من نحن
About
Decolonizing the Page: The Visual Politics and Poetics of Postcolonial Arabic books is a research project by Dr. Zeina Maasri (University of Bristol) investigating the visual culture of Arabic books during processes of decolonisation dating from the 1950s through the 1980s.
The primary objective of this website is to draw attention to a remarkable, yet forgotten, era of Arabic book arts, better to appreciate the visual culture of postcolonial Arabic books, spark interest and inspire further research.
The online exhibition brings together a digitised collection of around 250 books, contextualising and enabling broad accessibility to little-known archives of Arab visual culture. Through the Library and Learning Hub, the website supplements the exhibition with search tools and further insights about the books on display.
Designed with a non-specialist audience in mind, the website is intended to be enjoyed by anyone interested in the subject matter and can serve as a teaching resource across various courses and academic disciplines.
Archival collections and project partners
Decolonizing the Page largely draws from the private collections of Abboudi Bou Jawde (Al-Furat Bookshop, Beirut – Lebanon), renowned bibliophile and collector of Arabic print ephemera, with whom a long-standing partnership has been developing over many years to identify, collect, catalogue, and document illustrated Arabic books.
The research project has also benefitted from the British Library’s Arabic Collections and the expertise of its curator Daniel Lowe, as well as the archival collections of Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi (Azzawi Archives, London).
Team
Web design and Identity:
In the shade of a tree with Jana Traboulsi and Erik Hartin
Web development:
Erik Hartin (Not here to be liked)
Arabic graphic design consultant:
Translation from English to Arabic:
Rawan Ezzedine
Mahmoud Chreih
Image production:
Scope Ateliers, Lebanon
Data entry:
Jamal Adass
Youmna Ghandour
Hussein Nassereddine
Photography:
Agop Kanledjian
Mohamad Al-Rifai
Project Advisors:
Professor Hala Auji
Professor Jeremy Aynsley
Professor Su Lin Lewis
Acknowledgments
Decolonizing the Page was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship, UK [grant number AH/W011190/1]; and supported by the University of Bristol.
Research in Lebanon was facilitated through a visiting scholar affiliation at the Beirut Urban Lab, American University of Beirut.
The project is indebted to the following individuals for their generous advice and kind support: Howayda al-Harithy, Harriett Atkinson, Bob Brecher, Peter Dent, Mona Fawwaz, Mysa Kafil-Hussain, Samira Maasri, Louisa Mcmillan, Darren Newburry, Annebella Pollen, and Louise Purbrick.
Decolonizing the Page © 2025
Except for images, this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
All images remain the copyright of the respective publishers, artists, or artists’ estates. Users are responsible for complying with all applicable copyright laws and regulations.