00:00:00.001 --> 00:00:07.040 My name is Refqa Abu-Remaileh, and I am the author of Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:13.840 Palestinian Literature. This interactive digital monograph is one of the major outputs of the 00:00:13.840 --> 00:00:20.400 PalREAD project which was funded by a European Research Council grant and hosted at the Free 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:28.880 University Berlin between 2018 and 2023. Country of Words was published by Stanford University 00:00:28.880 --> 00:00:38.000 Press's digital projects in October 2023. Country of Words is a digital-born project that retraces 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:44.320 and remaps the global story of Palestinian literature in the 20th century, starting from the Arab 00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:51.040 world and going through Europe, North America, and Latin America. Sitting at the intersection of 00:00:51.040 --> 00:00:57.360 literary history, periodical studies and digital humanities, Country of Words creates a networked 00:00:57.360 --> 00:01:06.160 and multi-locational literary history, a kind of literary atlas enhanced. In this video, I'll 00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:13.680 give you a tour of the main features of the digital platform. The cover page which you see here is 00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:22.640 found on countryofwords.org. It features a summary of the project as well as endorsements by 00:01:23.280 --> 00:01:29.200 established academics in the fields of literature, history, and digital humanities. 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:37.600 By clicking Enter on this page, the user is transported to the full contents of the project, 00:01:37.600 --> 00:01:46.320 so I'll click Enter. The featured landing page of the project is the timeline view, 00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:54.400 as opposed to a contents page or an introduction. This was a deliberate choice to highlight 00:01:54.400 --> 00:01:59.600 the advantages of the digital platform in allowing readers to delve right into the work 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:04.400 and explore it in a non-linear fashion that suits their interests and paths of inquiry. 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:10.960 The choice of the timeline view as the landing page is also a signal that this is not a conventional 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:18.080 book project which needs to be read from cover to cover. If the user wishes to read more about the 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:24.640 creation of the project and the introductory text, they can do so via the drop-down menu here on the 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:36.000 left-hand side where you can find the introduction and the about pages that give you more insights into 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:43.760 the making of the project. I'll go back to the timeline view. I'll come back to those later 00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:51.840 in the tour. The other views featured here in this upper menu which will always be available for users 00:02:51.840 --> 00:03:02.160 to move between is the network view, the visualizations gallery, and the audio interviews. I'll also come 00:03:02.160 --> 00:03:10.720 back to those a bit later. Let's start with the timeline view. The timeline page features an 00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:17.680 expanded chronology of Palestinian literary history in the 20th century. It features seven 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:25.760 periods of Palestinian literary history between the 1880s and going all the way up to the 1990s. 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:34.560 The timeline page also illustrates the reality of Palestinian literary geographies that 00:03:34.560 --> 00:03:44.080 alternated between diasporas and exile and the homeland. It also captures simultaneous and overlapping 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:51.120 periods. As can be seen from some of the titles that you can see here of the periods, 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:56.800 the periods that took place in exile are often labeled with Literary Diasporas and those 00:03:57.200 --> 00:04:03.920 that took place in the homeland in Palestine are often labeled under Occupation. For example, 00:04:03.920 --> 00:04:11.760 Under British Occupation or under Israeli Occupation and so forth. You see how they 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:20.800 alternate between diaspora and occupation. The title of each period is displayed up here in 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:32.160 this timeline menu as well as down across the page. As the user scrolls down, you can see a date range 00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:39.760 for the period, a title, a caption and the option to press on the read button which will allow you 00:04:39.760 --> 00:04:47.200 to access the full contents of the period. I'll just press on that and this is the first period 00:04:47.200 --> 00:04:56.640 that takes place between 1880 and 1950. I'll go back to the