is a senior in public manage-

ment/policy and criminal justice. He spent his summer in northern Jordan on UA’s

first program in the Middle East: Arizona in Jordan. Kevin has long had an interest in the politics and culture of the Mid-dle East, more so than the lan-guage. He says that people tend to live in cultural bubbles and that

he “finds value in living in other cultures.” Spending two months in Jordan gave him a new respect for anyone who’s different – whether from another state or another country. He emphasized how “small and insignificant he is as an individual” when looking at global culture. Kevin did not study Arabic while in Jordan, but he did pick up a lot of the local dialect from hanging out in Irbid’s many cafés. Some of that time was for pleasure, but much of it was for an assignment he had, “Ethnography of an Irbid Café.” This was part of the course “Ethnography of the Middle East” and students had to engage in the community, observe patrons, and understand the importance of socialization in a Middle Eastern context. About half way through his summer he realized he wasn’t going to understand the culture as much as he had hoped to, but he tried to adapt nonetheless. And this wasn’t a difficult process in Irbid, which he called “raw.” He said that means to him that Irbid is a genuine setting. There’s al-most no commercialization or Westerniza-tion. It’s not like many study abroad sites that are chosen to make it easy for stu-dents to adapt.

had a summer of “firsts.”

She was the first UA student to ever re-ceive a Foreign Language and Area Stud-ies (FLAS) fellowship to study Kurdish.

And she was the first foreign student to study Kurdish at Artuklu University in Mardin, Turkey. Artuklu University’s Living Languages Institute only recently began teaching Kurdish, a language that had been banned for decades in Turkey. Mija is a MENAS master’s student and already possesses an advanced level of Turkish. When she arrived in Mardin, an ancient town in eastern Anatolia, she was some-what nervous about being there as a stu-dent of Kurdish. After all, she said, Kurds don’t even have access to education in Kurdish. But the anxiety dissolved quickly as she was welcomed into the community.

When asked by p e o p l e i n Mardin, or other nearby cities she traveled to, why she was studying Kurd-ish, she would reply that Kurd-ish is very im-portant regional language. She

feels too that speaking Kurdish is making a political statement. And being so politi-cized, she was careful about using it. Mija only spoke to people in Kurdish if she heard them speaking it first. Otherwise she relied on her Turkish. But she had ample practice speaking Kurdish whether it was in the streets of Mardin, the bazaars of Diyarbakir, or on local buses. In class, however, there was an emphasis on read-ing and writing. Mija said that learning Kurdish positions her in an important way for her MA re-search even though the language currently holds more of a symbolic relevance to her research topic as her primary research subjects are bilingual. Learning Kurdish, she says, demonstrates an attitude of openness and appreciation of Kurdish culture like nothing else would. In the fu-ture she hopes to continue research in Kurdish areas of Turkey using Kurdish as a primary language to interview Kurdish families and individuals who are not pre-dominantly Turkish speakers.

spent the summer im-

mersing herself in Jordanian Arabic on UA’s program in Irbid, Jordan. UA’s pro-gram, Arizona in Jordan, is run in coopera-tion with Yarmouk University and its Lan-guage Center. Carissa chose to study

colloquial Arabic (as did many on the pro-gram) during her time in Jordan. The pro-gram matched students up with a lan-guage partner, often a local student at Yarmouk, to hone the students’ speaking skills. Said Carissa of this language inten-sive experience, “Overcoming the chal-lenge of speaking Arabic was one of my most important accomplishments in Jor-dan. To reach an advanced level of Arabic you need to learn to speak and that’s what this program helped me do.” And as a second-year MENAS and SIRLS (School of Information Resources & Library Sci-ence) master’s student she couldn’t help but spend time poking around Yarmouk’s vast library, examining their information retrieval systems. Carissa was amazed by the generosity of the Jordanians. She said that no matter where she was, she felt as though she were their guest. But of all the places the group visited this past summer, including

Crusader cas-tles, the Dead Sea, Musl im forts, and moun-tain villages, her favorite place in Jordan was Wadi Rum, a spec-tacular valley of sand and moun-tains in southern

Jordan. Experiencing the desert, the sun-set, and the Bedouin hospitality (not to mention the food and dancing) were what pushed Wadi Rum to the top of her list. As for Irbid, the program base, Carissa was surprised by its traditional, almost village-like feel. She summed up her ex-perience in The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan saying she felt as though she were “interacting in an authentic situation.”

is currently a senior in jour-

nalism and Middle Eastern studies and spent six weeks in the Sultanate of Oman. He was one of 12 students from across the U.S. on a scholarship from the Sultan Qaboos Culture Center (SQCC), an Omani institute in DC promoting cultural and educational ties between the U.S. and Oman. Other students on the program came from various academic backgrounds including political science, international relations, and comparative literature. While in Oman, Mark and his cohort studied Ara-bic at the University of Nizwa. The group

This past summer dozens of adventurous University of Arizona students, staff, and faculty spent between one and twelve weeks in the Middle East or North Africa. They were studying a language, conducting re-search, engaged in a project, working, visiting family, presenting a con-ference, or enjoying a unique vacation. This newsletter highlights the summers of seven University of Arizona undergraduate and graduate students who were in Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey.

also attended special lectures on Omani history and culture. What surprised Mark most about this Gulf country was that it wasn’t as restrictive as

he thought it might be. For example, he said, people there will usually “talk about any-thing” and he noticed an over-whelming major-ity of female stu-dents at the uni-versity where the group studied.

