Qatar and Egypt
"In January 2015, I attended the Doha International Book Fair in Qatar that drew vendors from all over the world, and particularly from the Middle East and North Africa. My eyes tend to find rare/unique books first, and at one stall I noted a number of large, multi-volume sets. One of these sets was al-Muḥāmāh al-Sharʿīyah, a journal produced by the Egyptian Islamic Lawyers Association in the mid-20th century. I had been trying to acquire this rare text through our normal channels for months, and here it was, at a fraction of the price that I had been quoted. I ended up making a number of other unique purchases for the UT Libraries from this vendor, after we bonded over the Muḥāmāh.
In December 2016, I traveled to Egypt and Turkey to acquire new materials and make strategic academic connections for UT Austin. While in Alexandria, Egypt, I stopped in a number of government-run publishing houses’ bookstores. One of these bookstores was featuring photographic collections of revolutionary graffiti. This book–the title of which translates to Ground, Ground: The Story of the Graffiti Revolution–documents some of that graffiti from the 2011 Egyptian revolution and after. Books like this one are important for documenting the visual culture of revolution in the Middle East, and in particular, the social themes popular among the people, including religious unity and hope for a more free future."
- Dale Correa, Middle Eastern Studies Librarian