  Fatima, probably the first person in her medina entourage to have obtained a university degree, shared her experiences with a group of American university students and their teachers at the just-concluded Critical Language Scholarship (CLS, State Department funded, CAORC-administered through AIMS-TALIM) course in Tangier.  Academic director Abdelhak Akjeje is seated at the left.

When you’ve always been literate – our American students having mastered their native English from their pre-school days – it’s kind of hard to imagine an adult woman having to learn how to hold a pencil.  Then applying that pencil to a straight line on the page, then progressing to letters and words.  That’s what Fatima does with her beginning students, who then go through four levels of written classical Arabic.  Via the literacy classes, they can also enroll in handicraft, sewing, or cooking classes, and volunteers also teach English, French, and Spanish.

Another neighborhood Fatima, Fatima Gharbaoui, attended literacy classes a few years ago.  TALIM Associate Director Bouziane, seeing a budding artistic talent, encouraged Gharbaoui to develop her skill.  The result: an art exhibition of her “naive” portrayals of urban and bucolic scenes, garnering much-needed income.  And what did Gharbaoui do with her proceeds?  She had electricity and running water connected to her modest medina home.  Life changing indeed.

This September we’ll have the latest class of beginners start to learn how to hold that pencil.  One of the enrollees was born in 1929.  You do the math.

- - - - - -

Note on this post's title: the widely used Foreign Service Institute (FSI) language scale runs from 0 (no knowledge) to 5 (native fluency), in both Speaking (S) and Reading (R). Most students manage to get similar scores ("3/3") in both areas.

Gerald Loftus

Welcome to TALIM Director's Blog: Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies

The Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, TALIM, is a museum, cultural and conference center, and is the only US National Historic Landmark located in a foreign country.  TALIM is the research center in Morocco of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies - AIMS, part of CAORC, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

The blog is an informal way of keeping up with TALIM's interests and activities. Comments welcome!