This is a joint webinar between TARII and Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), and funded by the JM Kaplan Fund as part of a future convening for Nimrud.

The ancient city of Nimrud, also known as Kalhu, was once the lavish capital city of a Neo-Assyrian empire that stretched from the Gulf to the Mediterranean around 800 BCE. Located just 20 kilometers south of Mosul, human habitation at Nimrud dates to the late fourth millennium BCE, and at its height in the ninth century BCE its ancient city walls encircled over 900 acres that included temples, palaces, elaborate monumental buildings, a ziggurat, and some of the most famous archaeological artifacts from Iraq.

Nimrud has suffered greatly from intentional destruction by Daesh. Since then, several teams have undertaken the crucial but daunting task to document and initiate recovery operations at Nimrud. At this point in time, it is critical that a holistic plan is developed for the site to ensure its future. In collaboration with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), TARII is convening a private meeting in Iraq for the development of this site plan. To prepare for this meeting, join SBAH and TARII for a virtual discussion on the current condition of the site, including presentations from the Nimrud Rescue training team, archaeologists, and Iraqi officials and scholars. Our goals are also to address the need to raise international awareness of Nimrud’s current state, highlight the efforts of SBAH, and mobilize support for its restoration and rehabilitation to be accessible again for visitors.  

The webinar will be recorded with presentations in English and Arabic (simultaneous translations available). Registration for this Zoom event is required but free.

For more information like the program and speaker biographies, see the conference page.

Continuing with the series TARII began in late 2020, join us for a discussion on the protection and preservation of Iraq’s modern cultural heritage, which will be moderated by Dr. Peter Wien, TARII’s President. We are pleased to welcome Maysoon Al-Damluji, Dr. Geraldine Chatelard, Dr. Saad Eskander, Dr. Caecilia Pieri, and Dr. Nada Shabout to this group discussion.

During this event, we considered:

• The importance of art, intangible heritage, and recorded memory in strengthening Iraqi communities on the national, regional, and local levels

• The state of museums, libraries, and documentary collections in Iraq

• Capacity building for curators, librarians, and archivists

• Ways for Iraqi and international scholars to collaborate

• Iraqi archives outside of Iraq

To learn more about this and the panelists, see the conference page for this event here.

For those who could not join us live, the discussion was recorded and is available here on our YouTube page.

An announcement for the third discussion in this series, Protecting Iraq’s Ancient Cultural Heritage: Training, Security, Storage and Documentation, and Object Trafficking, will be made soon.

Banner photo: Freedom Monument by Jawad Salim, Tahrir Square, Baghdad

TARII is pleased to introduce a new regular lecture series for our members! In partnership with the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq, this lecture series will be held at least twice a year either virtually or at the Embassy in Washington, D.C. It will be an opportunity to learn about the research being conducted by scholars in and on Iraq as well as a chance to network with others in the TARII community. As an introduction to this new series, the first lecture will be open to non-members as well.

Welcoming remarks will be given by Ahmed Utaifa, First Secretary, Head of In-Service and Development Section, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until recently Mr. Utaifa was the Legal and Cultural Affairs Officer at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in Washington, D.C. where he coordinated this new project with TARII. He has long worked in foreign service for Iraq and has lectured numerously on cultural heritage, world history, and cultural diplomacy. We look forward to Mr. Utaifa’s opening remarks to begin this series.

A recording of the lecture is available below.

King of the Four Quarters of the World: The Art and Architecture of Assyrian Kingship

Around 878 BCE, the Assyrian king, Ashurnasirpal II moved his royal capital from its ancestral site to a new location in the town of Kalhu (modern Nimrud, biblical Calah). There he initiated a building program of lavish palaces and temples that set the stage for 250 years of Assyrian royal arts that accompanied the expansion of the largest empire the world had seen to date. This talk provides an overview of the impressive achievements of these imperial arts, examining the architecture, sculpture, and carved reliefs from Kalhu and the subsequent two royal capitals at Dur Shurrukin and Nineveh.

Dr. Marian Feldman

Marian Feldman is the W.H. Collins Vickers Chair in Archaeology and holds a joint appointment in the Departments of the History of Art and Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She received her PhD in art history at Harvard University in ancient Near Eastern art and concentrates on the arts of the late third, second and first millennia BCE in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. Her interests range from questions regarding the role of the arts in cultural interactions and collective memory to issues of style, object agency, materiality and space.

