The Moving Biographies Podcast

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This is a podcast series that was born out of the Moving Biography Summer School, organized by LAWHA/OIB, the American University of Beirut and the Global (De)Centre in 2022, and generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The summer school brought together different perspectives to question disciplinary assumptions and decenter 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 of the first sub-series titled "On Women By Women in Art", a woman artist reflects on another woman artist who influenced and inspired her practice. Episode 1 features Samar Mogharbel on Dorothy Salhab Kazemi (1 September 2023), episode 2 Greta Naufal on Yvette Achkar (29 September 2023), episode 3 Afaf Zurayk on Helen Khal (27 October 2023), and episode 4 Samia Halaby on Mona Saudi (24 November 2023).

The second sub-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 – Curating an Artist’s (and Parent’s) Biography (15 September 2023) – 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 – Vulnerability and the Capacity for Life: Biography as a Material Matter (13 October 2023) – consists of conversations Kirsten Scheid (Professor of Art and Anthropology at AUB) held with summer school participants Daniel Schönpflug (Historian at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) and Yvonne Albers (Freie Universität Berlin) to think about biography as a material matter. 

In the final episode – Evelyne Bustros (1878-1971): Patron of the Arts and Crafts (10 November 2023) – Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (Professor of Modern Arabic and Comparative Literature at AUB) talks to Sarah Sabban (PhD Candidate in History at 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 produced in collaboration with afikra, a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity.