Browse funds
Joukowsky Family Librarian for Middle Eastern Studies
Established in 1994 by Martha Sharp Joukowsky '58 LHD'85 P'87 and Artemis A. W. Joukowsky '55 LLD'85 P'87 to support the acquisition of materials in the field of Middle Eastern Studies (MES) and to fund a Library position responsible for Middle Eastern Studies collection development, to serve as a faculty liaison, and to provide reference services.
A Brown University faculty member in the French Department since January 2016, Dr. Maan Alsahoui was also appointed Joukowsky Family Middle East Studies Librarian in August 2017. His main research interests are the representation of Islam in French contemporary literature and Otherness in Arab French-speaking modern literature. Dr. Alsahoui received his Ph.D. in 2010 in French and Comparative Literature from The University of Paris-Nanterre in France and has conducted research in Syria, France, and, most recently, Lebanon. As a member of the Academic Engagement team, his focus on collection development has been to expand holdings in all aspects of Middle East Studies, ranging from classical Islamic sources to the contemporary production of art in the Arab World.
With the expansion of the Middle East program at Brown, collecting for Middle East studies has been moving in new directions, including increased purchases in Turkish and Persian languages as well as growth in the number of titles in Arabic literature and Islamic Humanities. With scholarship increasingly conducted online, Dr. Alsahoui has pursued the acquisition of digital resources, including a number of foundational reference works. Dr. Alsahoui has been working closely with colleagues in the Center for Digital Scholarship and Digital Technologies to build databases of our MES related special collections. This process has included the development of undergraduate research projects. Support of this endowment has raised the profile of Brown's MES program and bolstered its ability to attract students and scholars alike, who are drawn by the collection's depth and breadth. Through this collection scholars can explore emerging interests such as the wide range of publications on gender and erotic and homosexual literary productions from the Arab world. Support for this position has additionally enabled the digitization of a major collection of Quran manuscripts and the continued curation of other Middle East-related holdings of the University's special collections. Most recently, the Library has expanded its relationship with vendors throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world and adapted to the changing publishing environment. The endowment has supported endeavors that have added many titles that serve as teaching resources for the expansion of course offerings through MES. This includes archive databases such as The Middle East Online: Arab-Israeli Relations, 1917-1970 and encyclopedias about Shi'i Islam and Christian Arab writers, all of which will serve research endeavors in many disciplines.