timeline. If you already know which 00:04:56.640 --> 00:05:04.640 period you might be interested in reading, you can click on it here in the timeline and access it 00:05:04.640 --> 00:05:09.920 directly. The page will automatically scroll down to that period and you can access it again by 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:19.760 clicking on Read. One thing to note is that as the user scrolls down the page, the period in view 00:05:19.760 --> 00:05:26.960 is blocked out here so you know where you are in the timeline, and another nice feature is this 00:05:26.960 --> 00:05:34.080 adjacent map which features the geographical locations relevant to this period. And as you scroll 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:43.360 down the page, the geographies change and you can see the dots increase, decrease, move, and shift 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:55.680 as you scroll down. One option to also access the periods in a separate tab would be to click on 00:05:55.680 --> 00:06:02.880 Read using the command click option on the Mac and that opens it up in a separate tab in case 00:06:03.520 --> 00:06:16.400 you do not want to leave the timeline view. So let's have a look at one of the periods 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:23.120 in this literary history. I will click on the first one here, Literary Diasporas: The Mahjar. 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:31.840 All periods are structured in a similar way so going through one will give you an idea of the others. 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:42.640 As you enter each of the periods, you are greeted with an opening image that captures something 00:06:42.640 --> 00:06:47.920 about the period or is from one of the sources that was used for researching this period. 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:57.280 You will also see the map that we saw adjacent to the titles of the periods on the timeline view, 00:06:57.280 --> 00:07:04.320 so here again is a reminder of the different geographies involved in this period. And as the 00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:16.640 reader scrolls down, you can get the sense of the text, the narration of this period. A menu on the 00:07:16.640 --> 00:07:22.640 left hand side will always appear, these are section headings so you can move between sections as you 00:07:23.280 --> 00:07:31.040 see fit. Another feature of each of these periods is the embedded visualizations. 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:40.320 So for example this is a visualization of Arabic language periodicals during the Mahjar period. 00:07:40.320 --> 00:07:48.080 These are visualizations that were published in Latin America and North America, the Caribbean, 00:07:49.200 --> 00:07:56.800 and Central America. So there's a brief description of the visualization and the related contents. 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:07.280 A section tells you which period this visualization appears in. The visualization itself is a map in 00:08:07.280 --> 00:08:16.640 this case with the titles of Arabic language periodicals in specific countries, so I clicked 00:08:16.640 --> 00:08:26.880 on Brazil which has 121 Arabic language periodicals. When you click on the circle, you will get the 00:08:26.880 --> 00:08:34.640 titles of all the periodicals. You can also find out more information by expanding or minimizing 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:42.160 the entries here. The items will have additional information about dates and places of publication 00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:54.960 where they are available. Another option is to filter the map by date, for example, to see how many 00:08:54.960 --> 00:09:05.520 publications were issued in a specific date range. Here the dates are decreasing so we can see that 00:09:05.520 --> 00:09:22.320 in Brazil it goes down to 16 periodicals between this period of time. The user can also zoom in 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:33.760 and zoom out and return to the image as it was, the visualization as it was, upon entry. 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:46.160 So these are the embedded visualizations in each of the periods. Visualizations are also available 00:09:46.160 --> 00:09:55.040 in the visualization view which I will come back to. Another feature of the periods and their narrative 00:09:55.040 --> 00:10:02.640 is the use of images which will appear in this way with a caption on the right hand side. 00:10:03.440 --> 00:10:10.080 Another feature is when we have multiple images it becomes an image gallery so to speak and the 00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:17.040 user can click on the arrow to move to the next image or back to the first one. In this case we 00:10:17.040 --> 00:10:28.880 can also zoom in, zoom, out and return to the original size. Again the caption is on the right 00:10:28.880 --> 00:10:39.760 hand side for each of the images in this image gallery. Another thing the user might have noticed 00:10:39.760 --> 00:10:46.800 as I'm going scrolling up and down the page is the highlights. The highlights are an important part 00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:53.840 of this digital project because they link the periods to each other. Highlighted items can 00:10:53.840 --> 00:11:09.840 either be people in blue, so this is a person—Isaaf al-Nashashibi, Khalil Sakakini—or red for a theme, or green for a periodical. 