Hyperrhiz 16

E-Lit in Arabic Universities: Status Quo and Challenges

Reham Hosny
Minia University, Egypt / Research Scholar, RIT

Citation: Hosny, Reham. “E-Lit in Arabic Universities: Status Quo and Challenges.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 16, 2017. doi:10.20415/hyp/016.e06

Abstract

Electronic literature (e-lit) is an emerging kind of literature in the Arab world and just few Arabic universities have embedded it in their curricula. This article is premised on the assumption that university curricula are the authentic gate for any discipline to be academically guaranteed. Consequently, studying the status quo of teaching e-lit in the Arabic universities and challenges that hinder its progress are essential steps toward securing a recognized place for e-lit in the global literary scene.

This paper is intended to help identify and build a new generation of Arab e-lit critics and writers by diagnosing the circumstances of the Arabic classroom situation. My method in this ongoing research project is to conduct interviews with Arab professors of e-lit and surveys for the students. Additionally, my firsthand experience, as an assistant lecturer, in teaching in an Egyptian university (Minia University) will be of great help in understanding the capabilities of the Arabic classroom settings.

E-Lit in Arabic Universities

Electronic literature (e-lit) is an emerging kind of literature in the Arab world and just few Arabic universities have embedded it in their curricula. University curricula are the authentic gate for any discipline to be academically guaranteed. Consequently, studying the status quo of teaching e-lit in the Arabic universities and challenges that hinder its progress are essential steps toward securing a recognized place for e-lit in the global literary scene.

It’s important to consider the interests of students of the 21^st century as Dene Grigar believes:

If indeed students spend 10 times more of their energy with fingers on a keyboard instead of a nose in a book, then it stands to reason that we should rethink our notion of literacy and advocate elit as not only viable but also compelling art form for teaching all aspects of reading, writing, and communicating. (Grigar).

E-lit is the subject that is close to their everyday life and concerns. Additionally, it can connect with their capacities and ambitions.

This paper is intended to help identify and build a new generation of Arab e-lit critics and writers by diagnosing the circumstances of the Arabic classroom situation. My method in this ongoing research project is to conduct interviews with Arab professors of e-lit and surveys for the students. Additionally, my firsthand experience, as an assistant lecturer, in teaching in an Egyptian university, Minia University, will be of a great help in understanding the capabilities of the Arabic classroom settings.

2007 was a year of a great importance to the Arabic e-lit. It was the year of the first Arabic conference for digital culture in Libya in March. It was also the year when e-lit was taught for the first time, to my best knowledge, in the Arab world in the universities of United Arab Emirates, UAE, and Mohamed Al Khames, Morocco. Before discussing the obstacles of teaching e-lit in the Arabic universities, I want first to investigate the benefits that the Arabic pedagogical context can have from embedding e-lit in its curricula.

1. What could “electronic” add to teaching “Arabic literature”?

The following is the conventional paper-based poem La’b Nard -A Dice Player, (2009) by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. This is the form the poem takes in traditional literature textbooks:

The traditional pedagogical context depends on reading this text by the teacher or one of the students, proceeding to analyze the thematic and linguistic features of the poetic language. Usually, students are passive learners and the teacher, adopting the top-down approach, is the only transmitter of information. This poem was converted into an animated poem (2014) by Nissmah Roshdy as in figure 2.

Converting the literary work into the digital adds a new language which is the semiotic computer language. Roberto Simanowski writes: “The dual nature of digital literature thereby makes it important to teach a reflective engagement with both languages involved, the natural language that makes the piece at hand a work of literature as well as the computational language that makes it a work of digital literature” (241). In Roshdy’s animated poem, the student is confronted with two types of language: the human language (Arabic) and the cinematic digital language.

The digital version of A Dice Player employs the techniques of rotoscoping, kinetic typography, Arabic calligraphy, the voice of the poet himself, music by Trio Joubran and dance. To address all these techniques as genuine parts of the literary work, interdisciplinary knowledge, as will be explained in the following pages, is required from the elements in the classroom context; namely, the teacher and the student must draw on interdisciplinary knowledge and skills. Additionally, the classroom settings should be technologically qualified.

In light of such requirements, and although gigantic efforts are exerted to secure a safe place for the pedagogy of this newly born literature, many hurdles lurk in the face of learning/teaching electronic literature in the Arab world.

