CBC News: The National
Jan 5, 2021
COVID-19 is hitting California so hard that hospitals and funeral homes are overwhelmed. Health officials in Los Angeles County say someone is dying there every 15 minutes and paramedics are being told not to bring people to hospitals if it doesn’t seem likely they’ll survive.
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Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, Europeans are increasingly airbrushing from history their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But this legacy lives on in some of Europe’s most recognizable buildings, from Notre-Dame Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament.
This beautifully illustrated book reveals the Arab and Islamic roots of Europe’s architectural heritage. Diana Darke traces ideas and styles from vibrant Middle Eastern centers like Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo, via Muslim Spain, Venice and Sicily into Europe. She describes how medieval crusaders, pilgrims and merchants encountered Arab Muslim culture on their way to the Holy Land; and explores more recent artistic interaction between Ottoman and We”An exhilarating, meticulously researched book that sheds light on centuries of borrowing, tracing the roots of Europe’s major buildings.” — The Guardian
“This persuasive study argues that northern Europe’s greatest gothic buildings are deeply indebted to the Arab world … [it is] a useful reminder of the interconnectedness of civilization.”– The Observer
“Lively and provocative, this book takes us from Christopher Wren through an exploration of how ideas from the Islamic Middle East profoundly influenced the architecture of Western Europe. Darke’s enthusiasm and love for all things Syrian is apparent on every page. A great read for anyone seeking an alternative viewpoint.”– Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic, SOAS University of London
“Diana Darke writes about Syria and its cultural heritage with love, clarity and authority.”– Sir Michael Palin
“In this original and enlightening book, Diana Darke takes us on a journey of discovery. Guiding us from the churches of the ‘Dead Cities’ of Syria to Notre-Dame de Paris, she unearths manifold connections between the cultures of the Middle East and those of Europe.” — Venetia Porter, Curator of Islamic and Contemporary Middle East Art, British Museum
“A fascinating account of the way in which architectural techniques, ideas and aesthetics are actively and explicitly shared between people, indifferently as to whether they happen to be friends or enemies. Darke’s book reveals much that is surprising about the canon of European architecture, telling us how human relations are inevitably shared and forgotten only at their mutual peril.” — Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History, University of Oxford
“An extraordinarily ambitious work, part cri de coeur and part textbook on Islamic architecture and its influence on the West.”– Times Literary Supplement
“Intriguing and eye-opening.”– Asian Review of Books
“As exhilarating as it is learned, this splendidly illustrated book shows how our cultures–including our religious cultures–interact and interweave in ways that challenge all kinds of assumptions we might make about our history. By studying our past, Darke poses essential questions about the possibility of a shared and humane civilization in the future.”– Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Diana Darke’s “Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe” is another brilliant challenge to Islamophobes everywhere, skillfully telling the architectural counterpart of Moller’s tale, and showing how much Gothic architecture drew on the forms and innovations of Arab architects and mathematicians. –William Dalrymple, The Spectator (Books of the Year 2020)
“Another brilliant challenge to Islamophobes everywhere, skilfully telling the architectural counterpart of Moller’s tale, and showing how much Gothic architecture drew on the forms and innovations of Arab architects and mathematicians.”– William Dalrymple in The Spectator (Book of the Year 2020)
Diana Darke is an Arabist and cultural expert who has lived and worked in the Middle East for over thirty years. She is the author of The Merchant of Syria: A History of Survival and My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Crisis. She tweets as @dianadark
Recovering this long yet overlooked history of architectural “borrowing,” Stealing from the Saracens is a rich tale of cultural exchange, shedding new light on Europe’s greatest landmarks.
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NowThis News
Jan 5, 2021
Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, has joined the chorus of critics condemning the president’s Georgia call, saying he’ll go to great lengths ‘not to be branded the loser he actually is.’
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Episode of A&E’s Minute by Minute program regarding the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens. Included are interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses to the eruption.
