Podcasts by New Books in Middle Eastern Studies
Interviews with Scholars of the Middle East about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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On Edward Said's "Orientalism" from 2022-11-08T09:00
Beginning in the 17th century, European countries began colonizing countries east of Europe. They imposed their own ideas over local cultures and extracted free labor and resources. One way that Eu...
ListenOn Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī's "Indications of Inimitability" from 2022-10-04T08:00
Great poetry or beautiful prose if often capable of challenging and delighting readers far more than dry, bland language. But why is that? Dalā’il al-Iʿjaz, or Indications of Inimitability, is a hu...
ListenOn T. E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" from 2022-08-17T08:00
Lawrence of Arabia has become one of the most well known films in the world. It inspired Steven Spielberg to become a filmmaker and President Barack Obama considers it one of his favorite films. Bu...
ListenOn T. E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" from 2022-08-17T08:00
Lawrence of Arabia has become one of the most well known films in the world. It inspired Steven Spielberg to become a filmmaker and President Barack Obama considers it one of his favorite films. Bu...
ListenJon Hoover, "Ibn Taymiyya" (Oneworld, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ibn Taymiyya is one of the most prolific and influential Islamic thinkers to date, and was even the only pre-modern Muslim author cited in the 9/11 Report. His supporters and detractors alike have ...
ListenReina Lewis, “Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fashion is often dismissed as trivial, but Reina Lewis‘s Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures (Duke University Press, 2015) takes both it and what Muslims specifically wear and devotes and 3...
ListenJohn Tolan, "Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John Tolan’s latest book Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton UP, 2019) is a fascinating and rich survey of the complex perception...
ListenGeorge Kiraz on Gorgias Press (NBn, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Normally, we feature books, but this time we’re highlighting an independent press making waves in academic works on the ancient Near East, Syriac, Islam, Jewish studies, and more: Gorgias Press. Ba...
ListenZainab Saleh, "Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraqis abroad, hoping to return one day to a better Iraq, became uncertain exiles. Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (Stanford UP, 2020) tells ...
ListenMya Guranieri Jaradat, “The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others” (U. Chicago/Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2017), Mya Guarnieri-Jaradat offers her readers an intimate, often devastatingly gloomy portrait of the lives o...
ListenWalker Robins, "Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel" (U Alabama Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine before Israel (University of Alabama Press, 2020), Walker Robins explores how Southern Baptists engaged what was called the “Palestine que...
ListenAdam Gaiser, “Shurat Legends, Ibadi Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism and the Making of an Early Islamic Community” (U. South Carolina Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Adam Gaiser‘s majestic new book Shurat Legends, Ibadi Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism and the Making of an Early Islamic Community (University of South Carolina Press, 2016), treats readers to a ...
ListenMichael Q. Morton, "Masters of the Pearl: A History of Qatar" (Reaktion Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
History is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of young, energy-rich monarchies of the Gulf that often punch above their weight in geopolitics and geoeconomics. Yet, that is the ...
ListenBruce B. Lawrence, “The Koran in English: A Biography” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the basis for a major world religion, the Qur’an is one of the most influential books of all time. But when it first appeared, the Qur’an was in Arabic. Most Muslims today are not native-Arabic ...
ListenDanielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “re...
ListenYakov M. Rabkin, “What Is Modern Israel?” (U. Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In What is Modern Israel? (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016), Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses some of the most fundamental issues pertaining to ...
ListenDónal Hassett, "Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dónal Hassett’s Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918-1939 (Oxford UP, 2019) is at once a history of colonialism and of the “Great War”. Considerin...
ListenCyrus Schayegh, “The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The question of how to write the history of the modern Middle East is a much contested one. Do we write national histories, focused on modern-nation states? Do we treat the Middle East as an integr...
ListenAndrea Chiovenda, "Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War, and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Against the backdrop of four decades of continuous conflict in Afghanistan, the Pashtun male protagonists of this book carry out their daily effort to internally negotiate, adjust (if at all), and ...
ListenAndrea L. Stanton, “This is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in Mandate Palestine” (U of Texas Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite the recent booms in the study of the Middle East and North Africa, technology studies still remain scarce: one of the recent attempts to fill the void is Andrea L. Stanton‘s ‘This is Jerusa...
ListenNoel Malcolm, "Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sir Noel Malcolm’s captivating new book, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2019), tells the story of Western European fa...
ListenAsher Orkaby, “Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The civil war in Yemen today harkens back to a similar conflict half a century ago, when the overthrow of the ruling imam, Muhammad al-Badr, in 1962 sparked a conflict that dragged on for the rest ...
ListenAlan Chong, "Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume, Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), originality as well as dimens...