2. Status Quo

2.1. The Economic Status

The previous map (Figure 3), is for the 22 countries of the Arab world. It shows a similar economic status for the countries that have the same color (according to the Human Development Report, UNDP, 2014). The nine green Arab countries, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, have approximately the same average economic status where the income of the individual is moderate. The infrastructure of these countries is weak, with some variations from country to another, and this holds for the networks and computing systems/technological infrastructure. In a country such as Egypt, although accessibility to computers and networks is increasing enormously day by day, many families are not able to provide their individuals with such access because of the low income of these families. Moreover, we can’t speak of the hurdle of computer illiteracy before settling the problem of writing and reading illiteracy which is still existent in all of the Arabic countries to variable degrees.

If one shrinks the borders of the discussion to the pedagogy of e-lit in the Arab world and its challenges, one can say that paper-based/traditional literature is the mainstream literature in these nine green countries. However, these countries, specially, Morocco, Algeria, and Jordan, are considered the cradle of e-lit in the Arab world. There are a good number of digital authors and critics in this part of the Arab world. Although many of those writers are collected within a consortium, the “Arab Union for Internet Writers”, but they are not recognized by many of the traditional literature writers and consequently, the teaching/learning institutions. However, there are some emerging academic studies about the body of work of those writers. Worthwhile academic initiatives are the MA project of literary digital studies led by prof. Brahim Abdel Nour at Bechar University, Algeria as well as the MA and Ph.D programs directed by prof. Zohor Gourram in Mohamed Al Khamis and Ibn Tofail Universities, Morocco.

The six red countries, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Emirates and Oman, or the Gulf countries enjoy a very good economic status with high individual income. Most individuals of these countries have very advanced electronic sets such as laptops, iPads and smartphones although the problem of writing/reading illiteracy is also existent. On the other hand, e-lit writers are very rare in these countries. The rest of the Arab countries, Syria, Mauretania, Yemen, Djibouti, Sudan, Somalia and Comoros, are very poor countries where wars and famines deconstructed the infrastructures, hence, speaking about e-lit will be a kind of luxury.

2.2. Teaching/Learning System

2.2.1. Educational Institutions. Most Arab countries’ expenditures on scientific research are desperately poor, and as a consequence, the educational institutions are not able to fund ambitious projects such as teaching e-lit. With the increasing number of learners – as education is free and doesn’t cost much in the Arab world unlike the advanced countries – providing labs, net connections and computers required for teaching e-lit is one of the most difficult problems. Personally, I confronted many hardships in the classroom settings during teaching a practical criticism course in the Department of English, Minia University from 2010 through May 2015. There was no computer lab or internet connection to log in and use some supporting resources. Additionally, classrooms specified to my department were very limited and the numbers of students were growing year by year.

Strikingly, the administrative boards of these institutions are not open-minded to the new technological upheavals. The notion of teaching e-lit will not be easily accepted by the people in educational authorities who have gotten used to a certain style through decades of traditional teaching, and which may be difficult to adapt or to change so radically. They still have the “two cultures” in the terms of C. P. Snow, and are skeptical about the whole interdisciplinary science of digital humanities.

Changing the list of subjects studied in the departments of literary studies in the Arabic universities takes many years before we will be able to embed e-lit as an established subject of study. The concept of teaching technology in the Arabic universities in the countries of the green color is confined to using some study aids such as phonetic labs for the purposes of studying language. Additionally, all majors study the basics of computer science in the form of a subject discussing the soft and hardware of the computer without practical application.

E-lit has a fuzzy nature pertaining to its fluctuation among the disciplines of literary and cultural studies, media studies and computer science. As a result, cross-departmental cooperation is difficult to achieve. Moreover, interdisciplinary sciences are not well-established in the Arab world. Usually, there is a struggle between faculties because professors of every department want to dispense with professors from other departments and to teach their department’ interdisciplinary subjects by themselves.

2.2.2. The Teacher. The Arabic educational institutions lack the highly-qualified teacher who copes with the latest technology. The contemporary teacher applies obsolete methodologies of teacher-centered teaching used in preparing her/him as a teacher. Since language is not the main concern of the digital works, teaching e-lit will not convince this teacher as a means of teaching language. It is difficult for such a teacher to change the system of evaluation from paper-and-pencil based exams to digital ones.

