Works

Arabia and the American Dream: An Autoworker's Lebanon Sojourn

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For two tumultuous years from 2002 to 2004, Phillip Bannowsky was Secondary English Chair at the International College of Lebanon in Beirut. There he taught English, Human Rights, and U. S. Legislative Processes. He directed the School's Harvard Model Congress program, in which Middle Eastern students took on the roles of mostly American officials and legislators and then debated current issues at an international conference in Paris. Not hardship duty.

Bannowsky’s monologue relates his experiences in the Middle East to his time as a United Automobile Workers Union representative. “To understand Lebanon,” explains Bannowsky, “or any place in the world, for that matter, it is necessary to consider the reporter, the transmitter, the filter, the actual human being, with all his prejudices and preoccupations, who is trying to make sense of it all.” His presentation explores the confluence of what are called eastern and western values and how they interact with his own personal history. “It’s an antidote, I hope,” says Bannowsky, “to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim paranoia.”

2005 Philly Fringe

All photographs and text © 1986-2008 Phillip Bannowsky