ListenFaegheh Shirazi, “Brand Islam: The Marketing and Commodification of Piety” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Religion is big business nowadays. Within the global context of Muslim consumers Islamic commodities have become increasingly popular over the past few decades. Faegheh Shirazi, Professor in the De...
ListenWilson Chacko Jacob, "For God or Empire: Sayyid Fadl and the Indian Ocean World" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sayyid Fadl, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, led a unique life—one that spanned much of the nineteenth century and connected India, Arabia, and the Ottoman Empire. For God or Empire: Sayyid F...
ListenWendy Pearlman, “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria” (Custom House, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the wake of the Arab Spring and the ensuing Syrian Civil War, the stories of the millions displaced by the conflict as well as the millions Syria has lost since 2011 remain largely untold. Wendy...
ListenFarzaneh Hemmasi, "Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Farzaneh Hemmasi is the author of Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music (Duke UP, 2020). The title obviously refers the song "California Dreamin'...
ListenBetty S. Anderson, “A History of the Middle East: Rulers, Rebels, and Rogues (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the Middle East continues to become more topical to American and European audiences, a need for textbooks to teach the history of the region has become urgent. Some such textbooks take a topical...
ListenAlexis Wick, "The Red Sea In Search of Lost Space" (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Red Sea has, from time immemorial, been one of the world’s most navigated spaces, in the pursuit of trade, pilgrimage and conquest. Yet this multidimensional history remains largely unrevealed ...
ListenMichael Allan, “In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the d...
ListenMatthew S. Hopper, "Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines the interconnected themes of enslavement, glob...
ListenZachary Lockman, “Field Notes: The Making of Middle Eastern Studies in the United States” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The dominant narrative in the history of the study of the Middle East has claimed that the Cold War was what pushed Middle East studies to develop, as part of a greater trend in area studies. Drawi...
ListenSophie Richter-Devroe, "Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Sophie Richter-Devroe’s book, Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival (University of Illinois Press, 2018) offers an analysis of the forms assumed by wo...
ListenIsabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The title of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez‘s The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973: The USSR’s Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press/Hurst, 2017), tells you that this...
ListenZiad Fahmy, "Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophon...
ListenNader Hashimi and Danny Postel, eds. “Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The term ‘sectarianism’ has dominated much of the discourse on the Middle East and dictates that much of the unrest in the region is due to religious and cultural differences stemming back centurie...
ListenLorenz M. Lüthi, "Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What was the Cold War that shook world politics for the second half of the twentieth century? Standard narratives focus on Soviet-American rivalry as if the superpowers were the exclusive driving f...
ListenBlake Atwood, “Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and Political Change in the Islamic Republic” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Iranian cinema has close connections to the 1979 Islamic revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini , explicitly pointed to the uses of cinema for religious and revolutionary political purposes. But Iranian fi...
ListenVictor McFarland, "Oil Powers: A History of the US-Saudi Alliance" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a critical feature of the modern international system. It binds the global hegemon to a region on the other side of the planet. And it...
ListenErik Love, “Islamophobia and Racism in America” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Islamophobia and Racism in America (New York University Press, 2017), Sociologist Erik Love provides a historical and current snapshot of civil rights issues surrounding people fro...
ListenMajid Daneshgar, "Studying the Qur’an in the Muslim Academy" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Consider the works of the renowned Nobel-prize-winning African American writer, literary and social critic, and activist Toni Morrison (b. 1931),” writes Majid Daneshgar. “Hers—like Said’s—are pop...
ListenBrad Gooch, “Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love” (Harper, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ever since their composition in the 13th century the poems of the Persian writer Rumi have enthralled millions of readers around the world. In Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love (Ha...
ListenJonathan Lee, "Afghanistan: A History from 1260 to the Present" (Reaktion Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Lee’s comprehensive study of Afghanistan’s political history in Afghanistan: A History from 1260 to the Present (Reaktion Books) tells the story of the emergence and sometimes surprising l...
ListenRajan Gurukkal, “Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rajan Gurukkal‘s Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations (Oxford University Press, 2016) casts a critical eye over the exchanges, usuall...
ListenJacob Mundy, "Libya" (Polity Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jacob Mundy is associate professor of PCON at Colgate University He’s written a great book titled Libya, published in 2018 in Polity Presses' "Hot Spots in Global Politics" series. Jacob’s book is ...
ListenNir Baram, “A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank” (Text Publishing Company, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Text Publishing Company, 2017), Nir Baram, award winning author and journalist, gives a fascinating account of his tra...