00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:18.640 And as I just showed by clicking on the highlighted item, in this case a person, 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:27.280 Khalil Baidas, you get a brief biography and a related content display. So we see that Khalil 00:11:27.280 --> 00:11:35.200 Baidas appears in quite a few of the periods of Palestinian literary history, and one can click 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:45.440 on these periods and go straight to that content or you can open it in a separate tab, for example, 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:54.800 which I will do right now. So Khalil Baidas is mentioned in this period, Literature under 00:11:54.800 --> 00:12:02.640 Israeli Occupation. Another feature that appears here, so all the periods appear with a yellow 00:12:02.640 --> 00:12:11.120 page icon. This icon with a microphone is an indication that Khalil Baidas is mentioned 00:12:11.120 --> 00:12:20.400 in the audio interview with Faisal Darraj. Again you can click on this to open it in a 00:12:20.400 --> 00:12:28.560 separate page in case you do want to listen to the episode with Faisal Darraj which mentions Khalil 00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:40.960 Baidas. Similarly, clicking on the periodicals, this blurs the text in the background and 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:49.040 gives you a brief description of the periodical and tells you in which periods this periodical 00:12:49.040 --> 00:12:56.960 is mentioned. Similarly for themes, there's a description of the theme and the periods in which 00:12:56.960 --> 00:13:15.120 this theme was mentioned. Just as a note, the highlighted material was pre-selected for highlighting 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:22.640 for their connecting properties. So these are the periodicals, people, and themes that connect 00:13:22.640 --> 00:13:29.040 between periods. This doesn't mean that other people that were not highlighted or periodicals 00:13:29.040 --> 00:13:35.200 or themes that were not highlighted are not important but that they no connection could be 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:46.000 traced for that item with another period. This is also important because it gives the reader a 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:54.640 broader range of literary figures and sources thereby expanding the Palestinian literary canon 00:13:54.640 --> 00:14:00.960 which is currently quite limited to only a few names that everybody knows. So the idea is to 00:14:00.960 --> 00:14:08.160 increase exposure to names that may have been forgotten or marginalized or overlooked. 00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:17.680 Another feature of each of the periods is of course the hyperlinked citations so you can click 00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:24.000 on a citation. It will take you to a footnote section. So this is the footnote section at the 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:31.760 end of the page, and if you want to go back to where you were in the text you click on the arrow. 00:14:31.760 --> 00:14:37.360 That is at the end of the citation. 00:14:37.360 --> 00:14:59.840 Let's move back to the visualizations or the network view actually. Let's move to the network view. 00:15:01.760 --> 00:15:09.040 So the network view is the next tab up on the top menu. This offers the user a different way to access 00:15:09.040 --> 00:15:16.080 information and explore connections and continuities between and across the seven periods of Palestinian 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:22.800 literary history. So just as the timeline offers users a view of how periods overlap and alternate 00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:29.200 between diaspora and the homeland, exile and occupation, the network presents different ways 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:36.000 periods of Palestinian literary history are interlinked. So the cross links between periods 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:44.240 are shown so periods are in yellow with the page icon. The links are through people in blue, 00:15:44.240 --> 00:15:52.720 periodicals in green, and themes in red. We've seen this type of highlighting in the text of each of 00:15:52.720 --> 00:16:03.840 the periods. So clicking on any of these circles, let's click on a period here. I hover over this 00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:14.080 period, and it grays out the not non-relevant information and keeps all the people, periodicals, 00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:21.200 and themes that are linked to this particular period. Similarly I'll zoom in so this is also 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:30.480 of course a feature. I'll zoom in to hover over a periodical for example this AL-JADID—it's connected 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:38.480 to three periods—and I will hover over a theme. This theme, MAHJAR LITERATURE, is also connected 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:47.280 to actually four periods: if I zoom out a little bit, or more, it's connected to all the periods. