News أخبار
Crossroads Panel at Arabicum/ Syriacum Conference
The Crossroads team will take part in the panel ‘Nichola Khoury: the Political Figure, the Orthodox Priest, the Communal Activist (Palestine, Eastern Europe, Lebanon; 1890-1960)’, that will be part of the 13th Symposium Syriacum and the 11th Congress of Arab Christian...
Scholten Photo Exhibition at INALCO/ School of Oriental studies
Crossroads is organizing a special exibition of the photographs of Frank Scholten at the INALCO/School of Oriental Studies in Paris this summer. The title of the exhibition is Eastern Orthodoxy, Nationalism and the ‘Holy Land’ and is based on never exhibited...
Hybrid workshop: European and Arab linguistic endeavours and exchanges in interwar Europe (1898-1948): Teaching and learning Arabic
Language teaching and learning was crucial to European national and individual enterprises in the Levant, and ‘Oriental languages’ teachers (as they were termed prior to WW2) were fundamental in these processes.
Hybrid workshop: British Mandate Palestine Museums, Locis coexistenciae with peaceful mediators?
Late Ottoman investment produced the first museums in Palestine, the Muze-I Hamayun or the Imperial Museum (1901-17), which would later become the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM). During the British Mandate period. PAM and other new museums formed a new cultural infrastructure in cities like Jerusalem that addressed the material and cultural histories of the region.
Updated Program Crossroads Conference: Vocabularies of Tourism
CrossRoads is announcing the updated program for the upcoming conference 'Vocabularies of Tourism: Language, Photography & Tourism in Palestine (1898-1948)'. The conference will take place from 1-3 June at Leiden University. You can download the new program HERE. ...
New volume: The House of the Priest – A Palestinian Life (1885-1954)
Karène Sanchez Summerer is publishing a new volume together with Sarah Irving and Charbel Nassif entitled 'The House of the Priest' - A Palestinian Life (1885–1954) with BRILL! The volume is number 7 in the series Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies. 'The House of...
Book presentation of ‘Imaging and Imagining Palestine’ at IREMAM
Tuesday February 8 Books & MAM will welcome Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri to discuss their book "Imaging and Imagining Palestine. Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918–1948 " (Brill, 2021). The interview (in English) will be moderated by...
Talk by Sary Zananiri at MUCEM
On Friday 4th of February Sary Zananiri will be speaking at 'Engagements artistiques et politiques. Photographie et recherche', organised by Véronique Bénéï (directrice de recherche, CNRS/CNE) et Marion Slitine (postdoctorante EHESS-CNE/MUCEM) at MUCEM in Marseille....
100 years of Terre Sainte Magasine
A conference will consider the multifaceted history of the Magasine La Terre Sainte (1921-2021) on November 20th at College des Bernardins, Paris.Among the speakers, the three historians: Vincent Lemire, Maria Chiara Rioli & Karène Sanchez Summerer....
Online discussion of A Liminal Church
An online discussion will take place on the 11/10/2021, 16:00-18:00, over the new book of Maria Chiara Rioli and the opening of Pie XII archives in the context of Palestine and the new State of Israel, with the Ecole française de Rome and the research group on the...
Virtual Book Launch of Imaging and Imagining Palestine – 11 July
An online book launch for our Imaging and Imagining Palestine: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918-1948 will take place with the Palestine Museum US this Sunday 11th of July! Panelists Salim Tamari, Issam Nassar and Sary Zananiri will talk about the...
Karène Sanchez Summerer at the 4th Congress of Middle East and Muslim Studies
Karène Sanchez Summerer participated to the International Congress GIS on Middle East studies that ook place at Aix Marseille University from 28 June to 2 July 2021. The panel 'The Other in Terra Sanctae?' investigated the traces of "Christians’" keen interest in...
Conference: War and Genocide, Reconstruction and Change: The Global Pontificate of Pius XII, 1939-1958
Karène Sanchez Summerer participated to the conference War and Genocide, Reconstruction and Change: The Global Pontificate of Pius XII, 1939-1958 that took place from the 14th to 16th of June 2021 at the German Historical institute in Rome and Ecole française de Rome....
