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1. Water in Context in the Middle East
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2. Comparing Revolutions—Learning from the Arab World and the Fall of Communism
Water in Context in the Middle East
In September 2012 the Outreach Center convened an interdisciplinary workshop on water in the Middle East region, bringing together K-12 teachers, museum educators, and Harvard and MIT faculty. Workshop presentations put into conversation anthropological, archeological, remote sensing, and Geographic Information System approaches to the study of water, exploring interdisciplinary and cross-curricular approaches to the cultural and environmental study of water across pre-collegiate and university levels. Through the resources provided below we hope to support educators in exploring the questions:
- How do natural resources and human cultures affect each other in the Middle East?
- How can cultural knowledge inform implementation of technological approaches to water access?
- How can perspectives of the social sciences inform literacy in hard sciences such as mapping and geology?
Below you will find recorded presentations from the workshop, as well as essential questions, background readings, and viewing guides for each video. The viewing guides contain "time tags" to direct you to particular content and questions in each presentations. Below this are further online resources.
Workshop Presentation Recordings and Resources
Jason Ur: Water in Ancient Mesopotamian Civilizations
Essential Questions:
- How does access to natural resources impact the development of cities and civilizations?
- How do humans exert control over their natural environment during the development of early civilizations?
- How does control of natural resources impact the authority of leaders, and the structure of government?
Related Resources:
- Viewing Guide: Download a viewing guide showing time tags for slides and content.
- Presentation Slides: Water and Early Civilization in Mesopotamia
Farouk El-Baz: Remote Sensing of Arab Deserts
Essential Questions:
- How does water in a landscape change over time?
- How can technology be used to discover water in places where it is not visible?
- What role can discovery of water play in peace building processes?
Related Resources:
- Background Reading: Remote Sensing of the Earth: Implications for Groundwater in Darfur. Farouk El-Baz, 2008.
- Viewing Guide: Download a viewing guide showing time tags for slides and content
- Presentation Slides: Presentation on Remote Sensing of Arab Deserts
Jeffrey Blossom: Map Literacy
Essential Questions:
- How do maps communicate information?
- What choices to map makers make and why do they make them?
- How can information be visually “translated” from data tables to maps?
Related Resources:
- Viewing Guide: Download a viewing guide showing time tags for slides and content
- Presentation Slides: GIS Analysis and Mapping the Middle East
Steven C. Caton: Water, Expert Knowledge, and the Politics of Sustainability
Related Resources:
- Presentation Slides: Presentation on Water, Expert Knowledge, and the Politics of Sustainability
Additional Links and Resources
- Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University
- GIS Tutorials and Exercises
- NASA Visible Earth — A catalog of NASA images and animations of Earth
- Landsat Imagery — Access to multi-temporal, multi-spectral worldwide Landsat GLS data
- Natural Earth — A public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.
- DIVA-GIS — A free computer program for mapping and geographic data analysis
Comparing Revolutions—Learning from the Arab World and the Fall of Communism
This one-hour webinar held in November 2011 includes presentations by former Center for Middle Eastern Studies Outreach Director Paul Beran and Davis Center Outreach Director Cris Martin as well as questions and discussion and employs a comparative lens to see what lessons and questions from Russian history can inform current thinking about political transformation in the Arab world.