Interest in Arab Studies Soars Post 9/11
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the dynamics of the global community have shifted sharply. Mount Holyoke students have responded to this transformation by enrolling in record numbers in Arabic-language courses and in junior-year-abroad programs in Arabic-speaking countries.
“Students usually have a variety of reasons for studying Arabic, whether it’s just curiosity and a willingness to learn about the culture, the people of the Middle East, and Islam, or just because they love languages,” observed Anne-Laure Malauzat ’09, Mount Holyoke’s Arabic language fellow.
Mohammed Jiyad, who has taught Arabic at Mount Holyoke since 1988, noted that it is “in the interests of this nation to understand the language and culture [of the Middle East].”
Since 9/11, three of Jiyad’s students have gone on to doctoral programs in Islamic studies, and he can now point students to a host of scholarships available for study in Arab countries. Jiyad is also excited about the “abundance of media” in Arabic now available to students through the Internet and the international television network available at MHC, including the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera.
Enrollment in the Five College Arabic-language program—which offers courses at Mount Holyoke, Smith, and UMass—shot from ninety-seven students in 2001–02 to 182 in 2002–03. That number has continued to rise, particularly after the program was expanded to incorporate a mentoring component in 2003. Today, the program includes weekly conversations and mentored sessions with Fulbright tutors along with several hours of independent study. In 2007–08, 215 students from the five colleges were enrolled.
“I like being able to understand Arabic media and see other perspectives,” said Elizabeth Dumont-McCaffrey ’10, who was in charge of this year’s Arabic film festival. “Since it is such a hard language, it brings all the students together into a little family.”
The study-abroad program at Mount Holyoke has also reflected the rising interest in this part of the world. In the 2001–02 academic year, just three Mount Holyoke students studied abroad in Arabic-speaking countries. In 2003–04, that number leapt to six; in the last academic year, eight students studied in the Middle East. The list of host countries includes Egypt—by far the most popular—as well as Lebanon, Oman, Jordan, and Syria. In addition, in 2005 and 2006 the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives offered a summer internship at The Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon.
Alexis Tabak ’11 hopes to go into global journalism. “The more I have studied Arabic, the more my appreciation for the eastern world has grown, as well as my desire to correct stereotypes and rumors that exist in the west and in our government in particular.”—Meg Massey ’08
About the Photo:
Photographer Naira Nadjimova ’08 describes how she came to take the photo above.
“Visiting one of the most ancient cities in Egypt, Luxor, I remember finding myself in a richly agricultural, green area of southern Egypt. It’s the land of the falaheen—the farmers. Cotton is cultivated, but it is all government-controlled, poorly paid, and the labor routine requires long hours under unbearable heat. This street vendor selling shawls and other clothes for very low prices was a shocking reminder of the discrepancies in the economy of countries like Egypt and the wealthier importing countries globally. Paradoxically, he is wearing a fully synthetic outfit because ‘all the good stuff doesn’t stay in the country.’
“The photo was taken when my mother came to visit me during spring break, and we flew down to Luxor and Aswan to see the old Egyptian architecture. The man in the photo was trying to sell us shawls, like to all the tourists … I did talk to the merchant, who informed us that the clothes made of Egyptian cotton get exported, while synthetic clothes are cheap and that's what most people wear. Since I am originally from Uzbekistan, the second largest cotton producer in the world, the comment seemed foreign to me. In Uzbekistan, everyone wears silk and cotton, because it is locally produced. I thought the comment was an eye-opening experience about the Egyptian economy and the imbalance it creates for its own citizens.”
"Cotton: Too High a Price to Pay?" won honorable mention in the 2007–08 global images contest sponsored by the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives.
About Nadjimova’s Study of Arabic:
“I was an international relations major with a concentration on the Middle East. So I signed up for the junior-year-abroad program at the American University in Cairo, to take classes in Arabic and political science.
“I took Arabic at MHC with Five College Senior Lecturer in Arabic Mohammed Jiyad, who is one of the best Arabic tutors I've encountered. By the time I came back from Egypt, I think that I reached the stage of being an advanced speaker. During my senior year, I was briefly Dr. Jiyad's Arabic language assistant, and I also took my independent study with him.”
