Gingko Library

General information

ABOUT

The Gingko Library is a ten-year project promoting dialogue with the Middle East and North Africa through education, information, an annual conference and publishing programme. Established in 2014, it is dedicated to the memory of Mark Werner Linz, publisher of the American University of Cairo Press for over thirty years.

‘To every thing there is a season’. With this quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes Goethe introduces the scholarly essays in his West-East Divan, a homage to the Persian poet Hafiz and to Islamic culture. The Persian-Arabic word divan means ‘assembly’, and in the West-East Divan Goethe assembled lyrical and scholarly texts about the East. He called them ‘books’, though he also used the Persian word nameh, meaning epic poem. This study of the Other was Geothe’s personal attempt to broaden the minds of his readers who were fearful of the Islamic world. Today we face another period when the Western world feels threatened and increasingly seeks to define its own identity in opposition to Islam and frame the debate as a ‘clash of civilisations’. Mark Linz believed that the season had come for a new divan, and at the end of his life envisaged a ten-year project of dialogues and publications by the most distinguished scholars from the West and the MENA region.

CONFERENCES

The annual Gingko Library Conference, for scholars, public figures and members of the wider public who are engaged with issues concerning the MENA region, will promote inquiry, research, discussion and the advancement of knowledge. The conferences will be transnational, multicultural, interfaith events, attended by both people of Western backgrounds as well as people from, or with roots in, the MENA region. Our hope is that this will foster dialogue between people of different ethnicities and cultures, and promote mutual understanding based upon our shared interests and concerns. Each year the conference will take as its base one of the subject areas in which the Gingko Library publishes. The first conference, held in London in December 2014, looked that how the First World War shaped the Middle East we know today.

In order to better engage scholars and public figures, especially those from the MENA region, we aim to facilitate their participation with the award of grants and will assist in the procurement of visas.

Our conferences aim to generate wider interest in the region as well as promote greater understanding of its culture, both in the West and in the MENA region itself. Note that by the term MENA, we conceive the region as involving not just the Arab countries, but also Turkey, Iran, Israel, the Kurdish regions, etc.

PUBLICATIONS

Over a period of ten years, the Gingko Library will promote dialogue between the West and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region by publishing in the following subject areas:

History & Biography

Philosophy & Religion

Literature & Literary Criticism

Conservation & Sustainability

Art & Architecture

Music & Performing Arts

Science & Technology

Political Thought

Commerce & Economics

Education & Social Development