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In recent years, the critical study of museums has emerged as a major focus of scholarly inquiry across various disciplines, bringing into greater focus the effect that museum practice has on the formation of meaning and the public perception of objects. Representing Africa in American Museums is the first comprehensive book to focus on the history of African art in American art museums. Chronicling more than a century of building and presenting collections of African art in thirteen American art museums, from the late 1800s to the present, the book considers the art museum as a lens for understanding the shifting visions of African art that are manifested in institutional practices of collecting and display in the United States.
Thirteen essays present the institutional biographies of African art collections in a selection of American art museums: the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Hampton University Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Barnes Foundation, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Primitive Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Indiana University Art Museum, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the University of Iowa Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Menil Collection, and the National Museum of African Art.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Christa Clarke offer a review of the history of collecting and displaying African art in American museums and identify important issues that are raised by the essays: defining aesthetic criteria for African art and for its display; breaking free from the monolithic rubric of “primitive art”; broadening perceptions of what constitutes African art; and formulating a place for context and culture in understanding and presenting African art.
Representing Africa in American Art Museums concludes with an afterword that anticipates the direction for the collecting and display of African art in American art museums in the twenty-first century, including the ethics and legalities of collecting; the deconstruction of a singular and authoritative museum voice in interpreting works of art; the interests and engagement of local African American and African communities that have a stake in how collections are represented; and how, if, and where to include contemporary art from Africa in museum collections.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock is curator of African art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Christa Clarke is curator of arts of Africa and senior curator of arts of Africa and the Americas at The Newark Museum.
“Truly exceptional. In addition to serving as a text for courses in several disciplines, the volume is likely to be a significant research resource.” -Raymond A. Silverman, Director of the Museum Studies Program, University of Michigan
“The value of the anthology lies in its providing the possibility for comparison across institutions and reflect on how certain personalities and scholars have left their mark on the known corpus of African art. It is a is a significant contribution to the history of African art studies, enlarging the comprehensive overviews. . .” –Barbara Plankensteiner, H-AFRARTS, September 2012
“Truly exceptional. In addition to serving as a text for courses in several disciplines, the volume is likely to be a significant research resource.”―Raymond A. Silverman, University of Michigan
Representing Africa in American Museums is the first comprehensive book to focus on the history of African art in American art museums.
Representing Africa in American Museums is the first comprehensive book to focus on the history of African art in American art museums. Chronicling more than a century of building and presenting collections of African art in thirteen American art museums, from the late 1800s to the present, the book considers the art museum as a lens for understanding the shifting visions of African art that are manifested in institutional practices of collecting and display in the United States.
Kathleen Bickford Berzock is curator of African art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Christa Clarke is curator of arts of Africa and senior curator of arts of Africa and the Americas at The Newark Museum.
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Nov 2, 2010
If you think the probability of a monster hurricane hitting the New York City metro area is slim, think again, says Queens College geologist Nicholas Coch.
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Apr 19, 2013
Queens College hurricane expert Nicholas K. Coch calls for rezoning to bar structures less than 500 feet from the shoreline, building flood walls and protecting subway and tunnels to reduce damage from future hurricanes. With sea levels rising as global warming melts polar icecaps and heats the ocean, “every storm in the future is going to do progressively more damage.” The $51 billion federal rescue plan wastes money on rebuilding houses that are doomed to further destruction and developing sea gates across New York Harbor. “There are far more effective and cheaper things that should be done immediately.”
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Aug 27, 2011
Jeff Glor speaks with Coastal Geologist, Dr. Nicholas Coch about hurricanes that have hit New York City in the past and how this storm will affect the city.
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Democracy Now!, Jan 5, 2021
Israel has administered COVID-19 vaccines faster than any country in the world, with more than 14% of Israelis receiving vaccines so far. Despite the fast rollout, human rights groups are expressing alarm over Israel’s decision not to vaccinate Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, where about 1,500 people have died during the pandemic. Israel has defended its actions citing the Oslo Peace Accords, which put Palestinian authorities in charge of healthcare in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian officials are facing a number of hurdles in launching their own vaccine campaign, including a shortage of money, lack of access to vaccines and lack of infrastructure to distribute a vaccine. “Israel actually is violating international law because it is denying its responsibility as an occupying power,” says Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a physician, member of the Palestinian Parliament and head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. “Israelis are getting the vaccines, and Palestinians are getting nothing.”
