SPAN had begun in 1948 as a consortium between the University of Minnesota and about a dozen colleges that cultivated international understanding through practical academic research. Each year four (sometimes three) countries were selected as destinations. It was and is, because SPAN continues todaya self-financed program through voluntary donations by businesses in the Upper Midwest as well as by contributions from the participants themselves (known as SPANners). The program was oriented toward upper classmen (in that age of gender insensitive terminology) so applicants were usually students in their Junior (or third) year of undergraduate studies.

Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.

The essays, which discuss authors in a variety of literary genres and across the spectrum of the region concerned-from Iraq in the East to Tunisia in the West-provide clear evidence of the gradually changing roles of the indigenous and the imported which are an intrinsic feature of the movement known in Arabic as al-bahada (cultural revival) and the way in which Arab litterateurs chose to respond to the inspiration that such changes inevitably engendered. --