Announcing Summer Series: Masterclass Mondays

This series explores culture and creative practice — from the craft of filmmaking and the life of manuscripts to the ways we preserve and present our shared history.

Designed for the curious, join us for an evening of meaningful intellectual exchange. Each session brings together faculty insight and open discussion, creating space for ideas to be shared and explored across disciplines, geographies, and experiences.

Hosted by Columbia Global Center Amman, these hybrid events connect Columbia University faculty online on Zoom with a live, in-person audience in Amman. Registration is required for all sessions; while the series is free to join, please reserve a spot in advance for each session as in-person space is limited. 

This summer, the following will be offered:

July 6: Saving Culture - Occupying Museums in Palestine

Featured faculty: Brian Boyd, Director, MA in Museum Anthropology; Co-Director, Center for Palestine Studies

Who decides what is worth keeping? This session examines how a community’s legacy is built through cultural preservation. From physical exhibitions to digital archives, discover what is selected, elevated, or left out, and how these choices shape the record we inherit. We will look at the relationships between museums and representations of the Nakba, the looting of property and antiquities from Palestinian villages and cities, and the journeys of these items to Israeli museums, kibbutzim, and cultural institutions. While bearing in mind concerns about using the epistemologies of the global north at the expense of indigenous frameworks, how can we conceptualize the obligations of a decolonialized museum for the Palestine context?

July 13: Storytelling Through Film

Featured faculty: Rania Attieh, Award-winning filmmaker and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film, School of the Arts

What transforms an idea into a compelling film? This session explores the craft of directing, from shaping narrative structure to developing visual storytelling and cinematic language, exploring how to make creative decisions that bring a film to life from concept to screen.

August 3: Reading About Love in Late Abbasid Baghdad: Interpreting Documentary Sources

Featured faculty: Matthew L. Keegan, Moinian Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College

Arabic manuscripts sometimes contain documentary evidence about the people who read or listened to the text in the form of attendance records and other marginalia. How do we interpret these sources? What can these sources tell us about the practices of reading? This session traces the life of a single manuscript of the Masari' al-'Ushshaq of al-Sarraj, a collection of poems and stories about love that was widely read in the late Abbasid and Mamluk eras.

Columbia Global Center Amman advances knowledge sharing through public events, research projects, educational workshops, and practical trainings to connect ideas and perspectives across local and global contexts. Contact us to explore opportunities to partner, collaborate, or participate in our upcoming programs and events. We continue to build on our work together across our key thematic areas.