Giovanna Fassetta, Nazmi Al-Masri and Alison Phipps (eds), Multilingual online academic collaborations as resistance: Crossing impassable borders

Abstract

In the area of academia, it is rare to find a book that is both filled with investigative rigor and emotionally powerful content. This is undoubtedly one such piece. The authors refer to it as a “multivocal book,” which is quite accurate, given the 17 contributors whose research spans four continents throughout the work’s nine chapters. With the humble priority of highlighting the impact that both the internet and the English language have had on populations in areas of the world that struggle to access basic needs, let alone educational resources, the authors remind us of our own academic privilege, noting that the finished, published, printed form of the book itself may ‘remain invisible’ (5) to many involved in creating it. We are reminded at the outset of each chapter just how “global” knowledge-sharing has become, and how many aspects of our own lives as academics we have likely grown to take for granted: participation in international conferences and collaborations, access to databases of countless international journals, or even just connection to a steady supply of electricity. Dually, we are reminded, or perhaps learning for the first time, of the harrowing obstacles of infrastructure and human suffering that some of the world’s most disenfranchised populations must overcome in order to attain the globally-shared resources that comprise what we now simply refer to as “education.” Throughout the collection of nine distinct studies, all chapters feature collaboration with the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). The book begins with a necessary and human prologue that provides the university’s context, illustrating the reality of life in the Gaza Strip—an area suffering from high rates of unemployment and poverty resulting from an Israeli blockade that chokes the population, where ‘just about everybody has to survive on humanitarian aid’ and electricity Arts and Humanities in Higher Education