Digital humanities research and teaching resource wins prestigious education award in the USA
19 Nov 2019
At its annual meeting held in New Orleans on November 15th 2019, the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) presented its prestigious Undergraduate Education Award to Karma Nabulsi, Fellow and Tutor in Politics, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti, AAEF Chair in Modern Arab History at the University of Houston, and former Junior Research Fellow in Political History at St Edmund Hall.
The award recognises The Palestinian Revolution for its outstanding pedagogical contribution as an “impressive open-access website” exploring the little known history of the Palestinian liberation movement during the anti-colonial era of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Offering a 12-week teaching module in both Arabic and English, the course examines aspects of modern Palestinian political, social, economic and cultural history, as well as providing a research component, with hundreds of translated documents, photographs, films, and posters of the period, which includes a large database of video interviews with many of its participants.
Sponsored by the British Academy, and hosted at the Department of Politics and International Relations, The Palestinian Revolution has been adopted for teaching by major universities in the US and Canada, the UK, Holland and France, and the global South. This online resource is currently being translated into French and Spanish by scholars in France and the University of Chile in Santiago.
At the award ceremony, the chair of MESA’s Undergraduate Education Awards Committee stated that the judges had been deeply impressed with the digital anthology’s use of “highly innovative technologies”, and for offering “a unique and remarkable contribution to undergraduate education in the field of Middle East Studies”.
Read a review of the award by the Middle East Studies Association.