Online Panel Discussion: Doing Archaeology in Mandate Jerusalem
Sary Zananiri will be part of the online panel discussion 'Doing Archaeology in Mandate Jerusalem' organised by The RD Milns Antiquities Museum on Wednesday 16 June 2021 at 10:30 UTC+02. REGISTER TO RECEIVE ZOOM LINK Jerusalem was an important centre for...
Special Issue Contemporary Levant
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Konstantinos Papastathis of the CrossRoads project publish ‘Eastern Christianity in Syria and Palestine and European cultural diplomacy (1860-1948). A connected history’', the special issue of Contemporary Levant, vol.6, issue 1. You can...
CrossRoads publishes: Imaging and Imagining Palestine
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri are happy to announce the publication of their new book 'Imaging and Imagining Palestine - Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918–1948' with BRILL! This book is the first comprehensive study of photography during...
Webinar with Council for British Research in the Levant – 19 May
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Konstantinos Papastathis of the CrossRoads project will speak at the webinar 'Eastern Christianity in Syria and Palestine and European cultural diplomacy (1860-1948): A connected history' organised by the Council of British Research in the...
Roundtable University of Bologna – 10 May
A roundtable will take place on the 10th of May at the University of Bologna entitled 'European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948 -Between Contention and Connection'. This roundtable focusses on the entangled history of Christian...
Sary Zananiri guest on podcast Jerusalem Unplugged
On the latest episode of the podcast 'Jerusalem Unplugged' entitled Photography of Jerusalem from the Bible to contemporary Mamilla, Sary Zananiri talks with host Dr. Roberto Mazza about how Jerusalem was captured in Western photography. He also discusses his...
Webinar / Book Launch at Bethlehem University
On 11 March 2021 our book European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948 - Between Contention and Connection will be officially launched at Bethlehem University. We are delighted by this invitation of The Office of the Dean of Research and the...
CrossRoads publishes: European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri are happy to announce the publication of their book 'European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948 -Between Contention and Connection' with Palgrave Macmillan! This open access book investigates the...
Webinar December 15 – Reframing Jerusalem’s History Through New Archives
Karène Sanchez Summerer will be part of the Webinar 'Reframing Jerusalem’s History Through New Archives - Online Seminar on the books' on Tuesday 15 December 2020, 9 am (CET). The books that will be discussed are 'A Liminal Church - Refugees, Conversions and the Latin...
Essay by Sary Zananiri published with Insaniyyat
Insaniyyat, the Society of Palestinian Anthropologists, has published “A City of Commerce in a Time of Plague ”, an essay by Sary Zananiri. It chronicles Sary’s walks through the Old City of Jerusalem, shifting between historical insights, familial memory,...
Palestinian Museum research grant for Sary Zananiri
The Palestinian Museum has awarded a grant to Sary Zananiri for his research proposal under the Knowledge Gap Research Project, “Art History in Palestine from the 19th century until late-20th century (1990s) and its discourses.” Sary will write a paper on iconography...
CrossRoads short documentary on Frank Scholten released!
CrossRoads is happy to announce the release of our short documentary 'Frank Scholten - Photographing Palestine'. Frank Scholten was a Dutch photographer who travelled through Palestine from 1921-23. His extensive collection of photos numbers upwards of 20,000 images,...
Digital Humanities grant for ‘Archives of French as a Foreign Language’
Karène Sanchez Summerer is part of a Digital Humanities project for 2020-2021 that just got granted: Archives of French as a Foreign Language, CollEX-Persée CLIODIFLE 1919-1985, Des institutions des enseignants, des étudiants. Une contribution à l’histoire de la...
Sary Zananiri lecture at EYE
Sary Zananiri will be giving a talk in response to the exhibition Trembling Landscapes on 13th October at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam. The lecture will accompany a screening of Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs. It will think about the geo-political aesthetics of...
Conference: People, Cultures, Ideas and Religion within and across Empires
CrossRoads' Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri will attend the international conference People, Cultures, Ideas and Religion within and across empires: Mobility in the Eastern Mediterranean in the axis Asia Minor, Cyprus, Egypt, 19th-20th centuries. Current and...
