Twenty years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we commemorate the suffering and honor the perseverance of the Iraqi community with a panel of distinguished scholars, an exhibition of “The Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” artists' book collection, and a concert of traditional Iraqi Maqam. This event is co-sponsored by: the Middle East Institute; the Center for the Study of Muslim Societies; the Department of Art History & Archaeology; and the Columbia University Libraries at Columbia University.
This event is open to the public, and all attendees are encouraged to register at the link provided below. Non-Columbia affiliates will be asked to show an official ID at the entrance of the Libraries on the day of the event.
The panel features the following distinguised speakers:
Nadje Al-Ali, Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies.
Omar Dewachi, Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology and Global Health at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
Muhsin al-Musawi, Columbia University, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Studies.
Zahra Ali, Sociologist and Assistant Professor at Rutgers University-Newark.
Beau Beausoleil, poet and activist based in San Francisco, California. He is the founder of, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, which is a book arts response to the March 5, 2007 car-bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street (the street of the booksellers) in Baghdad, Iraq.
Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi American poet and writer, laureate of the UNESCO Sharja Prize for Arab Culture and fellowship recipient from the United States Artists, the Guggenheim, and Kresge.
The accompanying pop-up exhibit at the Columbia University Libraries, to take place in the Butler Studio (2nd floor), will feature a selection of items from the Al-Mutanabbi street artists' books collection, which is now housed at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here" is an arts initiative and an archival collection, conceived as a response to violence and directed at creating shared cultural spaces. The project and the collection were initiated in 2007 following a car bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street (the street of the booksellers) in Baghdad, Iraq. The archive holds approximately 260 artists' books, 200 prints, and 100 letterpress broadsides as well as 35 photographs (from the newly launched and related project, Shadow and Light)
For information on the free April 14th Iraqi Maqam concert, hosted by Symphony Space, see here.
