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Aga Khan Documentation Center
Aga Khan Documentation Center

Category Archives: All AKDC News

AKDC@MIT Program Head at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations

Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., spoke at the Media in Muslim Contexts: Inventing and Reinventing Identities conference sponsored by the Aga Khan University (International), in the United Kingdom, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, 3-4 November 2016. There, she presented her paper “The Past Demands an Answer: What Becomes of History in the Digital Era?” exploring the opportunities, constraints, intentions, and consequences–planned and not–of the production, presentation, and dissemination of digital projects about and/or from the Middle East writ large. The conference was simulcasted with campuses in Nairobi and Karachi.  

AKDC@MIT announces holiday hours

Generosity is the disposition of the dwellers of Paradise.   The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT will close for the  Thanksgiving (USA) holiday beginning Monday, 21 November.  We will reopen on Monday, 28 November.  We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.  

International Tangier: Exhibit in Rotch Library

Images from the early 20th and 21st century on display For centuries European powers battled one another and Moroccan forces for control of the city of Tangier, strategically positioned on the Straits of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. In 1924 an agreement made the city a demilitarized “International Zone,” administered by European representatives, yet still nominally under Moroccan sovereignty. With the exception of a period of five year occupation by the Spanish during World War II, some variation of this arrangement remained in place until the city was returned to Moroccan sovereignty in 1956. An exhibition […]

The Allure of the Digital Humanities in Times of Crisis

Sharon C. Smith, PhD, program head of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, is the invited lecturer at Western University (London, Ontario, Canada) where she will present “Allure of the Digital Humanities in Times of Crisis: Documenting Disruption in the Middle East” on Wednesday, October 12, commencing at 5:30 pm. The lecture will be held in the John Labatt Visual Arts Center, room 100. It is free and open to the public. Earlier that day, Smith will lead a graduate seminar discussion on the “Islamic City” at the invitation of Cody Barteet, professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Western.

Elements: Photography exhibition in Rotch Library

A studio photographer by trade, Mike Walker approaches subjects with the intention of drawing something out that one might not see or notice at first glance. In the Elements series, he captures exquisite, ephemeral, and volatile qualities of scientific phenomena. About the artist Mike Walker, a photographer with more than 30 years of experience, owns Mike Walker Photography in Chicago. His clients have included National Geographic, Mattel, Popular Science, the Joyce Foundation, Newton Running, Jones Dairy, Kemper, Sony, American Girl, Oxford University, Headwater Financial, and Peapod, to name a few. Mike’s work has taken him from the campus of Kent State University […]

City records and other Archnet enhancements

Archnet has recently implemented city authorities to help users find resources related to specific cities, even if they search using variant spellings, alternate or vernacular names, abbreviations, or even names that are no longer used. For example, users will be able to find records associated with Cairo even if they search on an Arabic transliteration of the name;  records associated with Mumbai even if they search on the former name of Bombay; and records relating to Fez even if they search using the Francophone spelling of Fès. Names in Arabic or other non-Latinate scripts are also included and will display to the user, though it is not yet possible to search using […]

Isfahan (Iran) Urban History Project archives arrive at AKDC@MIT

The Aga Khan Documentation Center has received the Isfahan Urban History Project archive from the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada). The project documents the development of Isfahan, Iran, from the time of the Buyid dynasty (ca. 9th c./4th c. AH). Undertaken by Dr. Lisa Golombek (Curator Emeritus [Islamic Art] Retired, ROM) and Dr. Renata Holod (Professor, and Curator in the Near East Section, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania), the project spanned the 1970s and investigated the early urban nodes of Isfahan  — a city perhaps more known for its monumental architecture and urban planning of the  Safavid […]

AKDC donates books to university in Morocco

As a result of the sudden and tragic death of Melanie Michaildis (Ph.D., AKPIA MIT 2007) in 2013, Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT became the home for her research archive and personal library. Dr. Michaildis was an Islamic art specialist and was serving as the Korff Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Art at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, at the time of her death.  She had conducted fieldwork in Iran, Uzbekistan and Western Europe, was praised as a gifted and passionate scholar and teacher on the subject of Islamic art.  Dr. Michaildis had published numerous scholarly articles on Islamic […]

AKDC collaboration brings 1959 recordings of Moroccan music to Archnet

Between 1959 and 1962 the American author and composer, Paul Bowles, traveled Morocco to collect samples of the Moroccan soundscape. Half a century later, the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT is working with the Library of Congress and the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM) to make all of those recordings and the accompanying notes publicly available on Archnet. At the time he was recording, Bowles felt it was most urgent to capture the music of Morocco’s Amazigh (Berber) communities, which he saw as in danger of disappearing, but he also recorded classical and popular Arabic songs […]