For the past 62 years, there has been an American campus in this city – the American School of Tangier (AST), the first such school in Morocco, offering classes K-12. Now, with the announcement by UNE – Maine's University of New England – of plans to establish a presence at AST, there will be a … Read more An American Campus in Tangier
House Bunting (Emberiza sahari), American Legation Tangier (photo by Christiane Delongueville) Last year, when I wrote about "wildlife" in the medina, I neglected a whole class of the animal kingdom: birds. How could I? They are by far the most ubiquitous creatures in this mostly treeless part of the city. We're not really bird watchers, … Read more Buntings on the Balcony
Tangier is home to Morocco's leading institute of higher education in tourism, ISITT, of the Ministry of Tourism. Now in its 40th year, ISITT has an alumni list of thousands, many of whom have made careers in tourism, Morocco's most important source of foreign exchange. Invited to make a presentation on the Legation at ISITT's … Read more Culture, Tourism, and Cultural Tourism
Dorothy Weems as her mother, Ruth Wolfe Weems “I was the youngest member of the Legation, the one most newly arrived from America…” There’s a touch of Isak Dinesen’s wistful remembrance of Africa in Ruth Wolfe Weems’ writing on her years in Tangier. A bit of the postwar sense of loss after the adventures, the … Read more Reliving Forties Tangier with Ruth Wolfe Weems
Dorothy Weems (left) as her mother, Ruth Wolfe Weems (right) It started with a simple sentence, a comment on a TALIMblog post about the Legation during the Second World War: My mother worked at the US Legation in the early 1940's. That one-liner from Dorothy Weems blossomed into several months' correspondence, where it emerged … Read more Miss Weems & Miss Wolfe: Tangier Stories from the ’40s
"La Chasse aux Sangliers dans la Plaine de Sahara," Horace Vernet, hand-colored lithograph by Gautier, France circa 1860, Donald Angus Collection, Tangier American Legation Yesterday's jaunt in the Perdicaris Forest west of Tangier brought us more than one reminder of Tangier's heyday as an international city. There was the ruin of Perdicaris' home itself, … Read more The Powers Go Pigsticking: Tangier Tent Club
John Carter Vincent, Tangier 1967, by Marguerite McBey You never know what you're going to find in those cryptically marked boxes. I recently came across a treasure trove of sketch books left to the Legation by Marguerite McBey, Tangier American artist, 1905 – 1999. Though her husband James was a better known artist (his portrait … Read more John Carter Vincent by Marguerite McBey
Aman te Water & George Bajalia at Moulay Hafidh Palace For most of its 16 years, SIT – le Salon International de Tanger des Livres et des Arts – had been a 100% francophone affair. Then last year we were invited to set up a stand, which was a nice entrée into this annual … Read more Putting the “I” in Tangier’s International Book Fair
April Seminar 2012 TALIM's theme this year – Civic Participation – drew in a range of civic associations, student groups, and academics, both from Morocco and Tunisia. In the wake of the Arab Spring, the idea was to stress the local, homegrown roots of public participation. Not in politics, but in the betterment of life … Read more Civic Participation: Citizenship 101 in Tangier
It's one of those happy coincidences of timing: in the same week, we have had a convergence of human and cultural geographers from two universities in the Netherlands here at TALIM. What is the difference between the disciplines? From the University of Utrecht's Human Geography and Planning website, the answer in a series of questions: … Read more Taking the Cultural and Human Pulse: Geographers at TALIM
