| Living in Romantic Baghdad: An American Memoir of Teaching and Travel in Iraq, 1924-1947 Subjects: Staudt Ida Donges 1875–1952 -- Travel -- Iraq; Iraq -- Description and travel; Iraq -- History -- Hashemite Kingdom 1921–1958; Americans -- Iraq -- Biography; Teachers -- Iraq -- Biography; American School for Boys (Baghdad Iraq) -- History; In 1924, an adventurous young couple accepted a commission to open an American school for boys in Baghdad. Setting foot on Iraqi soil the very day that the Constituent Assembly convened in Baghdad to frame a constitution for the new nation, Ida Staudt and her husband Calvin witnessed the birth of this fledgling country. For the next twenty-three years, they taught hundreds of young boys whose ethnicity, religious background, and economic status were as varied as the region itself. Cultivating strong bonds with their students and their families, the Staudts were welcomed into their lives and homes, ranging from the royal palace to refugee huts and Bedouin tents. John Joseph is professor emeritus at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the American School for Boys in Baghdad in 1941 and taught at the school's intermediate division for four years. |