Moreover, the humanities departments in most of the Arabic universities, don’t employ the continuous grading system but the final exam at the end of every semester which deprives students of the real evaluation of their capabilities. Additionally, students’ ultimate goal from learning will be for memorizing information not for creating striking and creative ideas.

As a free of charge material, teaching e-lit may be refused by some professors who have financial interests such as selling books. The salaries of professors in most of the Arabic universities are desperately poor. Selling books for students is an important source to help them live a decent life. On the contrary, professors in the more developed countries are paid salaries that can ensure a good life without looking for other resources.

One of the apparent problems that teachers could confront during teaching e-lit is the difficulty of controlling class especially large-number classes. The state of open access to the internet inside the class may give students the chance to log in irrelevant websites such as social media beside the course page and text some friends while the teacher is lecturing. The emotional reactions of students responding to the other web pages may distract their colleagues. Such behavior will oblige the teacher to exert more efforts to catch the attention of students and get them involved in tasks.

Some professors are not convinced of teaching e-lit because they believe that in addition to being a new discipline, the corpus of e-lit works is small and not worthwhile. When I presented my Ph.D proposal in my department of English in Minia University, most of my professors were astonished that there is such a kind of literature in the whole world or even in the Arab world. This is due to the absence of e-lit writers from the mass media and their reluctance to occupy a good place in the mainstream culture of usual people. Additionally, some of them do not take it seriously namely; they just try writing e-lit for once and shift into traditional writing. Consequently, professors prefer to teach the well-established literary genres. Actually, they don’t have the spirit of adventure to try untrodden areas. They prefer to stick to the usual literary curricula.

2.2.3. The Student. Most students are addicted to memorizing a few papers to be recalled verbatim in the exam hall. They take the back seat at the lecture halls, just listening to the lecture as passive learners. In my classes, less than 10% of students interact with my questions. Shifting the roles played by both the teacher and the learner may be faced with obstacles because the teacher is not accustomed to playing the role of a monitor, on the other hand, students are not trained to get that great deal of freedom inside the class and trust in their capabilities. Moreover, computer illiteracy is a shared problem between the teacher, especially old ones, and the student, especially who was grown up desperately poor.

In her book How we think: Digital media and contemporary technogenesis, Hayles develops an argument concerning the difference between how one can cognitively perceive information digitally and traditionally:

The small distractions involved with hypertext and web reading clicking on links, navigating a page, scrolling down or up, and so on increase the cognitive load on working memory and thereby reduce the amount of new material it can hold. (64)

Hayles believes that there are “two cognitive modes” the readers use in their interaction with the text: “Deep Attention” which is employed with the traditional long texts and “Hyper Attention” which is employed with media texts. While deep attention helps students concentrate on “a single information stream,” hyper attention is related to “multiple information streams” (Hyper and deep attention 187-8). The contrast between the first mode used in the traditional classroom and the second mode used in the everyday access to new media distract the student’s attention.

Strikingly, the student’s eye is always upon the labor market, so she majors in the departments that provide her with an opportunity of work after graduation. In Faculty of Arts, Minia University, for example, most students compete to join departments of languages specifically, English, French and Arabic languages respectively to work as teachers, the job that is stable and required in most Arab countries. According to Simanowski’s discussion, this attitude is the same in other countries: “Most students in literature departments are being educated as primary and secondary school teachers and eventually have to pass a highly standardized examination, focusing on French language and literature” (236).

Interdisciplinary sciences are not well-established in the Arab world yet, so, such sciences do not support opportunities for work in the Arab world unlike other countries such as America whose labor market is open for all majors. Most graduates of literary departments in the Arabic universities work as teachers, but majoring in e-lit doesn’t secure a stable job. Surprisingly, students who are actually studying electronic literature have a different viewpoint. As I show in my survey below, 64% of students think that majoring in electronic literature could provide them with jobs. Most of the proposed jobs are teachers.

Apparently, there is a media gap between the teacher and the student. While the teacher is knowledgeable in terms of the academic and historical part of digital media, most students have the hands-on experience in dealing with the different computational programs. “While the teacher may know more about the contextualization of digital literature within the history of literature and the arts, the students are likely to possess more media literacy regarding achieving, navigating, processing and manipulating data online.” (Simanowski 233).

