The Middle East Librarians Association today announced its 2024 MELA Book Awards for outstanding work related to Middle East studies librarianship, the history of Middle East libraries/scholarship, or other topics congruent with the mission of MELA. Brahim El Guabli, associate professor of comparative thought and literature at Johns Hopkins University, has received Honorable Mention for Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence, published by Fordham University Press.

The committee’s citation for the honorable mention reads:

“This work addresses the void left by authoritarianism and political violence, examining a rich, yet overlooked, collection of archival materials and literary works across at least four languages suppressed by state violence. This work is crucial to historians, anthropologists, and librarians as it broadens the scope of “archival studies” by incorporating textual, sonic, and visual sources, offering a reconstructed narrative of a silenced history, or an ‘other-history.'”