The MELA Book Award Committee (BAC) is charged by the MELA Executive Board (EB) to choose one or more outstanding work(s) related to Middle East studies librarianship, the history of Middle East libraries/scholarship, or other topics congruent with the mission of MELA. The Committee has considered publications from the last three copyright years (2020-2023). The Committee received eleven nominations of books published in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
The MELA Book Award Committee has decided to award the MELA Book Award to one publication:
Mahdi Ganjavi’s Education and the Cultural Cold War in the Middle East: The Franklin Book Programs in Iran (London: Bloomsbury, I.B. Tauris, 2023) is a remarkable work, in part, because it shows the importance of a particular type of text: translations. Translations do not always get the attention they deserve and many institutions do not collect them at all. By taking these texts as the work’s primary focus, Ganjavi shows us why translations should not be taken for granted in histories of publishing and education. Ganjavi zeroes in on things like funds for publication, publishing, and distribution. While these subjects are germane to the type of work we do as librarians, they are not always considered worthy of intellectual attention. Ganjavi convincingly shows why, in understanding educational programs and Cold War jostling over ideas in Iran, we should care about these facets of the ‘book business,’ so to speak.
MELA Book Award Committee 2023:
- Hiba Abid (New York Public Library)
- Guy Burak (New York University)
- Arthur Decker (Northampton Community College)
- Akram Habibulla (Indiana University)
- Ryan Zohar (Georgetown University)