Missions and Preaching: Comparing and de-compartmentalizing the study of the missionary phenomenon
The MISSMO conference 'Missions and Preaching: Comparing and de-compartmentalizing the study of the missionary phenomenon. Middle East – North Africa (19th-20th centuries)' will take place on 1st and 2nd October 2020 at the École française de Rome. Karène Sanchez...
Sneak peek of exhibition Frank Scholten: Archeology and Tourism in the ‘Holy Land’
The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) was due to open its doors to the small photography exhibit Frank Scholten: Archaeology and Tourism in the ‘Holy Land’ in April. Since the organisers, Leiden University and the RMO, have had to temporarily close, researchers Karène...
Book Presentation: Arabic and its Alternatives
Due to COVID-19, event postponed The Arabic and its Alternatives research group (NWO VC) is happy to present the volume: Arabic and its Alternatives. Religious Minorities and their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East (1920-1950), Brill, Series:...
Book Presentation: A City in Fragments by Yair Wallach
Due to COVID-19, event postponed The CrossRoads research group (NWO VIDI) is happy to present: Graffiti, street names and visiting cards: the fractured history of Arabic and Hebrew urban textuality in modern Jerusalem (dr. Yair Wallach). Within its conference...
Public Event: A New Industry in an Ancient Land
Due to COVID-19, event postponed. On the 5th of June 2020, Crossroads will organize a public event at RMO museum in Leiden. New industries in Ancient Lands (NIAL) considers the vocabularies of tourism to think about the ways in which Palestine was both produced and...
Mapping the Mandate: Frank Scholten in the ‘Holy Lands’
Mapping the Mandate: Frank Scholten in the ‘Holy Lands’ is a pilot project that, in conjunction with the digitisation of the NINO’s Frank Scholten collection, financed by NINO and Leiden University Libraries (2020-2021), is building a user-friendly interface that...
Program Crossroads Conference: Vocabularies of Tourism
Due to COVID-19, event postponed. CrossRoads is happy to announce the provisional program for the upcoming conference 'Vocabularies of Tourism: Language, Photography & Tourism in Palestine (1898-1948)'. You can download it here. This conference considers the...
Provisional Program Thessaloniki Conference
The CrossRoads Conference in Thessaloniki 'European cultural diplomacy and Eastern Christianity in Syria and Palestine: A connected history in Late Ottoman times and the British Mandate.' has been postponed due to COVID-19. However, a provisional program has been...
Public Event: The Multilingual ‘Holy Land’
Due to COVID-19, event postponed. The Multilingual Holy Land is forum dealing with the many languages in British Mandate Palestine as part of the Vocabularies of Tourism conference. It will feature presentations of a number of guide books and photobooks from the...
Photographic exhibition Frank Scholten RMO
Due to COVID-19, temporarily not accesible Photographic exhibition - Frank Scholten: Archaeology and Tourism in the ‘Holy Land’ RMO exhibition, 2nd April 2020- end of the summer 2020 In early 1921, Dutch photographer Frank Scholten (1881-1942) arrived in the port of...
Frank Scholten to show at Mawjoudin in Tunis
Three posters detailing elements of the queer aspects of Frank Scholten's work will part of an exhibition in Tunisia organised by the Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival. They will be on display from 20th to 23rd March, 2020. The posters detail Frank Scholten's art...
Sary Zananiri resident at Al Mamal in Jerusalem
Sary Zananiri will be a resident at the Al Mamal Foundation in Jerusalem for six weeks. He will be continuing his research on iconography and Jerusalem's souvenir industry during the British Mandate period and looking at the role of the market in shaping cultural...
Karène Sanchez attending ‘Humanitarianism in the Mediterranean’
Karène Sanchez Summerer will give concluding remarks with Claudia Baldoli (University of Milan) at the 'Aftermath of the First World War: Humanitarianism in the Mediterranean' conference at the University of Milan on the 3rd and 4th December. The conference is...