ListenJames Zogby, "The Tumultuous Decade: Arab Public Opinion and the Upheavals of 2010-2019" (Steuben Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
James Zogby’s The Tumultuous Decade: Arab Public Opinion and the Upheavals of 2010–2019 (Steuben Press, 2020) takes the reader on a decade-long tour of the Middle East as the region reverberates fr...
ListenLewis Glinert, “The Story of Hebrew” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For this episode, New Books in Jewish Studies interviews Lewis Glinert, Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Linguistics. His book, The...
ListenBehnaz A. Mirzai, "A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800-1929" (U Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Behnaz A. Mirzai’s book A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800-1929 (University of Texas Press, 2017) contributes to the growing field of slavery in the Middle East is a growing field ...
ListenJoseph Lumbard, “The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary” (HarperOne, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015) represents years of effort from a team of dedicated translators and editors (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Joseph Lumbard, Maria Dakake, C...
ListenAdam Hanieh, "Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When most Westerners think of the Gulf, the first thing that comes to mind is often oil. However, as Adam Hanieh demonstrates in Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the...
ListenBrian T. Edwards, “After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
American culture is ubiquitous across the globe. It travels to different social contexts and is consumed by international populations. But the relationship between American culture and the meanings...
ListenJeremy Black, "A Brief History of the Mediterranean" (Little Brown, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jeremy Black, the prolific professor of history at Exeter University, has published A Brief History of the Mediterranean (Little Brown, 2020), to offer readers an overview of this sphere from pre-h...
ListenNathan Hofer, “The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325” (Edinburgh UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespread popularity of Sufism was marked by a public...
ListenNathalie Peutz, "Islands of Heritage Conservation and Transformation in Yemen" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Soqotra, the largest island of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago, is one of the most uniquely diverse places in the world. A UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, the island is home not only to birds, rept...
Listen“Best New Books in Political Science 2016: International Politics Edition” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Last week featured a year-end-round up of books in American politics. This week I looked back to the past year on the podcast in other subfields. I start with an interview I enjoyed with Prerna Sin...
ListenRichard van Leeuwen, "The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction" (Brill, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the impressive volume of The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction (Brill), Richard van Leeuwen thoroughly examines an array of intricate ways in which the Thousand and One Night...
ListenJack M. Sasson, “From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters” (Eisenbrauns, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For over 40 years, Jack M. Sasson has been studying and commenting on the cuneiform archives from Mari on the Euphrates River, especially those from the age of Hammurabi of Babylon. Among Mari’s we...
ListenM. R. Jackson Bonner, "The Last Empire of Iran" (Gorgias Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite the competition it posed to the Romans’ eastern empire and the longevity it enjoyed compared to its Iranian predecessors, English-language histories of the Sassanian Empire are few and far ...
ListenSharon Rotbard, “White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa” (MIT Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (MIT Press, 2015), Sharon Rotbard, Senior Lecturer in the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, examines the...
ListenAbigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, “Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine” (Brandeis UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Much of the existing literature on Mandatory Palestine adheres to a dual society model which assumes that the Palestinian Arab community and the Jewish Yishuv had separate economic, social, and cul...
ListenDavid Bressoud, "Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas (Princeton UP, 2019) takes readers on a remarkable journey through hundreds of years to tell the story of how calculus evolved into the subject we kno...
ListenDevin Naar, “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford University Press, 2016) Devin Naar delves deep into the archives to produce this intimate and exciting portrait of Salonic...
ListenZachary Valentine Wright, "Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the 18th-Century Muslim World" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World (The University of North Carolina Press 2020) by Zachary Valentine Wright (Associate Professor in Residence in...
ListenVictor Taki, “Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire” (I.B. Taurus, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Victor Taki’s Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (I.B. Taurus, 2016) invites the reader to explore the captivating story of the relationship of the Russian and Ottoman Empi...
ListenWaleed Mahdi, "Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation" (Syracuse UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Waleed Mahdi’s book, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (Syracuse University Press) offers a comparative analysis of the portrayals of Arab A...
ListenBanu Bargu, “Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the relationship between state power and self-destructive violence as a mode of political resistance? In her book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia University Pre...
ListenNancy Um, "Shipped but Not Sold: Material Culture and the Social Protocols of Trade during Yemen’s Age of Coffee" (U Hawaii Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the early decades of the eighteenth century, Yemen hosted a bustling community of merchants who sailed to the southern Arabian Peninsula from the east and the west, seeking and offering a range ...
ListenBryan K. Roby, “The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948-1966” (Syracuse UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948-1966 (Syracuse University Press, 2015), Bryan K. Roby, fellow at the Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of M...
ListenJered Rubin, "Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge UP, 2020) addresses one of the big questions in economics and economic history: why did the modern economy...
ListenBehrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did the preeminent theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault experience and observe the Iranian revolution? How did he find the revolution disruptive of a teleological notion of history? And how...