Feldman’s first book, Diplomacy by Design: Luxury Arts and an ‘International Style’ in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE (Chicago, 2006), investigates the role of artistic hybridity and luxury arts in international diplomacy during the Late Bronze Age. Her second book, Communities of Style: Portable Luxury Arts, Identity and Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant (Chicago 2014), examines the ways communities form around -- and by means of -- art objects, focusing on portable luxury items (in particular, ivory and metalwork) in the first half of the first millennium BCE. Feldman has also co-edited several volumes, including Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art (with Brian A. Brown; De Gruyter 2013), and is the author of several articles and catalogue essays. Her current book project investigates aspects of space, affect and agency in late third and early first millennium Mesopotamia.

Professor Feldman has held fellowships at the Institute for Archaeological Research (IAW) at the University of Freiburg (2019), the Internationales Kolleg Morphomata at the University of Cologne (2013), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2008-2009). She was recently a co-PI on the project “Material Entanglements in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond,” funded by the Getty Foundation “Connecting Art Histories” Initiative (2017-2020). She was a Getty Foundation “Connecting Art Histories” Visiting Professor at Bogaziçi University, Istanbul (March 2013) and a visiting professor at the University of Heidelberg (June 2010). She taught in the History of Art and Near Eastern Studies Departments at the University of California, Berkeley, before coming to Johns Hopkins in 2013.

This first lecture was open to members and non-members. Future in-person lectures in this series will be free for members and available to non-members for a small fee.

A virtual discussion led by Dr. Dina Khoury with Dr. Zahra Ali, Dr. Nadje Al-Ali, and Dr. Yasmin Chilmeran

Following the release of Dr. Zahra Ali’s book, “Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation”, join Dr. Ali, Dr. Nadje Al-Ali, and Dr. Yasmin Chilmeran for a discussion on the role that women, feminist discourses, and gender norms have had on the Iraqi uprising. The discussion will be led and moderated by Dr. Dina Khoury.

To learn more about this and the speakers, see the conference page for this event here.

A recording of the event is available here.

Transcriptions and translations will be made available on our Conferences page in future.

Sponsored by The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII), this colloquium session at the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) will be offered in honor of the memory of Dr. Lamia Al-Gailani Werr, an internationally recognized scholar and one of Iraq’s first female archaeologists. Dr. Al-Gailani was also the first woman from the Iraqi government’s Antiquities service to serve as an official representative on a foreign expedition. 

As one of the first Iraqi women to run her own dig (Tell adh-Dhibai) and as the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI)’s only honorary lifetime member, her legacy reaches into every aspect of the cultural heritage community in Iraq and internationally. Her scholarship and advocacy will have a lasting impact on generations of scholars.

Dr. Lamia Al-Gailani Werr died on January 18, 2019 at the age of 80. This collection of papers and discussion will focus on Dr. Al-Gailani’s work in Iraq and London to include both her scholarship, advocacy, her role as an advisor, and her legacy in projects that continue.

Speakers:

Dr. Abdulameer Al-Hamdani

Dr. McGuire Gibson

Dr. Katharyn Hanson

Dr. Amy Gansell

See the AIA annual meeting program, available here, for a full schedule of sessions and for the presentation abstracts of our speakers. You must register to attend the AIA annual meeting in order to join this or any other session during this annual meeting.

Photo credit: NPR.org

TARII organized a conversation about Iraq’s cultural heritage moderated by Dr. Katharyn Hanson. We welcomed Maysoon Al-Damluji, Dr. Abdulameer Al-Hamdani, Dr. Patty Gerstenblith, and Dr. Nada Shabout for this webinar discussion.

The scholars discussed:

• Key issues for Iraq’s cultural heritage today

• The progression of cultural heritage research

• The role of the international community

• The trafficking of cultural heritage objects and artifacts

• The preservation of modern art and historic architecture

• Effects of the global pandemic

See the Conference page for this event for more information about the panelists and other relative conferences.

This webinar was held over Zoom. For those who could not join us, the discussion was recorded and available via YouTube here.

Join TARII for an online discussion with Historian Dr. Kevin Jones on his new book, “The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Revolution in Iraq”.

A recording of this lecture is available below.

The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Revolution in Iraq

Poetry has long dominated the cultural landscape of modern Iraq, simultaneously representing the literary pinnacle of high culture and giving voice to the popular discourses of mass culture. As the favored genre of culture expression for religious clerics, nationalist politicians, leftist dissidents, and avant-garde intellectuals, poetry critically shaped the social, political, and cultural debates that consumed the Iraqi public sphere in the twentieth century. The popularity of poetry in modern Iraq, however, made it a dangerous practice that carried serious political consequences and grave risks to dissident poets.
The Dangers of Poetry is the first book to narrate the social history of poetry in the modern Middle East. Moving beyond the analysis of poems as literary and intellectual texts, Kevin M. Jones shows how poems functioned as social acts that critically shaped the cultural politics of revolutionary Iraq. He narrates the history of three generations of Iraqi poets who navigated the fraught relationship between culture and politics in pursuit of their own ambitions and agendas. Through this historical analysis of thousands of poems published in newspapers, recited in popular demonstrations, and disseminated in secret whispers, this book reveals the overlooked contribution of these poets to the spirit of rebellion in modern Iraq.

