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Sarah Sullivan
Honored by Adham Center
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| Sarah Sullivan
with AUC's president and provost |
Standing between
AUC's president and provost, Sarah Sullivan, former managing editor
of the Adham Center publications, addressed a select group of guests
invited to a luncheon May 31, 2004 at the Sony Gallery to celebrate
her appointment as Adham Center Associate.
"Coming back to the Adham Center is like coming home. Even though
I left it, it is a big part of me," said Sullivan, who served as
the founding and managing editor of the Center's publications for five
years. She is now working as publications manager at the Arab American
Institute.
Sullivan graduated
from Georgetown University with a bachelor's degree in history in 1994.
As an undergraduate she became interested in the Middle East after taking
courses in Arab area studies. She had already acquired journalistic
skills early on in life: it was in 1989 that she worked as a TV reporter
for a CBS affiliate in the United States, where she received an "excellent
training" on how to report, edit, and use the camera.
She was first
introduced to theAUC community when she came during her junior year
to pursue her studies as part of a study-abroad program in 1992. After
she graduated, she decided to come back to AUC in 1995 as an intern
for the Caravan helping students improve their reporting and design
skills. A year later, she enrolled in the Arabic Language Institute
as a student.
During that period
she started to develop her design skills through her work as Shams Friedlander's
assistant in graphic design. "Shams is an amazing teacher and really
had a great impact on my work and my career," said Sullivan.
It was Friedlander
who introduced her to Professor Abdallah Schleifer at a time when Schleifer
was thinking of publishing an electronic journal to be called Transnational
Broadcasting Studies (better known as TBS) to study the social,
economic, and political impact of transnational broadcasting. Schleifer
needed a designer and an editor. Sullivan met the requirements and ultimately
was appointed as TBS managing editor and web designer.
"It was a
perfect time for me to come in to the Adham Center and work on this
project," Sullivan said. She added that TBS was founded
at a time when few academic or professional journals were uploaded to
cyberspace. "It was an interesting challenge: we were sort of pioneering
in the sense of reformatting electronic journals," Sullivan added.
Looking at TBS
now, Sullivan acknowledges a change in its focus. She said that in the
past TBS has focused on the transnational broadcast media in
Europe and Latin America as well as the Arab and Islamic worlds. However,
with the rising number of Arab satellite TV channels, the journal had
to change its focus to study the implications of the satellite broadcasting
boom in the region. "It was very smart of them to focus on Islamic
and the Arab world, I think that is extremely good move," she said.
"There is very little information out there (in the West), other
than TBS, that is reliable and in depth (and) that comes out
of a deep understanding of the Arab and Islamic world."
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In 1999, Sullivan
became the Adham Center Publication manager responsible for the center's
website, which was a section of the AUC website. Later it became an
independent website known as "AdhamOnline." She also published
three issues of the annual print newsletter "In Focus" carrying
the center's news from 1999 to 2001. In 2002, this newsletter merged
into Adham Online where news about the center, the center's alumni,
and the Sony Gallery are regularly uploaded. At that point, Sullivan
left the center and moved back to the US to work at the Arab American
Institute while maintaining her links with TBS as a contributor
and consultant. "It was a good next step to continue working in
a sense with the Arab world," Sullivan said.
By
Noha El Hennawy
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