"Vanya Da Dua" Glimpses of a Lost World: An American Boy in the Liberian Bush
CreateSpace, 2012
Paperback/ebook, 176 pages, $33

Erik d'Azevedo (MFA 1976) authored this window into the intimate daily lives of tribal peoples in the interior of the West African country of Liberia in a time before everything was changed by 20 years of civil wars. It is more than the experiences of American children living in the midst of a foreign culture; it is an in-depth glimpse into the deep interior of a region almost unknown to most people. Many of the indigenous villagers and their children had never before seen a white person. This journey chronicles the stories of a six-year old boy, and his personal relationship with the children he befriends, and his integration into a culture he embraces.

Zarouhie Abdalian (MFA 2010) maintains quite the hectic travel schedule. This fall she made a trip to Bergen, Norway, to participate in the Kunstindustrimuseum's Material Information exhibition, and afterward she headed to the 9th Shanghai Biennial as a participant in the San Francisco pavilion. She's exhibited work and created site-specific installations throughout the United States and eight other countries; right now you can see one of her works, The fall without the fruit, at the CCA Wattis Institute's When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes exhibition, on view through December 1, 2012.

Abdalian's work has evolved dramatically since her years as an undergraduate at Tulane University, where she focused on painting and printmaking. While at CCA she developed an entirely new way of working that is sculptural, and profoundly site specific. A new piece doesn't begin until she researches the place where it will be located. Visually and historically, her installations engage in dialogue with their viewers and -- ideally -- disrupt their typical interaction with a particular place.

During the height of the Arab Spring, Zena Adhami (MFA Design 2012) was watching from her apartment in San Francisco as revolution erupted back home.

She decided to make it the subject of her CCA graduate thesis: an examination of the specific media and technologies that were making it possible for her to stay informed from halfway around the world.

This time of upheaval also represented a culmination of Adhami's efforts to reconsider graphic design as a more politically engaged pursuit. "Every once in a while there's a degree of social consciousness among designers, but usually I feel that they're talking to themselves, and that's a failure of design intelligence," she opines.

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here
PM Press, 2012
Paperback, 300 pages, $20

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad -- the historic center of Baghdad bookselling -- wounding more than 100 people and killing more than 30. This anthology, long in preparation, begins with a historical introduction to al-Mutanabbi Street and includes the writing of Iraqis as well as a wide swath of international poets and writers who were outraged by this attack. The publisher PM Press, is local, and the book is coedited by the San Francisco bookseller Beau Beausoleil with the poet Deema Shehabi. Steve Dickison (Writing and Literature faculty), is one of many contributors.

Exploring the question “Where does al-Mutanabbi Street start?,” the book looks at both communities and nations, seeking to show the commonality between a small street in Baghdad and other individual cultural centers. Chapters examine al-Mutanabbi Street as a place for the free exchange of ideas, a place that has long offered its sanctuary to the complete spectrum of Iraqi voices, and a place where the roots of democracy took hold many hundreds of years ago.