Launch of two podcast series coming out of the Moving Biography Summer School

LAWHA is excited to share with you the launch of two podcast series coming out of the Moving Biography Summer School.

Moving Biography was a summer school organised by LAWHA/OIB, the American University of Beirut and the Global (De)Centre in 2022, generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The summer school brought together different perspectives to question disciplinary assumptions and decentre life writing.

As an outcome of the Summer School, LAWHA partnered with The Institute of Art in the Arab World (IAAW) at the Lebanese American University to produce a series of podcasts under the title On Women by Women in Art, conceived and moderated by IAAW’s director Yasmine Taan. In each of the four episodes, a woman artist reflects on another woman artist who influenced and inspired her practice.

The second series, Moving Biographies, is a direct outcome of the discussions held at the summer school in June 2022. Each of the three episodes is moderated by one of the co-organisers of the Summer School. The first episode is an edited version of life presentations that took place at the OIB in May 2023. In this episode with Mahita El Bacha Urieta, Manuella Guiragossian and Hala Schoukair, the daughters of Amine El Bacha (1932-2019), Paul Guiragossian (1926-1993) and Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916-2017) – leading artists of Lebanon’s art world – talk about the responsibility of taking care of their parent’s legacy, what challenges they face and what it means to curate a biography that is intrinsically linked to their own. The presentations are moderated by Nadia von Maltzahn (LAWHA/OIB). The second episode consists of conversations Kirsten Scheid (Professor of Art and Anthropology, AUB) held with summer school participants Daniel Schönpflug (Historian, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) and Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin) to think about biography as a material matter. In the final episode, Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (Professor of Modern Arabic and Comparative Literature, AUB) talks to Sarah Sabban (PhD Candidate in History, AUB) about her doctoral research on the life of Evelyne Bustros (1878-1971) and how it was entwined with the formation of Lebanese heritage and early nation-building in Lebanon.

The podcasts were done in collaboration with afikra | عفكرة, a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. They have been generously funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung as an outcome of the Moving Biography Summer School.

Listen to the podcasts on Afikra’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@afikra

Also available on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/lb/podcast/moving-biography-summer-school-podcast/id1706289613

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