Iraqi Archaeologist Elected Member of the US Academy of Arts, Sciences
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Paris - Asharq Al-Awsat
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the names of its new members who have been elected in 2020, among them was Dr. Zainab Bahrani, professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Columbia University. In a call with Asharq Al-Awsat, the Iraqi expert expressed her joy at joining this 220-year-old cultural body and said that the news was a pleasant surprise. The list of new members also included Algerian researcher in Immunology, Yasmine Belkaid and Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah who writes in English. Zainab Bahrani was born in Baghdad in 1962 and studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University where she obtained a master's degree, and later a doctorate in the joint history of arts and archaeology program at Columbia University. She is currently the Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Columbia University and has previously taught at the University of Vienna and the State University of New York, and was a curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Near Eastern Antiquities Department. She has several books and volumes and tens of research articles in her field. She has been given several fellowships, honors and international awards. Bahrani returned to Baghdad for a while in 2004 and worked as a cultural adviser to rehabilitate the Iraqi Museum that had been looted during the US invasion and the National Library, she also worked on creating opportunities for young archaeologists and libraries to train abroad. Work on the ground, however, was difficult, but the danger of the situation did not prevent her from going to Babel to turn the attention of foreign military to the damage of turning a rare archaeological site into a helicopter pad, and the criminality of flying planes near its 8,000-year-old temples. She then started a program at Columbia University to excavate archaeological sites in Iraq, Syria and Turkey and draw maps of Mesopotamia. The Academy's history goes back to the establishment of the United States. It was established by a group of people who included John Adams, the second US president, and John Hancock who was one of the signatories of the US Declaration of Independence. The point of establishing the academy at the beginning was to honor those with prominent achievements including the building of the new republic. It still makes sure to honor innovators in the sciences and humanities. Its members of honor across history have been names that had a global impact on human history, including British-American Poet T.S. Eliot, British naturalist Charles Darwin, German physicist Albert Einstein, former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and former Prime Minister of South Africa Nelson Mandela.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2272131/iraqi-archaeologist-elected-member-us-academy-arts-sciences
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