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:51.520 So now we can see that by zooming out. 00:16:51.520 --> 00:17:08.080 This you can get by hovering over a certain circle or node, and by clicking on the node— 00:17:08.080 --> 00:17:14.880 in this case I clicked on a period in yellow—you get that caption and also the option to read. So 00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:21.200 this is another point of access to read the contents and the narrative of each of the periods. 00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:36.080 When you click on a person, you also get their brief biography. When you click on a periodical, 00:17:36.800 --> 00:17:47.680 you get the brief description, and on a theme, similar brief description at the bottom left hand side of 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:59.600 the page. So reading the periods is also an option from here. Here again I can open it in a separate 00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:07.360 window or click on it and I can read this particular period. 00:18:07.360 --> 00:18:19.760 Let's move on to the visualizations gallery. 00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:29.440 Clicking on this tab takes us to this gallery which contains all 43 visualizations that are 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:35.840 embedded in the seven periods. So this is a way to explore these visualizations in the kind of 00:18:35.840 --> 00:18:43.760 standalone way instead of in context in the period itself but of course you can always go back to 00:18:43.760 --> 00:18:50.240 the period and explore it in the period along with the narrative and the text. Visualizations 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:57.280 featured in this gallery and also across the periods is based on six data models including maps, 00:18:57.280 --> 00:19:04.000 networks, timelines, temporal evolutions, trajectories, and information cards. I'll just show you 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:12.800 one example which is the information card. This for example is the information card for 00:19:12.800 --> 00:19:20.080 Liana Badr. We get a brief biography, some biographical data where it's available, and the 00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:28.960 related contents section which shows us which periods Liana Badr is mentioned in and also 00:19:28.960 --> 00:19:36.960 shows us that we have an audio interview with Liana Badr. You can see the microphone icon and her name. 00:19:39.200 --> 00:19:48.880 So this visualization—the info card—contains a map, a timeline, and a temporal evolution 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:55.920 of her literary production. Again one can zoom out and zoom in 00:19:55.920 --> 00:20:08.800 and move across the map. So here I'll show you how some of the timeline features work. 00:20:08.800 --> 00:20:16.480 So if you hover over this block on the timeline it tells you that Liana Badr lived in Jericho 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:24.640 between 1950 and 1967, and then she moved to Amman. So as I'm moving across the time the blocks, 00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:31.760 the map also moves to the geographical location. So now Liana Badr has moved to Amman and she 00:20:31.760 --> 00:20:42.880 lived there between 1967 and 1973. She moves to Beirut, then to Damascus, then all the way to Tunis 00:20:42.880 --> 00:20:55.760 and then she is back in Palestine. Similarly for her literary production we see these 00:20:56.320 --> 00:21:02.640 circles with numbers. So in this particular year she published four works, and if you click on this 00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:10.640 circle you'll get the titles of the works with the option to expand to find out more details and data 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:20.720 and minimize. So this is an example of the info card. 00:21:25.840 --> 00:21:31.200 Go back and I'll move on to the audio interviews page. 00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:40.240 Here we have a series of 10 audio interviews with key literary and cultural figures. 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:46.320 The reason they are included here is to highlight the importance of oral literary history in the 00:21:46.320 --> 00:21:52.320 context of lost, looted, and destroyed archives, especially in the case of Palestinian archives. 00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:58.880 So to complement and enrich the patchwork of primary sources that were gathered for this project, 00:21:58.880 --> 00:22:03.360 we also produced a series of 10 Arabic language 00:22:03.360 --> 00:22:12.720 interviews. These interviews are featured as part of a podcast series called Balad min kalam, 00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:19.920 Country of Words. More information is available here on the PAL Read Project page and I'll click 00:22:19.920 --> 00:22:27.840 to show you this page where also all the audio files are available with some more information. 