He also said that Nizwa was more tradi-tional than the country’s capital, Muscat. Overall though, and regardless of what part of the country they’re from, Omanis have an international outlook and are se-cure in their cultural identity, Mark con-cluded. This was Mark’s first time abroad and he was very glad he chose Oman for this first international experience. He called Oman a “stunningly beautiful country” and hopes to go back to see more of it at some point, perhaps for research or just to visit. He made many Omani friends and interacted with the local community through program-related events.

is a third-year MA student in

the dual MENAS-Journalism program and spent nine weeks in Cairo this summer as an intern at the Egypt Independent, a new English-language weekly with 15 full-time reporters and two managing editors. Brit-

ain is no stranger to the Middle East, having previ-ously visited Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine prior to em-barking on this latest journalis-tic adventure. Her first as-s i g n m e n t , given to her in

her second week, was to write up a report on a meeting of officials from various sec-tors to discuss solutions to Cairo’s conges-tion problems. Britain interviewed partici-pants from the meeting and submitted her story. Her editor loved it and she was given the environmental beat. This fell out of her area of expertise, but Britain said that it put her “in touch with a part of Egypt I never would have been able to see other-wise.” Britain went on to write nine stories during her summer with the newspaper, including articles about composting, a Ve-nus event at the American University in Cairo observatory, an organic olive farm, a story about El Gouna, supposedly the most environmentally sustainable commu-

freedom in that country. She asked staff at the Egypt Independent how they perceive their role as journalists now compared to the period before the revolution. She dis-covered that access to information, al-though only slightly improved according to those interviewed, remains one of the big-gest challenges facing journalists after the revolution. The summer, said Britain, was the “ultimate experience” in that it was a per-fect convergence of her two UA academic programs. She developed relationships and sources (a fundamental task for jour-nalists), and she was able to use the Ara-bic (both Modern Standard and Egyptian colloquial) that she had learned at UA. But, of course, the “ultimate experience” had its challenges. They included the in-cessant noise (particularly the honking horns), the poor air quality, the crowds, and, curiously, testy zoo officials. Do ask her about her story from the Giza Zoo. To read some of Britain’s reports from Egypt, go to: www.egyptindependent.com/staff/britain-eakin.

served as assistant

academic director with the Critical Lan-guage Scholarship (CLS) program in Tangier, a coastal city in northern Mo-rocco. Khaled, a native of Jordan, is a 4th year PhD student in UA’s Second Lan-guage Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program and teaches Arabic in MENAS. No stranger to CLS, Khaled started with them in 2010 in Alexandria, Egypt and then spent the summer of 2011 in Fez, Morocco as the assistant academic direc-tor there. Working with CLS aligns per-fectly with his academic and professional goals, he said. His SLAT major is in lan-guage use (sociolinguistics and discourse

analysis) and one of his mi-nors is technol-ogy and peda-gogy. The summer p r o g r a m i n Tangier was eight weeks in length and en-rolled 39 stu-

dents from all over the US. These students ranged from intermediate-low to advanced-high levels of Arabic. As assistant AD, Khaled’s job was multi-faceted. He over-saw teacher training and language partner training, offered advice to instructors, or-ganized student excursions, designed language-appropriate activities, and, on his own decided to teach dabke, a folk dance popular in Jordan, Palestine, and Syria. There were a few challenges, too, during the summer, said Khaled. For example, it is sometimes more difficult to track ad-vanced language students’ progress than that of lower level students. Keeping the students engaged also required a con-certed effort on the part of the entire CLS

team. Khaled felt fortunate to be a part of a dedicated, talented team of site directors who worked to ensure that the student cohort in Tangier left Morocco with the very best experience they could have. One of the highlights of the summer for Khaled was simply being in Tangier and enjoying the weather and the food. In fact, food also became a highlight for the stu-dents as Ramadan began in late July and local families invited students to “Iftar” meals at the end of the day, where they indulged in fragrant, home-cooked Moroc-can dishes. To understand the cultural and religious significance of Ramadan, some students even started fasting. Ultimately, said Khaled, he hopes to build on these experiences through involvement in future study abroad ventures and through continued teaching in the areas of Applied Linguistics, Arabic as a Foreign/Second Language, English as a Foreign/Second Language, and Discourse Studies.

is a senior at UA with a major in

history. He has always had an interest in history and, in particular, Ottoman history. Kyle started studying Turkish in the fall of 2011 and was described by his Turkish instructor as truly gifted. He received a FLAS award through CMES to attend an intensive Turkish language program at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, where he studied intermediate-level Turkish. He was there with 40 other students from around the US in an intensive, 160-hour language acquisition program. Though there were more than 40 students on the program, Kyle said that class sizes were relatively small with only 10 or so in each class.

Classes fo-cused mostly on Turkish grammar and listening activi-ties, with per-haps less at-t e n t i o n t o speaking skills than he would have liked.

Outside of class, Kyle said he reached a level where he could really begin to under-stand native speakers of Turkish. And, he said, that Istanbulites are friendly and al-ways willing to help out, especially when they hear a foreigner speaking Turkish. The Boğaziçi program took the students on a few tours of Istanbul to see the major historical and religious sites and students were treated to a cruise on the Bosphorus. But that was as far as Kyle got. He didn’t have a chance to explore Turkey beyond Istanbul and its oppressive summer hu-midity. He hopes to go back to Turkey in the future to continue studying and see more of the country. For now though, Kyle is studying ad-vanced Turkish (with another FLAS award) back at UA. He reached his goal of being able to read articles in Turkish and get the gist of them. His future goal is to be able to read scholarly articles written by contem-porary Turkish historians. To do that, said Kyle, he’ll be heading to grad school for a master’s, with an end towards becoming a professor of Ottoman history.

nity in Egypt, and giraffes at the Giza Zoo. In addition to her internship, Britain conducted interviews at the Egypt Independent for her master’s research. She is examining how the revolution in Egypt has altered press