Thursday, November 22, 2012

Featured article on Babel Together Magazine's Website

Saba7o LOVEanese (mess el kheir for all those in Lebanon)! And happy Lebanese Independence Day/Thanksgiving! (for those in the U.S. and elsewhere that celebrates today).

This is not a usual post, in that I won't be covering a topic, but I want to post a couple links that I want to bring to your attention.

Pretty cool story actually. Yesterday, a friend asked if I would contribute to her online magazine, Babel Together Magazine, and write about love, dating, and Lebanon. The magazine was originally dedicated to cross-cultural exchange, and although I love this topic, I wasn't sure what exactly to write about because the parameters seemed kind of vague, ambiguous, and unstructured. So, after talking more, I offered that I write about dating in Lebanon from my point-of-view, discussing why it's so complicated and reflecting on my thesis. We both got really excited about it, and she even offered to think up an interview about love and dating, and ask me questions after I wrote it.

Well, I sat down, and somehow it all just flowed onto a Word document. Everything I wanted to say came out perfectly. And a few hours later, it was sent off, and then published the same day along with an interview. It's pretty much my thesis condensed into two-and-a-half pages!

21 April 2013 UPDATE:
In the past few weeks, my changed the theme of her magazine, though, and had to remove all of the previous content. I didn't want that content to be lost, so I uploaded the piece I wrote along with an interview into my Google Drive, and reposted them here. Sadly, they are no longer published, but the content is still located at the links below. Some great news, though, is that the post got the attention of a communications professor who specializes in intercultural communication. She loved the article so much, that she asked me to convert it into an academic article (all content stemming from my thesis of course) so that she could include it in her forthcoming book, Intercultural Communication with Arabs (which has been published and is now available from Springer). Per a Gulf Today article, "A new academic book edited by an American University of Sharjah faculty member [Dr. Rana Raddawi, PhD.] will be the first addressing intercultural communication (IC) in the Arab world...there is no single book until today about intercultural communication with Arabs in different settings."


Needless to say, it's really exciting! Check it out, and feel free to voice your opinions about what I talk about! Do you agree? Disagree? Can you identify? Tell me what you think and about your experiences!

With that said, here are the links:


1. The post entitled: "Two Cultures, Different Ideas, One Love"


2. The interview

I'm really looking forward to your insights and comments!


Spread the love,
-Ogie, MA