ACC Library Hosts "Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys"

The Athens-Clarke County Library announces the beginning of the “Let’s Talk About It: Muslim Journeys” discussion series.

The Athens-Clarke County Library is one of 125 libraries and state humanities councils across the country selected to participate in the project, which seeks to familiarize public audiences in the United States with the people, places, history, faith and cultures of Muslims in the United States and around the world. The Muslim Journeys theme that the Library has chosen to explore is Points of View. The Library received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Library Association (ALA) to host the five-part reading and discussion series.

The series kicks off at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 12, with a lecture by Kemal Korucu on Muslim points of view. Korucu, a native of Turkey, is the owner of a software development company, serves on the board of directors for the Istanbul Center in Atlanta, and enjoys participating in interfaith and intercultural dialog programs. The lecture is free and open to the public and will take place in the library’s Appleton Auditorium, followed by a reception in the Multipurpose Room.

The first book discussion will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 15, in Multipurpose Room A. Dr. P. Daniel Silk will lead the discussion of Hisham Matar’s “In the Country of Men.”

Silk has earned three degrees from the University of Georgia: an AB in Religion, an MA in Religion (Islamic Studies), and a PhD in Adult Education. Since the late 1990s he has studied or worked in a variety of Muslim communities around the world. 

In 2002 he was part of the first permanent State Department staff at the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, which was followed by an assignment to the US Consulate in Jerusalem. In 2009 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in the United Kingdom, where he studied outreach between Muslim communities and police, which was also the topic of his PhD dissertation. He continues to be involved in related projects, and just finished a project for the US Embassy in London, during which he facilitated conversational forums about police-community engagement for citizens and police personnel in the UK. He currently works for the University of Georgia, where he serves as a captain with the UGA Police Department, and also teaches in the Criminal Justice Studies Program.

All of the books to be discussed in this series are part of the Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys. The books and films comprising the Bookshelf were selected with the advice librarians and cultural programming experts, as well as distinguished scholars. They are in the fields of anthropology, world history, religious studies, interfaith dialogue, the history of art and architecture, world literature, Middle East studies, Southeast Asian studies, African studies, and Islamic studies.

For information or to register for an upcoming discussion, please click here  or call the library at (706) 613-3650.

 The Bridging Cultures Bookshelf is a project of NEH, conducted in cooperation with the ALA Public Programs Office, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Additional support for the arts and media components was provided by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts. Local support is provided by the Interfaith Council. The Athens-Clarke County Library is located at 2025 Baxter Street, Athens.