31/1/20 – Le pontificat de Pie XII (1939-58) à la veille de l’ouverture des archives vaticanes
Karène Sanchez Summerer will serve as invited panellist at the upcoming conference ‘Le pontificat de Pie XII (1939-58) à la veille de l’ouverture des archives vaticanes : bilans historiographiques et perspectives de recherche’ at Paris Sorbonne University on 31...
Middle Eastern Culture Market 2019
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri of the CrossRoads team will give a lecture on Sunday 1 December 2019 at the Middle Eastern Culture Market 2019 in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. The lecture entitled 'European Cultural Diplomacy & Arab...
Cleveringa lecture at NIMAR
On tuesday 19 November Karène Sanchez Summerer gave the annual Cleveringa lecture at NIMAR (Nederlands Instituut Marokko) in Marrakech. The lecture was titled: « Le rêve des origines par le médium de la modernité? » Photographie et histoire sociale de la Palestine...
‘The Savage and the Salvageable: Colonised Bodies in Colonial Landscapes’
Photo by Frank Hurley - Tua (Mount of Olives). Where’s the dickey bird? Captain Frank Hurley explains how it all works while father Ali looks on - 9thNovember 1940, Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial photo archive On November 7th 2019 Sary Zananiri gave a paper...
Photo Archives VII: The Majority World conference
Sary Zananiri presented a paper 'Gleaning in the Archives: A Transnational Approach to Imaging and Palestine' at the Photo Archives VII: The Majority World conference in Florence. The conference was organised by Akkasah, NYU Abu Dhabi and the Kunsthistoriches...
Autumn School “Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in the Digital Age”
Karène Sanchez Summerer and Sary Zananiri of the CrossRoads team will be attending the Autumn School “Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in the Digital Age” at Utrecht University from 28 - 31 October 2019. About the Autumn School: In 2012, the noted scholar of...
A rare public viewing of the Frank Scholten collection
18th October 2019 – 11-12:30 PM Leiden University Library – Hensius Room Scholten was a Dutch photographer who travelled through Palestine from 1921-23. His extensive collection of photos numbers upwards of 20,000 images, very few of which have been publicly seen. The...
Round Table: This Transitional Paradise
Round Table ‘This transnational paradise’ Re-visiting photography and circulation in British Mandate Palestine 17 October 2019, Leiden University 17:30- 19:00, Vossius room Drinks afterwards, all welcome! British Mandate Palestine (1918-1948) was the nexus of many...
Orienting the Tour
16th October 2019 – 7PM Leiden University Library – Vossius Room ‘Orienting the Tour’ with Sarah Irving (Leiden University) will look at Stephan Hanna Stephan’s English travel guides of Palestine produced in the 1940s that were predominantly marketed to British and...
Talk: Flanneurism, Spectacle and Modernity and in the Photographic Albums of Wasif Jawhariyyeh
16 October 2019, Leiden University 18:00, Vossius room Abstract by Dr. Salim Tamari Wasif Jawhariyyeh recomposed his memoirs in the early 1960s, when he was in his sixties, on the basis of his notebooks, and on notes and captions inscribed into his photographic...
Paper at IEG-IISMM-NWO IG network in Norway
In the context of the IEG-IISMM-NWO IG network event Refugees, Diasporas and Humanitarian Actors in the Eastern Mediterranean Regions, 1860-2020 Karène Sanchez Summerer presented the paper ‘Europeans and Arabs facing migration in the Middle East and beyond: Archives,...
ALMS Conference: Queering Memory
Sary Zananiri presented his paper : ‘Homosexuality, Biblical Narrative and the Classical: Frank Scholten Photographing Palestine’ at the Queering Memory conference at the Magnus Hirschfeld Society, HKW Berlin, 27-29 June 2019. READ MORE
Karène Sanchez Summerer panellist at CLIODIL
Karène Sanchez Summerer was invited on the 3rd day of CLIODIL Pourquoi et comment enseigner l’histoire des méthodologies en didactique des langues et des cultures? to be on the panel of ‘Dans quelle mesure intégrer la recherche dans l’enseignement de l’histoire en...