Unlike the teacher who studied e-lit as an academic subject in his graduate or postgraduate studies, the 21st century student has got accustomed to technology since she was a kid playing with different types of arcade games and video games and after a short while, she got to be addicted to social media. In my university, I witnessed a situation when a professor asked the help of one of her students to fix a problem with her laptop. New technology deconstructed the hierarchical relationship between the teacher and the student to decentralize it in favor of the student. On the other hand, using technology inside the class may have its bad effects. The ads and irrelevant material that pop up or accompany web pages may distract the student’s attention. She will receive fragmented information, the state that prevents accumulating knowledge in the form that permits its retrieval correctly.

In the following, I discuss two case studies where e-lit was taught in Arabic universities. I discuss the context of each university and the pedagogy employed, and then I survey the results of the teaching experience. Finally, I draw conclusions for future directions in promoting and expanding e-lit in universities in the Arab world.

3. Case Studies

I corresponded with professors Melhm and Gourram via Messenger. I asked them many different questions about the nature of the methodology they used in teaching Electronic Literature subject, the challenges they faced, the interactivity of students and the system of grading. The two professors were generous in responding to all questions, clarifying different dimensions of their experience in teaching this new and unique subject.

3.1. United Arab Emirates University, UAE.

United Arab Emirates University is one of the leading Arabic universities in teaching e-lit. It incorporated e-lit courses in the curricula of department of Arabic Language since 2007. Prof. Ibrahim Melhm, a leading critic, describes his experiment in teaching an e-lit course from 2011 to 2014 to an undergraduate class consisted of 10 to 15 students in the department of Arabic Language. He also taught an e-lit course as a minor subject to students from other departments.

3.1.1. Course Description. Prof. Melhm created a website for the academic material which included theoretical and practical content. He depended on Arabic and foreign texts of e-lit and links to online material. He supported this content with a page with examining questions. Prof. Melhm says “I was aware of the problem which most of my colleagues do; that is selling books to students to memorize and write as many pages as they can in the final exam. I substituted the paper book with a website that students can download on their computers and smart phones to use everywhere inside and outside the classroom.”

3.1.2. Methodology. His method of teaching depended on giving an introduction to the topic by using the smart board, then dividing students into small groups. Every group choose a leader who organizes the process of answering the interactive questions inside the class. He adds “the student should be a partner in the process of teaching and learning not just a consumer or memorizer of knowledge.”

3.1.3. Grading. Grading is divided between the interaction inside the class and the final exam which requires paper-and-pencil answers for analyzing e-lit texts by using a digital device. Additionally, every student was required to present his own e-lit text as a project.

3.2. Mohamed Al Khamis and Ibn Tofail Universities, Morocco.

Prof. Zohor Gourram, a renowned e-lit critic, has taught e-lit to undergraduate, MA, and Ph.D students since 2007 in departments of Arabic Language, Mohamed Al Khamis and Ibn Tofail Universities. She was also the president of the laboratory of “Language, Creativity and New Media” and the leader of one of its groups which was the group of “Literature and New Media” from 2010 through 2015, Ibn Tofail University. She was also one of the panel of the E-Lit Prize organized in 2007 by The Arab Union for Internet Writers.

3.2.1. Course Description. Prof. Gourram depends on Arabic and French e-lit works. Using data show projector, she relies also on secondary resources for more clarification of e-lit works. Undergraduate students are about 160 students versus 20 MA students. Currently, she supervises 4 Ph.D. students majoring in e-lit.

3.2.2. Methodology. She starts by helping students to consider the nature of technology and its effect on our present time, “Although e-lit is a new subject for students but it is close to their everyday life, so I am amazed from the way they interact with the subject.” Then, she employs a sort of brain storming by presenting an e-lit work without any information about it and ask students to write their thoughts and feelings towards this work. The idea is that she challenges their capabilities and interests to create the desire for exploring the nature of this queer text. After that, she helps them to be good readers of e-lit by discussing its nature; “I ask them to read a work and when they start to read by the traditional method, I begin to formulate their watching culture.” Finally, she asks them to write a report about their understanding of the work and the changes in their views before and after reading.

3.2.3. Grading. Grading is achieved in two ways: digitally through the whole course by noticing the interaction of the student inside the class. The second way is paper-and-pencil exam at the end of the course.

3.3 Summary

After figuring out the context of my interview with the two professors, the features of their leading experiments can be summarized in the following table (Figure 4).

