Today, Remembrance Day in Britain, Armistice Day in France, and Veterans Day in the US, has a special resonance here in the Maghreb. 70 years ago today, American and British forces were in the midst of a battle to free Vichy-held French North Africa. Operation Torch. 70 years ago today, General Patton's representative in Fedala, … Read more 1942 – 2012: Operation Torch, 70 Years On
Though its studios are in a pleasant old villa in central Tangier, Medi 1's antenna farm in Nador, near the Moroccan-Algerian border, points east (photo, right). Medi 1 is shorthand for Radio Maghreb International, and its broadcasts in Arabic and French cover a wide audience all across North Africa. With US presidential elections only weeks … Read more Radio Medi 1 Across the Maghreb
US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens served in the Peace Corps in Morocco in the 1980s, when he worked on a project at the Tangier American Legation Museum.
After three days of conferencing, the Legation's fountains and birds are again audible in the relative calm of the medina. Not that we're complaining: a better group of participants couldn't be found. We have just hosted an illustrious group of experts on Berber Societies, the theme of this year's AIMS – American Institute for Maghrib … Read more Berber Societies: AIMS Conference 2012 at TALIM
How appropriate to launch The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia: Performance Traditions of the Maghreb, a scholarly work by Khalid Amine and Marvin Carlson, at the Tangier American Legation. Why? Well, for one thing, the Legation property once housed a theatre. "The Theatre Parcel" is noted on historic documents tracing the Legation's growth over … Read more Focus on Theatre in the Maghreb
The village of GaucÃn Ronda A week spent on the Andalusian coast, looking south, meant that Morocco was never out of sight. So too it seemed further inland, where the whitewashed hilltop villages look much like they must have looked before the Moors were expelled from Spain half a millenium ago. Based in … Read more The Andalusian-Maghrebi Cultural Bridge
That white sea in the middle, as the Med is known in Arabic, has for millenia been the scene of strategic juggling. So it was particularly helpful to have as erudite an analyst as Dr. Bichara Khader of Belgium's UCL (Université Catholique de Louvain) as the latest speaker at Tangier HEM's Université Citoyenne. Khader, … Read more UPM, UMA: Mediterranean Dialogues, Post-Arab Spring
Foreignization, domestication, transmutation… Karima Bouziane has mastered the vocabulary of her topic. At today's presentation at TALIM, the audience caught on immediately to this specialized world of semiotics, which has to do with the study of signs and communication. The capacity audience (09:00 on a Friday morning – a major feat!) was composed largely … Read more Domesticating Foreign Ads or Translating the Maghreb
To our usual languages in the little "card" above, we wanted to add a New Year's greeting in Tamazight, also known as Amazigh or Berber. But we couldn't find it in tifinagh, the Berber alphabet. The world's most complete list of holiday greetings has just included (with our prompting) an entry for the language spoken … Read more 2011 to 2012: Another TALIM Transition
Algerian scholars Amina Leghima and Lila Chabane, 2011 AIMS Maghribi Grantees at TALIM's Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed Library I hope not; I hope this is not the end of a small, effective scholarship program. I hope that someone in a position to do something – say a senior US Government Executive Branch official – will … Read more The Last of the Maghribi Grantees?