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At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. For three centuries, the city attracted scholars, lawyers, craftsmen, and religious luminaries, becoming a true cultural and political capital. Bringing this extraordinary history marvelously to life, Judith Herrin rewrites the history of East and West in the Mediterranean world before the rise of Islam and shows how, thanks to Byzantine influence, Ravenna played a crucial role in the development of medieval Christendom.
Drawing on deep, original research, Herrin tells the personal stories of Ravenna while setting them in a sweeping synthesis of Mediterranean and Christian history. She narrates the lives of the Empress Galla Placidia and the Gothic king Theoderic and describes the achievements of an amazing cosmographer and a doctor who revived Greek medical knowledge in Italy, demolishing the idea that the West just descended into the medieval “Dark Ages.”
Beautifully illustrated and drawing on the latest archaeological findings, this monumental book provides a bold new interpretation of Ravenna’s lasting influence on the culture of Europe and the West.
A sweeping and engrossing history . . . an accessible narrative that brings to life the men and women who created the city during this period and who fashioned its hybrid Christian culture of Latin, Greek and Gothic elements. The narrative is periodically elevated by discussions of the city’s most famous attractions and its glorious churches, brilliantly illustrated in the book’s 62 color plates. It is also enlivened by recurring digressions on daily life in the city at each phase in its history.—Anthony Kaldellis, Wall Street Journal
[E]minently worth reading. The colour plates are so sumptuous that the Ravenna mosaics fairly glow on the page. History teaches us that it is on the margins that the greatest change often occurs. Ravenna was on such a margin. Now, perhaps for the first time, the city emerges triumphant from the shadow of the so-called Dark Ages.—Ian Thomson, The Spectator
Bold. . . . elegantly argue[d].– “New Yorker”
Judith Herrin explains in her lively, startling book, Ravenna really did deserve ‘the most noble’ title bestowed by this anonymous admirer. From its origins as a refuge in a dying empire, it went on to host kings and prelates, physicians and lawyers–and ultimately help shape Europe.– “The Economist”
[Ravenna] is absolutely gorgeous, with magnificent colour reproductions of Ravenna’s churches and mosaics. Relics of an age that seems almost impossibly remote, they are the foundations on which modern Europe stands.—Dominic Sandbrook, The Times
Beautifully illustrated, impeccably researched and accessibly presented, it traces Ravenna’s career as the capital of the Roman empire in the west. . . . Buildings are also brought to life alongside the people who built and used them. . . . It is this linking of tangible remains and historical record that is the book’s great strength.—Jonathan Harris, BBC History Magazine
Herrin tells the changing story of Ravenna as it unfolds from the end of the fourth century to the ninth in a series of short, accessible sections with the aid of luscious illustrations.—Averil Cameron, History Today
Judith Herrin’s book [Ravenna] explains by recounting the city’s life from 402, when it became the capital of the Roman Empire in the West, to 751, when the Lombards took over. The story is not, she emphasises, one of decline, but of rebirth, for Ravenna established what European Christendom could become. . . . By the time we can easily visit Ravenna the city again it should be with the advantage of having read Ravenna the book.—Christopher Howse, The Telegraph
The book is absolutely gorgeous, with magnificent colour reproductions of Ravenna’s churches and mosaics. Relics of an age that seems almost impossibly remote, they are the foundations on which modern Europe stands.—Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
Aficionados of early medieval history–and of course Ravenna itself–will learn much from Herrin’s work.– “Kirkus Reviews”
“This brilliant biography of Ravenna is essential reading for anyone who would understand the transformation of the Roman world.”―Patrick Geary, author of The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe
Judith Herrin is professor emeritus in the Department of Classics at King’s College London. Her books include Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium, and The Formation of Christendom (all Princeton). She lives in Oxford, England.
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Transition Studies 