Q Life Magazine Q Magazine (US) December 2015 | Page 17

Education |
A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, which recently
celebrated its tenth anniversary in Doha.
On March 31, 2015, the Embassy was inducted into
the Georgetown 1789 Society, the university’s most
distinguished fellowship. The award recognized the
Embassy’s longstanding support for the CCAS and
the university, including establishing the Qatar Post-
Doctoral Fellowship program and funding the Clovis and
Hala Salaam Maksoud Chair in Arab Studies. It also
celebrates a major landmark: the Embassy’s total support
for Georgetown surpassing one million dollars.
“The Embassy of the State of Qatar stands as a
symbol of the close friendship between the American
and Qatari people,” the university noted in presenting
the award. “With its many initiatives to foster
cooperation and understanding among nations,
[it] serves as a model of global diplomacy.”
“It’s a very prestigious society, and we are very excited
to welcome the Qatar Embassy into the Georgetown
family,” adds Monica Devlin, Office of Advancement,
Donor Relations at Georgetown. “Ambassador
Mohammed Jaham Al-Kuwari attended the ceremony
and accepted the award, which was held during the
annual convocation ceremony.”
“Education is very important to Qatar,” adds
Ambassador Al-Kuwari. “It is a bridge, that
helps to build better relations between nations.
The Qatari people have become part of the
Georgetown community, and we’re proud of that.”
Translating the Arab World
It’s mid September, and Kelley is just beginning
her year-long stint as the new Qatar Post-Doctoral
Fellow at CCAS. She will use the time to turn her
Ph.D. dissertation from the University of California,
Berkeley, Translating the Arab World, into a book.
American readers and publishers are interested in
books that will “translate” the Middle East world for
them, says Kelley. She mentions The Kite Runner,
a novel by Afghani-American writer Khaled Hosseini,
and The Yakoubian Building, a rich portrait of Mubarak
-era Egypt by Egyptian dentist Alaa Al-Aswany.
| Ambassador Al-Kuwari being inducted into the Georgetown 1789 Society
“Such books give Americans a taste of another culture,
another community, another way of life,” says Kelley.
“But often that taste is highly mediated and not that
robust—it doesn’t really challenge the reader ... and there
are a lot of forces that reinforce the old stereotypes.”
The covers of books by Arab writers, for instance,
often feature women wearing the hijab. “In a lot of cases
it’s just an Orientalist trope which does a disservice to
the work,” Kelley says. But she finds the American
public’s interest in the Arab World very encouraging;
the best books, she thinks, can create a bridge between
the two cultures.
Kelley feels incredibly grateful towards the Embassy,
which funds the fellowship. “I’m so lucky to have
this time to be able to write. It’s a really wonderful
opportunity for a junior scholar.”
With the Middle East likely to stay in the headlines
for years to come, such cross-cultural understanding
can only be a good thing.
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