The songs included in The Songs of Yearning collection are composed by different women from Yemen’s highlands. Whether from Ibb, Gibleh, Ta’iz, or al-Jawf, these songs reflect these women’s joys and sorrows as they yearned for their absent loved ones. They record and mark the different chapters of these women’s lives. Though these women have asked not to be named and for their recorded voice singing these songs not to be published, they remain foundational contributors to The Global Yemen Project.
Gokh (Gukha/جُوخة) is a History PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East. She specializes in race and gender in the Middle East, with a focus on the social history of Yemen. Her current project focuses on the social history of Al-Muhamasheen —Yemen’s marginalized African-diaspora. She seeks to understand how the Yemeni revolutions of the 1960s cemented the Muhamasheen’s position on the margins of Yemeni society while these revolutions simultaneously called for the overhaul of the country’s social hierarchy. Through this project, and her previous degrees in Religious Studies, Political Science, and Global Studies, Gokh aims to provide an interdisciplinary case study to better understand race and race relations in the Middle East.
The Global Yemen Project (TGYP) is indebted to the help and mentorship of many people. Professor Utathya Chattopadhyaya's mentorship helped challenge me to reconceptualize Yemen as the center of an oceanic story rather than always at the margins of a territorial one. Professor Juan Cobo Betancourt created the website template used here and provided extensive help trouble-shooting site issues. He and Andreina Soto first introduced me to the field of Digital Humanities and its potential for telling stories other research formats could not. My graduate advisor Professor Sherene Seikaly has provided consistent and steadfast support throughout my graduate studies. She has played a foundational role in shaping the overall direction of my research and the questions that animate it. Thank you all!