The History of AUC Press - Audio Documentary

Final project promo - The History of the AUC Press

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SCRIPT:

Music fade-in: “Rudolf Firkušný - Schubert - Klavierstücke D.946 n°2 (1989).”

ANNC: The AUC Press annually publishes academic texts and general interest books on ancient and modern Egypt and the Middle East, as well as Arabic literature in translation.

Mark Linz – Director of the AUC press: “what we have preached before, and in to professionalize the press and move it to twenty books a year, we said we were gonna double this.” (00:00:06 seconds).

Music fade-out: “Rudolf Firkušný - Schubert - Klavierstücke D.946 n°2 (1989).”

The History of AUC Press - Final Project Promo

Music fade-in: “Rudolf Firkušný

- Schubert - Klavierstücke D.946 n°2 (1989).”

ANNC: The AUC Press is a leading English publisher in the Middle East and the United States.

Mark Linz – Director of the AUC press: “In the American list of the 120 publishers we are now in kind of a middle position, so we are now a significant publisher in what we publish every year and how we do it.” (00:00:11 seconds).

ANNC: Attend the listening sessions at AUC’s New Cairo campus on Sunday May 16 and Wednesday May 19 at 10 a.m. each day in the BEC building, room 1061.

Listening Journal - BBC's "Muslims Fighting for Israel"

IDF SOLDIERS Posted By: Thomas E. Ricks

ricks.foreignpolicy.com

This audio documentary, titled Muslims Fighting for Israel discusses Muslims who do army service in Israel and according to the IDF hundreds of Muslims sign up every year.
Rachid Sekkai from the BBC's Arabic Service talks to Muslims currently serving in the IDF and also to former soldiers and hears about the conflicts they face at home and on duty, and the pride that military service sometimes brings them.

Muslims Fighting for Israel, is produced by the BBC and runs for 23 minutes. It is part of the World Stories series. These are five individual documentaries made by BBC language service producers about the region they come from.

Nat sound has been used in the beginning of this audio documentary, you could hear the sound of gun shots, which underlines the topic of this documentary. I liked the use of music effects, as a very melancholy song for the dead was used in the introduction and this also contributes to the whole atmosphere. I didn’t like the voice of the narrator, as it is very monotonous and flat. When he first started talking, the sound quality was very bad, it was a bit fuzzy as if the microphone was moving or there was the interference of wind. In addition, I felt that his narration was clashing with the sound bite of the imam, which was taken from a religious ceremony. In this instant, it was very hard to concentrate and listen to what the reporter was saying.

He used phrases like “here we have been asked to stand up,” and “this memorial site was set up in 1999 by a Bedouin Muslim and a Jew,” which I feel like is language for TV, not radio, as we can’t really see the location and hence them standing up or the memorial site. Some accompanying pictures would have complimented the documentary and kept the listener interested.

He had a lot of sound bites, but at the same time, many of the sound bites were not necessary, especially those that were of people speaking in Hebrew or Arabic, languages that the general listener doesn’t really speak or understand.

I feel like that this documentary has had very minimal editing, for example, the reporter includes sound bites of him getting out of the car and meeting the interviewee, saying hi to her. I felt like this was very unprofessional, as listener I really don’t have to listen to all these extra sounds, I just want to listen to stuff that will add to my knowledge. In addition, there is a lot of background noise, which really deterred my attention.

The use of middle-eastern music in the middle of the documentary is not suitable for such a topic of military, war and the role Muslims play in the military of a Jewish state.

Interview with History Professor Sherene Seikaly

Transcript of the interview:

Sherene Seikaly is an Assistant Professor of History and Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo. She earned a PhD in the departments of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University in 2007, an MA at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and a B.A. at the University of California, San Diego. Before joining AUC, Professor Seikaly was the Qatar Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University (2007-2008) and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Middle East in Europe Program at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2008-2009).

Tell us about yourself, how did you decide to become a historian?

I’ll tell u a little bit about my self. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon during the civil war to Palestinian parents who were expelled as children from Palestine in 1948 and I grew up in the states. My first memories were really ones of civil war in Lebanon. And after I did undergraduate studies at UC San Diego I went back to Lebanon and I did work in the Palestinian refugee camps and non-profit work for about four years in Lebanon and I think after that when I went back to do graduate work and I decided that the on-profit world wasn’t really helping me to do new things, there was like a ceiling for me in that field. I moved towards graduate work and academic work and then my journey towards history was kind of accidental in many ways but then as I got more familiar with what I could do as a historian especially as a historian of Palestine I became very committed and convinced of it.

And that brings us to our next questions, how has the fact that you are of Palestinian descent affect the way you viewed things and your approach to work?