00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:38.160 And eventually there will be full Arabic transcripts for each of the episodes. 00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:46.800 The podcast is also available on mainstream podcast channels on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:53.440 I'll just click on Spotify to show you where it exists as a standalone 00:22:53.440 --> 00:23:04.160 podcast for listeners to enjoy with the project or outside of the project. So this is the Spotify 00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:07.840 version of the podcast. 00:23:13.440 --> 00:23:21.440 So each of the 10 interviews are one hour long (60 minutes long) and are all available for listening 00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:26.320 on this page. So they're available for listening on podcast channels on the PalREAD Project page 00:23:26.320 --> 00:23:35.520 but also as part of this project. In fact the interviews are referenced and mentioned in the 00:23:35.520 --> 00:23:43.040 narrative of each period wherever they are relevant. That's why you will see the microphone icon come 00:23:43.040 --> 00:23:48.160 up for certain highlighted figures or periodicals or themes that means somebody 00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:54.160 spoke about this topic or this person or this periodical in an interview, and it tells you 00:23:54.160 --> 00:24:03.280 which interview that is. In each of the episodes guests talk about their literary evolutions and 00:24:03.280 --> 00:24:09.520 trajectories, their movements across periods and geographies, their literary circles and networks, 00:24:09.520 --> 00:24:16.400 and the periodicals with which they were associated. They also read a text from their own works 00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:21.760 and discuss an important work that they think or believe influenced the course of Palestinian 00:24:21.760 --> 00:24:28.080 literary history, and most of the guests end with talking about their personal libraries especially 00:24:28.080 --> 00:24:35.840 in light of censorship, movement, loss, and destruction. Okay so scrolling down the page 00:24:35.840 --> 00:24:41.840 you will see that the title of each of the interviews is the name of the person being 00:24:41.840 --> 00:24:49.280 interviewed with some biographical information. The user can click on Read More to see the full 00:24:49.280 --> 00:24:58.960 credits of who was involved in producing this particular episode. And if you click on the play 00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:05.280 button here (and here we can minimize this as well) if you click on the play button, you can also 00:25:05.280 --> 00:25:08.640 start to listen to the episode. (Audio plays from episode.) 00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:29.280 Okay I'll stop it here, so let's go back to the additional elements that are not available in 00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:36.960 this top menu which are here in this left hand menu which are mainly the introduction. 00:25:36.960 --> 00:25:46.000 And this introduction is text-based and features content that introduces the reader to the 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:50.480 intellectual underpinnings of the research and outlines the main aspects of the project. 00:25:51.280 --> 00:25:58.640 It moves to highlight the intellectual mentors for the project and to discuss the processes that 00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:04.480 were involved in bringing the project together in terms of housing, scattered and disconnected 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:13.440 fragments, methodologies and sources, data and data sets, digital technologies and the overall 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:27.280 structure of the project. The About page features text content that acknowledges everyone that was 00:26:27.280 --> 00:26:35.520 involved in the making of this project particularly people who contributed to the PalREAD project 00:26:35.520 --> 00:26:44.640 between 2018 and 2023. The project no doubt involved the participation of people and institutions in 00:26:44.640 --> 00:26:50.400 many different capacities across different countries. It included a core team, affiliated 00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:57.440 researchers and fellows, and professional collaborators in the digital design and podcasting worlds. 00:27:00.560 --> 00:27:06.960 And finally the last button we haven't clicked is the Home button. Clicking that brings you back 00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:14.720 to the cover page so we are now back full circle where we started. My hope is that users and readers 00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:21.760 navigate their own unique paths of exploration and enquiries through this project and I also hope 00:27:21.760 --> 00:27:28.160 that those interested in specific moments, literary figures, periodicals or themes can build on the 00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:33.840 groundwork laid out in this project to delve deeper and bring to light aspects of Palestinian 00:27:33.840 --> 00:27:41.760 literary history that remain caught between the crevices unexplored and undocumented.