MisSMO Summer School – Rome
From 03-07 June 2019 the summer school ‘Renouveaux des sources et méthodes pour l’étude du phénomène missionnaire’ took place in the Ecole française de Rome in Italy. Karène Sanchez Summerer was co-organizer as part of the MisSMO consortium project 'Christian missions...
International Conference of Critical Geography, 8th Congress ‘In Permanent Crisis?’
Sary Zananiri presented Diminshment, Transgression and Rehabilitation: Masculinity and the Palestinian Body at the International Conference of Critical Geography, 8th Congress In Permanent Crisis? in Athens, 19-23rd April 2019. READ MORE
Scholar in residence at EFR
Karène Sanchez Summerer was Scholar in residence at the École française de Rome (EFR) between April-August 2019. EFR is a French public research institution operating under the supervision of the French Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and...
Archaeology and Cultural Diplomacy in British Mandate Palestine
Series of 3 lectures that took place in Rijksmuseum van Oudheden – RMO – Leiden. Dr. Karène Sanchez Summerer and Dr. Sary Zananiri, discussed the Dutch photographer Frank Scholten, who made thousands of photographs during his trip to Palestine in 1921-1923. In...
Mediterranean Empires of the Interwar Period: Biopolitics, Chronopolitics, Geopolitics
The third workshop of the Research Network The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800 | 2000, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the École Française de Rome (EFR), and the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom (DHI Rome), focused on...
Talk: Reproducing the Image: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical in Palestine
Sary Zananiri gave the talk Reproducing the Image: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical in Palestine at the Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem Palestine on the 15th March, 2019. This talk looks at the ways in which Palestine was imaged and...
Symposium ‘The ‘Holy Land’ and Modernity: the Frank Scholten Collection in Context’
Leiden University Libraries (UBL), the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) and the Nederlands Fotogenootschap organised the symposium ‘Holy Land’ and Modernity: the Frank Scholten Collection in Context’ and hands-on viewing of Frank Scholten photographs and...
Visiting Scholar at EBAF Ecole biblique et archéologique, Jerusalem
Karène Sanchez Summerer was a Visiting Fellow at EBAF, the historical photographs department, ‘Photothèque’ in December 2018. She worked on several photographic collections of missionaries present in Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine and on a project of...
7th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions Again
Sary Zananiri presented Cultural Diplomacy, Photography and Biblification in Late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine at the 7th Euroacademia Forum of Critical Studies ‘Asking the Big Questions’ that took place from 23rd-24th November 2018 READ MORE
Tracing Historical Paths through the Jerusalem Archives Digital Platform
The Open Jerusalem project’s international workshop, entitled “Opening Open Jerusalem: Tracing Historical Paths through the Jerusalem Archives Digital Platform,” took place at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice on 8–9 October 2018. It aimed to serve as a forum for...
World Congress of Middle East Studies
During the WOCMES (World Congress of Middle East Studies) in Sevilla, 16-22 July 2018, Karène Sanchez was the Chair of MisSMO panel Cultural Diplomacy and missions in the Middle East, XIXth-XXth c. with the paper: ‘Crossroads- Cultural diplomacy and Arab Christianity...
Panel: The Making of (Trans)National Jewish and Christian Identities
Karène Sanchez took part in the panel discussion ‘The Making of (Trans)National Jewish and Christian Identities: Language, Religion, and Community in and out of the Middle East (1850-1950)’, that was part of the NWO project Arabic and its alternatives: Religious...
CLIODIL: Une fabrique de l’histoire pour la didactique des langues et des cultures
Karène Sanchez Summerer presented ‘Diplomatie culturelle et Arabes chrétiens en Palestine, pour une histoire connectée’ at CLIODIL /DILTEC (Didactiques des langues et des cultures), Une fabrique de l’histoire pour la didactique des langues et des cultures which took...
Symposium ‘In partibus fidelium. Missions in the Levant and knowledge about the Christian Orient, XIX-XXth c.’
During the symposium ‘In partibus fidelium. Missions in the Levant and knowledge about the Christian Orient, XIX-XXth c.’,of which she was co-organizer, Karène Sanchez Summerer was discutant during the panel ‘Missions and linguistic knowledge’. The symposium took...