The Arabic Print Revolution: Cultural Production and Mass Readership

The Arabic Print Revolution: Cultural Production and Mass Readership

Thursday, February 16

12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Columbia University

Fayerweather Room 411

Join us for a guest lecture by Dr. Ami Ayalon of Tel Aviv University on the topic of printing. Printing was adopted in the Arab countries in the nineteenth century and assumed mass proportions during the last half-century of Ottoman rule there. The talk will discuss the formative phase of that practice in the region and examine some of the problems and creative solutions in early Arab printing, publishing, and diffusion. 

Introductory remarks provided by Dr. Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University.

Dr. Ami Ayalon is professor emeritus of modern Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University. Having earned his Ph.D. from Princeton (1980), he subsequently taught at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History in Tel Aviv, until 2013. Ayalon's scholarly work focuses on the cultural and political history of Arabic-speaking societies in modern times. In recent years he has been interested primarily in the introduction of printing into the Middle East and its wide implications. His latest book, The Arabic Print Revolution; Cultural Production and Mass Readership, was published in October 2016 by Cambridge University Press.

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