Selections from Middle Eastern and North African Materials

The Middle Eastern and North African Materials (MENAM) collection consists of items in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages of these regions selected from general collections and digitized. This digital collection includes materials in diverse ephemeral formats, such as posters, broadsides, newspapers, cards, and artwork. Dating from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, these items showcase motivations for creating materials meant to announce, educate, and evoke deep sentiments on topics ranging from the political, social, economic, educational, environmental, and religious. As ephemera, their formats were chosen not to stand the test of time, but rather to exist in the here and now of their own creation, speaking to the moment of their production and the topics of their day.

Created by artists, writers, lawyers, ministries and government officials, film producers, and others, the items digitized in the Middle Eastern and North African Materials collection offer a selection of resources meant to engage their audiences to action, emotion, and thought.