3.4. Results

• Teaching e-lit leads to employing effective teaching methodologies that attract the interest of students such as brain storming.
• Teaching methodologies used by the two professors are similar to the methodologies in other different countries; the point that can lead to globalizing teaching methodologies.
• Teaching e-lit requires a special kind of teachers who are active, ambitious and most significantly, creative.
• Departments of Arabic language in the Arabic universities are the only departments, till now, that hold the responsibility of embedding e-lit in their curricula. This is an indication for the richness of the Arabic Language and its openness to new challenges.

4. Survey

According to Arab Knowledge Economy Report 2015 – 2016, Arab World internet users will reach around 226 million by 2018. Consequently, it is important to address how the Arab youth, who constitute the majority of internet users, think and what are their trends towards studying e-lit.

A survey was applied in Arabic language, on 28 students: 23 undergrads in the same class and 5 MA students, in Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Multidisciplinary faculty Taza, Department of Arabic language, Morocco. Students studied one of two subjects; “Forms of Digital Expression” or “Digital Literature”. Professor Ibrahim Amry is the teacher of both subjects.

I collaborated with Salima El Allame, a Ph.D candidate in Ibn Tofail University, Morocco, in doing this survey. We proposed the important questions and figured out the final form of the survey. We intended it to be an electronic survey using Google forms. Through a Facebook page of students of specific e-lit course, Salima asked students in her university to respond to the Google form. We received just 12 responses through about three months. The other choice was to print the survey and to visit students inside the university. Painstakingly, Salima did this initiative and filled the answers of students in a Google form. It was my turn to assimilate this data and draw on it in figuring out the general digital pedagogy in the Arabic universities. The following is a visualization of the questions directed to students and their answers.

4.1. What social media and search engines do you use frequently?

The following pie chart (Figure 5), clarifies the distribution of social media and search engines students use frequently. According to the survey, the hours students spend during using these sites range between one and eight hours per day. More than half of students, 54%, use Facebook frequently. WhatsAPP, Twitter and Instagram are the following in rank with the values of 16%, 12%, 8% respectively.

4.2 Do you like or dislike the subject of E-Lit?

When asked if they like or dislike the subject of Electronic Literature, 82% of students like it. The other 18% of students don’t give causes why they dislike it. Students justify their acceptance of this subject by giving causes such as:

1. Interesting because of the intersection of literature with art and information technology.
2. New and Different from the other forms of literature and it makes use of the nowadays technology.
3. The teacher of the subject plays a vital role in attracting students to this new subject.
4. Interactivity between students and the digital text makes it unique
5. A new way of reading is required; the matter that makes this subject different.
6. Being a practical subject that fosters a hands-on approach.
7. Providing a job opportunity.

4.3. Do you prefer reading a digital or paper book? Why?

Half of students prefer to read a paper book than a digital one. The prominent reasons are to be easily-portable and comfortable for reading. Most significantly, it doesn’t run out of charge. For those supporters of reading a digital book, 39%, they believe that the digital book is available and easily-reachable. Additionally, techniques of interactivity and hypertext are important advantages. A percentage of just 11% like reading both types of books (Figure 6).

4.4. Do you think that the subject of e-lit is:

• More difficult than other subjects?
• Easier than other subjects?
• Equals other subjects?

More than half students, 54%, think that the subject of e-lit equals other conventional subjects in its difficulty. On the other hand, 32% of students believe that e-lit subject is more difficult than other subjects. I think that this difficulty can be attributed to studying some texts in other languages than Arabic language or the experimental nature of e-lit that may hinder some students from getting the intended theme (Figure 7).

4.5 Do you think that majoring in electronic literature can provide you with a job?

About two thirds of students believe that studying e-lit can give them job opportunities. They propose many jobs such as programming, translating and writing, but the frequent proposed job is teaching whether in schools or universities (Figure 8).

4.6. Results

1. Facebook is the closest social media to students. This point can be employed for   achieving the best practices of social media. E-lit genres that use Facebook as their medium will be the best genres to be taught inside class, for example, netprov and Facebook fiction. Professors can create Facebook pages to discuss and update students with new tasks as Leonardo Flores has done in some of his courses.
2. Although the majority of students like the subject of e-lit, half of them prefer reading a paper book.
3. Arabic universities should collaborate with programming companies to pave the way for providing students with future job opportunities.

