Education

Categories Books, Education, Historic Preservation, TALIM

Treasures to be discovered at the Legation

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By Grecia Álvarez, MLIS, Guest blogger

Grecia, Dunya and Majda inside the rare books cage
Grecia, Dunya and Majda inside the rare books cage

When we started sifting through our collection to cull our rare books from the regular shelves and put them into their new home in “the cage” we never imagined we would find books dating from 1572, or even a parchment signed by King Philip II of Spain (Philip I of Portugal). In fact, we started out by pulling books dating from 1920 and earlier and soon found that our cage was overflowing, so that we had to cut back to books printed before 1911. Previously, these books were intermingled with our regular collection, which focuses mainly on Morocco, but it was decided that these books required special protection, and thus the cage, a small room with an iron gate, was born. Our rare books cover a breadth of topics, from early accounts of European exploration of the region, to government treatises, geographical studies, books signed by illustrious figures (including a book belonging to former Prime Minister of Spain Antonio Cánovas del Castillo). We even have copies of an 1889 edition of Washington Irving’s The Life of Mahomet and a first edition of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad.

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Categories Education, Strait of Gibraltar, Tangier

Greg White Discusses “Tangier Metropole” with Professors & Researchers from Abdelmalek Essaadi U.

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(left to right): Iliass Khaddour, PHD Student civil engineering, Dr Abdessamad Bernoussi, Professor of Mathematics, John Davison, TALIM Director, Dr Greg White, Professor of Government, Hamadou Kamara, PHD Student Hydrology, Dr Mharef Amina, Professor of Hydrology, Dr Adil Alaoui, Professor of Civil Engineering, Yhtimad Bouziane, Associate Director TALIM
(left to right): Iliass Khaddour, PHD Student civil engineering, Dr Abdessamad Bernoussi, Professor of Mathematics, John Davison, TALIM Director, Dr Greg White, Professor of Government, Hamadou Kamara, PHD Student Hydrology, Dr Mharef Amina, Professor of Hydrology, Dr Adil Alaoui, Professor of Civil Engineering, Yhtimad Bouziane, Associate Director TALIM

TALIM welcomed Smith College Professor of Government Gregory White to the Legation October 27 for an informal round table conversation with professors and researchers from Tangier’s Abdelmalek Essaadi University.

Participants engaged in lively exchanges about links between the environment and touristic and overall development of “Tangier Metropole,” an ambitious program to develop the Tangier region from Cap Spartel in the west to beyond the port of Tangier Med in the east.

Read moreGreg White Discusses “Tangier Metropole” with Professors & Researchers from Abdelmalek Essaadi U.

Categories Arab World, Cultural Diplomacy, Education, Fulbright

Global Voices, Chicago and Tangier

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TALIM Global Voices group
Tangier Global Voices group, plus ALC Tangier staff: IT wizard Rachid El Mziryahi, teacher Rabia el Antaki, and Director Mark Holbrook

Their voices came wafting up over the Legation courtyard, a springtime Friday evening.  Intrigued, I paid a visit to our group of high school English students enrolled in the Global Voices Initiative program, thanks to our partnership with the American Language Center (ALC) Tangier.  You can watch the videos on the ALC website.

It was practice for their upcoming presentation of a set of three plays, which they developed, wrote in English, and then performed for their audience of American students in Chicago, via a Google + connection.

Meanwhile, the Chicago students were doing the same thing – in Arabic.  Here’s how George Bajalia (he’s smiling from the corner of the screen in the photo below), former Fulbright scholar in performance studies in Tangier, described the scene in Chicago:

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