Moderator: Dr. Peter Wien is President of TARII and Professor for Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Maryland in College Park. He received his PhD in 2003 from the University of Bonn, Germany, and Master degrees from the University of Oxford, UK, and the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1999. He taught at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, and was a fellow of the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin. His publications include the books Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 2017), and Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (London: Routledge, 2006).

Author: Dr. Kevin Jones is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2013 and was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the George Washington University Institute for Middle East Studies in 2013-2014 before beginning his current position at the University of Georgia. His work on Iraqi cultural history and Middle Eastern labor history has appeared in Social History and his new book, The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in Iraq, was published by Stanford University Press in September 2020. The book traces the history of poetry, political protest, and public performance in modern Iraq and demonstrates the unique contribution of nationalist and communist poets to the cultural politics of anticolonialism and national liberation in the twentieth century.

Discussant: Dr. Sara Farhan is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah; and a  Michael Ellis DeBakey History of Medicine Fellow at the National Library of Medicine. She earned her PhD in History from York University in 2019.

This event was co-sponsored by Stanford University Press

Interested in the book? Check out their website here.

Join us for our annual Reception at MESA!

This is a great opportunity to learn more about TARII by meeting and socializing with TARII staff, Board members, individual members, and our colleagues. Join us for some food, drinks, and great conversation!

We will be at the Palace Café’s Black Duck Bar, a very short walk from the MESA Annual Meeting hotel.

Please join us for our Roundtable at MESA!

Abstract:

Due to the ongoing legacies of sanctions, authoritarianism, violence, and foreign interventions we have now suffered over 20 years of disconnect between international scholars, who do research in Iraq studies, and their ability to conduct that research inside of Iraq. Following on The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII)’s recently established Center for Research in Baghdad we propose a roundtable to review the state of Iraq Studies in all disciplines and how our research center in Baghdad can contribute to the future of the field. TARII is a registered non-profit devoted to promoting scholarly research on and in Iraq and to strengthen relationships between Iraqi and American scholars and institutions. At this time in particular, Iraq’s important role on the world stage necessitates facilitating research on Iraq with a full and accurate context that can be best accessed inside Iraq. With this panel we hope to provide the opportunity for a robust discussion covering Iraqi history, contemporary politics, cultural heritage, and cultural production across disciplines today.

Roundtable Chair: Peter Wien

Speakers:

• Nabil Al-Tikriti

• Katharyn Hanson

• Alda Benjamen

• Antoine Borrut

• Matthieu Rey

One of the most costly and aggressive interventions in American history, the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 ushered in an era of state collapse, insecurity, ethno-religious violence, and new forms of authoritarianism culminating in the rise of ISIL in 2014. Current narratives of Iraq have eschewed tackling questions of transitional justice and post-conflict peace building. This workshop brings together leading experts on Iraq to explore how Iraqi state and society relations can benefit from peace-building paradigms as mechanisms for addressing stalled democratization.

For the flyer and more information, click here.

For the agenda and presentation abstracts, click here.

Are you attending the Middle East Studies Association meeting in San Antonio this year? If so, please join TARII on Saturday evening to meet others interested in Iraq and Mesopotamian studies. All are welcome!

On Saturday, May 5, 2018 from 10:00 am - 4:00 pm, the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq to Washington, D.C., will have the honor to join more than 75 other nations participating in Passport DC, opening its doors to the gracious public and the Iraqi community in the US during the Around the World Embassy Tour.

This year's Iraqi Embassy Tour will be showcasing traditional Iraqi music, costumes, art, painting, ancient Mesopotamia, as well as the documentary, "Letters from Baghdad: The True Story of Gertrude Bell and Baghdad." It will also entertain guests with Iraqi traditional food.

The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII) and the University of Chicago Oriental Institute will also participate in the Iraqi Embassy Tour.

The Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) and The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII) cordially invite you to a lecture:

"The Situation in Mosul"

Mosul, Iraq, once a thriving city of more than 1.8 million religiously and ethnically diverse inhabitants, was attacked and conquered by ISIS (ISIL or Da’ish) in June 2014. Its successful liberation in July 2017 began the first step in the rebuilding of Iraq’s third largest city.

Speakers include: Dr. Alda Benjamin, Dr. Katharyn Hanson, Dr. Nabil Al-Tikriti, & Dr. Eric Davis

Kindly RSVP to events@caorc.org.