To wrap up, many procedures and changes should be put in place for the educational institutions, the teacher and the student in the Arabic universities to promote digital humanities in general and electronic literature in specific.

Besides creating new programs, a recommendation is to transfer the present traditional textbooks into digital versions, employ different digital approaches and intersect with many disciplines such as informatics, media, arts and literature. By digital I mean making use of different digital techniques such as Nissmah Roshdy's to create a visualization of Darwish’s poem, not transferring the paper textbook merely into digital formats such as PDF. This initiative will enlarge and boost the mental capabilities of students and put an end to the boring and dull traditional pedagogical situation.

Most significantly, this initiative will open new avenues for job opportunities for students from different majors such as literature, media, arts and informatics. Keeping in mind the financial problem of funding the ambitious project of transferring the present curricula into digital, two possibilities can be proposed. Educational institutions can assign cooperation protocols with programming companies. These companies will employ students, whether grads or undergrads, to create the digital content of the curricula and universities will give these companies facilities in investing their products inside universities. A parallel possibility is that the Arabic universities search for international foundations to collaborate with in achieving the project of creating digital curricula.

The faculties who will be responsible for this project should undergo qualifying courses to understand the nature of the task assigned to them. They can visit foreign universities that achieved success in doing the same project. Faculties of Education in the Arabic universities should incorporate E-Lit subject in their curricula. I have BA from Faculty of Education, Beni-Suef University, Egypt. I can assure that students of these faculties in the Arab world are not highly qualified for the requirements of the 21^st century because they are brought up with the same methodologies their professors were brought up with.

Other experiments in different universities can be inspired in creating new academic programs. RIT in New York is a leading university in creating new digital humanities programs such as the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences bachelor’s program, which is one of the first of its kind anywhere, and a proposed MFA in Digital Writing. An ongoing collaboration is to draw on these new programs to establish curriculum at RIT Dubai.

Finally, it is important to change the system of grading from the exams at the end of every semester to the continuous grading through the whole semester depending on the interactivity of students inside class. Presenting collaborative projects by groups of students from different disciplines is vital in boosting their team work capabilities and most significantly, developing their productive abilities.

Acknowledgements

This paper would not have been possible without the help of the following people:

1. Sandy Baldwin, Professor of e-lit at RIT, New York, I am grateful to his insightful comments and guidance.
2. Salima El Allame, a Ph.D candidate at Ibn Tofail University, Morocco, I am thankful for her help in doing the survey.
3. Ibrahim Melhm, Professor of literature at United Arab Emirates University, many thanks for his help and time in providing me with a full account of his experience in teaching e-lit.
4. Zohor Gourram, professor of literature at Mohamed Al Khamis, I highly appreciate her help and time in discussing her experience in teaching e-lit in two different universities in Morocco.

Works Cited

Darwish, Mahmoud. La Urid Lihadhi Alkasida An Tantahi – I Don’t Want This Poem to End. Lebanon: Ryiad Al-Rayis for Books and Publication, 2009.

Grigar, Dene. “Electronic Literature: Where Is It?” electronic book review, 2008. http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/invigorating.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How we think: Digital media and contemporary technogenesis. University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Hyper and deep attention: The generational divide in cognitive modes.” Profession (2007): 187-199.

Bonds, E. Leigh. “Listening in on the Conversations: An Overview of Digital Humanities Pedagogy.” CEA Critic 76.2 (2014): 147-157. https://doi.org/10.1353/cea.2014.0017.

Simanowski, Roberto, Jörgen Schäfer, and Peter Gendolla, eds. Reading Moving Letters: Digital Literature in Research and Teaching. A Handbook. Vol. 40. transcript Verlag, 2015.

Notes

1. From his volume that was collected after his death La Urid Lihadhi Alkasida An Tantahi – I Don’t Want This Poem to End.
2. Mahmoud Darwish (1941 – 2008), is the most famous Palestinian poet.
3. This animated poem won many world prizes such as the German ZEBRA FILM PRIZE for Best Poetry Film: https://vimeo.com/69830884.
4. Egyptian Animator.
5. Human Development Report, UNDP, 2014. http://www.iq.undp.org/content/iraq/en/home/countryinfo.html.
6. I corresponded with prof. Melhm on Nov. 20, 2015.
7. I corresponded with prof. Gourram on Jan. 5, 2016.
8. http://www.orientplanet.com/Press_Releases_AKER2015-16.htm.