Steven Schaaf is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the George Washington University and an ACOR-CAORC fellow in fall 2017. His research focuses on the comparative analysis of administrative courts in Jordan, Palestine and Egypt. Why do some people choose to pursue their grievances through legal channels, while others do not? What is the […]
Steven Schaaf, ACOR-CAORC Fellow, Fall 2017 Read More »
Zachary Sheldon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago and an ACOR-CAORC Fellow in fall 2017. His research project is titled “Guests in the ‘Garden’: An Ethnography of the National Present among Iraqi Residents of Amman, Jordan” and it is an exploration of young Iraqis whose families left Iraq and have come
Zachary Sheldon, ACOR-CAORC Fellow, Fall 2017 Read More »
Sarah Islam is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Princeton University and an ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellow for 2015–2016. In order to complete her research project, which deals with the evolving historical discourse on blasphemy as an Islamic legal category, from the medieval period until the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Islam needed to painstakingly
Mining Manuscripts of the Ottoman Archives Read More »
Susynne McElrone, a historian studying late-Ottoman Palestine, is interested in rural socioeconomic history, land tenure, and the implementation of property-tenure reforms following the promulgation of the 1858 Land Code. Significantly, Ottoman property-tenure reforms in the second half of the 19th century continue to influence land tenure in the Levant today. They institutionalized individually held, centrally
Susynne McElrone, ACOR-CAORC Postdoctoral Fellow, Fall 2017 Read More »
Political scientist and ACOR-CAORC fellow Rana B. Khoury was in Jordan during fall 2016 researching networks of Syrian activists. She writes below about her research methodology. As researchers, we ask many questions related to the characteristics of populations. How many voters plan to go to the polls on election day? How satisfied are citizens with
Studying a Hard-to-Reach Population of Syrian Refugees Read More »
Brittany Barrineau, ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellow for 2016–2017, writes below about her research into the social, political, and economic forces that are transforming Jordan’s traditional but rapidly evolving olive oil industry. The olive harvest festival in Irbid included an outdoor opening ceremony with poetry, several speakers, two dance groups, a marching band, and a small speech
Producing Extra Virginity in Jordan Read More »
Recent ACOR-CAORC fellow and senior archaeologist Suzanne Richard writes below about how her ongoing excavations at the central Jordan site of Khirbat Iskander are revising long-held views of the Early Bronze Age urban collapse. In the southern Levant, cities were destroyed and/or abandoned and urbanism disappeared at the end of what scholars call the Early
Khirbat Iskandar—A New View of Urbanism in Early Bronze Age Jordan Read More »
The ACOR Video Lecture Series provides accessible discussions of new research into the past and present of Jordan and the broader Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean worlds. This video, adapted from the September 2016 ACOR public lecture delivered by Dr. Suzanne Richard, examines the site of Khirbat Iskandar in light of ongoing research and new
The Levantine Early Bronze Age — An ACOR Video Lecture by Dr. Suzanne Richard Read More »
Archaeologist and recent ACOR-CAORC Fellow Andrew M. Smith II writes below about his ongoing research at the important Nabataean-Roman site of Bir Madhkur in Jordan’s Wadi Araba and how USAID SCHEP has been supporting efforts to increase awareness of the site’s important remains. During my recent fellowship at ACOR, I was pursuing two interrelated and
Between Past and Present at Bir Madhkur Read More »
Sarah Islam is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at Princeton University and a CAORC Fellow at ACOR in the fall of 2016. Her research project, “The Evolution of Blasphemy as Legal Category in Medieval Islamic History,” examines how interpretations of blasphemy—known as sabb— in Islam have varied based on time period, geography and
Sarah Islam, CAORC Fellow at ACOR, Fall 2016 Read More »
