Caroline and John Williams Collection

"John Alden and Caroline H. Williams have travelled and photographed in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, as well as Egypt. John Alden Williams did his doctoral work in Middle East Civilization at Princeton University and was from 1957-59 assistant director of the American Research Center in Egypt. Thanks to a generous travel fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, he was able to travel and photograph historic centers of Islamic civilization from Spain to India and Central Asia. In Cairo, he studied the history of Islamic Architecture with Professor Sir Archibald Creswell. From 1959-66, he taught and researched at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, spending the summer months in Egypt and Turkey. In 1966, he returned to Cairo as director of the Center for Arabic Studies at the American University. Caroline Williams graduated from Radcliffe College and returned to Harvard University to complete an M.A. in Islamic History. In 1966, she moved to Cairo to do a second M.A. on the history of Islamic Art. She is the author of Islamic Monuments of Cairo: The Practical Guide, which is now in its 5th edition. From 1970-1984, Caroline and John alternated years of teaching in Cairo with teaching at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1988, John Alden Williams became the Kenan Professor in the Humanities at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. He retired in 1999. Caroline Williams is currently writing on Orientalist painters and photographers, as well as on the evolution of Cairo''s Islamic city. The slides in this collection were taken between the years 1968-1978."