I think that from the very beginning very sort of because my family, in part because of the civil war but also in part because of how my family experienced being Palestinian in Lebanon, even though we had citizenship, because the Palestinian Christians got citizenship in Lebanon. My family sort of raised me from the very beginning with the kind of political background and being unable to go to Palestine and be in Palestine and be in one place with the rest of the family, so that was sort of one of the first things that formed me as a person, my very first memories are of that. And then what I think happened when I went to the states was because I understood that the way that the Palestinian story being told in the media wasn’t accurate, and so I began questioning the way politics were represented more broadly. So it helped make connections with sort of the plight of the Native Americans in the United States and African Americans and I began making connections sort of from an early age. Today I think the approach is one of commitment to justice and I like to think that’s not just about Palestine but more general, but it is definitely informed by that commitment to justice in Palestine.

Did you ever face difficulties in your field or while you were studying just because of whom you are?

No not while I was studying, while I was studying I had a very supportive group of advisors and folks around me that were supporting me and helping me, but when I started sort of the job application process, because I had been doing political work for about ten years, I mean even longer, especially my time in New York began with a kind of, the second intifada, and that was the time of real political activism, and I think when started going out onto the job market, the combination of having done political work and doing something on Palestine and being Palestinian, was a challenge definitely, I think people were afraid of the possible controversies that having me on-campus would inspire.

I heard that you are working on a manuscript, its a work in progress, so can you tell us a little bit about this.

Sure, it’s called Meatless Days: Consumption and Capitalism in Palestine, its based on the dissertation, which tries to look at basically the ideas that the way we’ve looked at history, Palestinian history, before 1948 has simplified the social history of that period. So people have looked at that history as one of either there are these kind of decadent notable elites or honourable and ignorant peasants, and one of the things that my work tries to do is say that there was something else going on in the middle, that there was a middle class, that they had ideas about capitalism, that they had ideas about what it meant to have a healthy body and economy and a nation. And one of the reason I think it’s important, is because it allows us to look at liberalism and capitalism critically as a historical phenomenon.

Listening Journal - Long Form Audio Documentary

'The Girl at the Window'

This audio documentary is produced by Radio Netherlands (RN). It is produced and presented by Anna Yeadell and it runs for 00:29:30 minutes. This documentary is a producer’s quest for the artist who painted a picture left to her by her grandmother. Yeadell talks about how she discovered the 90 year old artist still painting with an incredible story to tell about how she survived the Second World War, her husband’s death and pursuing her dream.

I found this documentary to be very interesting because I got to listen to the artist talk about her life and her art, which I didn’t expect since she is very old. The documentary was very simple and only included interviews with a few people which make it very personal. But nevertheless, listening to this old lady telling her story, which is filled with lessons about life, was very insightful and touching. Her words were of wisdom, and I felt like the whole point behind this documentary is not the painting itself but the message behind it.

The sound quality was very good, all the voices were clear, except that I heard a shuffling sound when Ursula was talking, and towards the end of the documentary, in one of Ursula’s sound bites, I heard the sound of an airplane in the background. This shows that not much effort was put into the editing process. Natural sound was not used at all, except for some piano music which played in the background at the start of the documentary and ran for almost 3:20 minutes. It started playing again when Ursula brought up the subject of her husband’s death and the war and this set up a tragic atmosphere.

The narrator’s voice was really clear and was suitable for transition from one topic to another because it was youthful and clear, which is contrary to the interviewee’s voice, I felt like she was putting a lot of effort to talk. But, Ursula’s voice is so expressive and underlines this whole nostalgic mood.

I felt like the documentary was too long for such a topic, especially that only two people were interviewed. It included a lot of sound bites of Ursula, which is understandable since the documentary is about her, but they could have been shorter. Towards the end, it was hard to concentrate on what she was saying because she was struggling to pronounce her words.

The documentary begins strongly, they start with a sound bite of Ursula, which compelled me to keep listening because her voice is expressive and has this very sad and frustrated but asserting and determined feel to it. Although this documentary features a 90 year old woman who’s life is close to an end, the ending of the documentary leaves the listener full of hope and provides the listener with some very compelling words of advice: “you must not stand still because that means going back, you must always go forward, and that’s what I try to do,” said Ursula.

http://www.prx.org/pieces/1626-rn-documentary-the-girl-at-the-window

PSA - Al Quds Club Awareness Campaign

Local Officer: Zeina Bisharat, 0166036645 zee_727@hotmail.com, Head of Public Relations
Organization: Al Quds Club at the American University in Cairo
Contact Info: alquds.auc@gmail.com
Heading: Al Quds Club Campaign to Promote Awareness
Airdate: March 10, 2010 – May 12, 2010

30 seconds

MUSIC: MA BAIN HAIFA W JENIN: 2 SECOND

MUSIC CONTINUES TO PLAY IN BACKGROUND, BUT FADED

ANNC1: Al-Quds club, the Palestinian club at AUC, would like to open the door of opportunity to those who are interested in learning more about Palestine’s culture, tradition and history.

ANNC2: you can increase your awareness and engage yourself in weekly debates, documentary screenings and first-hand stories from the many Palestinians at AUC.

ANNC1: Al-Quds Club also offers weekly dance practices to those who want to learn the traditional Palestinian dance.

ANNC2: for more info. visit our booth or join our facebook group.

AMPLIFY MUSIC

END.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24201360431&ref=ts