ListenWill Smiley, "From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2018), Will Smiley examines the emergence of rules of warfare surrounding ca...
ListenNile Green, “Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The historical convergence of European imperialism and technological innovation in communication and travel made multiple social sites of intersection between the local and global possible. Nile Gr...
ListenGhassan Moussawi, "Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut (Temple UP, 2020) challenges representations of contemporary Beirut as an exceptional space for LGBTQ people by highlightin...
ListenAhmed Ragab, “The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, Charity” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his shining new book The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, and Charity (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Ahmed Ragab, Assistant Professor of Religion and Science at Harvard Divini...
ListenS. Daulatzai and J. Rana, “With Stones in Our Hands: Reflections on Racism, Muslims and US Empire” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this current moment it has become increasingly clear that US society is deeply entangled in racist policies and logics of white supremacy. While this affects numerous communities, anti-Muslim ra...
ListenSarah Abrevaya Stein, “Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century” (U. of Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s rich new book, Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2016) takes readers on a global j...
ListenUlrike Freitag, "A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ulrike Freitag’s A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge University Press), offers a rich urban and biographical history of Jeddah. Known as the ...
ListenMiki Kratsman with Ariella Azoulay, “The Resolution of the Suspect” (Radius Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Resolution of the Suspect by Israeli photographer Miki Kratsman, with text by Ariella Azoulay, is co-published by the Peabody Museum Press at Harvard and Radius Books of Santa Fe, NM (2016). Mr...
ListenAlyssa Gabbay, "Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam" (I.B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, we speak with Alyssa Gabbay about her recent new book Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima (I.B. Tauris, 2020). The ...
ListenAnders Ingram, “Writing the Ottomans: Turkish History in Early Modern England” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You read a lot about “Orientalism,” that is, the often odd ways in which Westerners tried to understand predominantly Middle Eastern peoples and cultures. You don’t read a lot about good Western sc...
ListenAdi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, "The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace" (All Point Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of retur...
ListenPaul M. Cobb, “The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Crusades loom large in contemporary popular consciousness. However, our public understanding has largely been informed from a western perspective, despite the fact that there is a rich textual ...
ListenNathan Spannaus, "Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What were some of the major transformations taking place for Muslim communities in the Russian Empire of the eighteenth century? How did the introduction of a state-backed structure for Muslim reli...
ListenVanessa Ogle, “The Global Transformation of Time: 1870-1950” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the 1880s onward, Beirut-based calendars and almanacs were in high demand as they packaged at least four different calendars into one, including: “the reformed Gregorian calendar; the unreform...
ListenAsma Barlas, "Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this revised edition of her classic and groundbreaking work, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (University of Texas Press, 2019), Asma Barlas demonstr...
ListenReza Zarghamee, “Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World” (Mage Pub, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From his modest beginnings in southern Iran, the Persian king Cyrus II went on to conquer three of the dominant kingdoms of the ancient Near East those of the Medians, the Lydians, and the Babyloni...
ListenGaurav Desai, "Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination" (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gaurav Desai’s Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2013), offers an alternative history of East Africa in the Indian Ocean world. Rea...
ListenElizabeth Hurd, “Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Among the most frequent demands made of Islam and Muslims today is to become more moderate. But what counts as moderate and who will decide so are questions with less than obvious answers. In her t...
ListenPaula Fredriksen, "When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would ...
ListenBard Kartveit, “Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians” (Brill, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Bard Kartveit‘s Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians (Brill, 2014) is an outstanding book, which carefully describes the constraints faced by Palestinian Chri...
ListenDanyel Reiche and Tamir Sorek, "Sport, Politics, and Society in the Middle East" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sports scholars Danyel Reiche and Tamir Sorek’s edited volume, Sport, Politics, and Society in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2019), makes a significant contribution to what remains a la...
ListenMarc Lynch, “The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East” (PublicAffairs, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marc Lynch is the author of The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2016). Lynch is a professor of political science at George Washington University and blogs a...
ListenShahla Haeri, "The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority and Gender" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Shahla Haeri (Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University) is a captivating bo...
ListenEid Mohamed, “Arab Occidentalism: Images of America in the Middle East” (I.B. Tauris, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edward Said’s 1978 book, Orientalism, dramatically shifted how people think about the production of knowledge and representations of the Other. His ideas have been championed and critiqued with doz...
ListenEdward Alpers, "The Indian Ocean in World History" (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edward Alpers’s The Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford University Press, 2014) is a concise yet an immensely informative introduction to the Indian Ocean world, which remains the least studied o...
ListenIrene L. Gendzier, “Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Politic...
ListenSigurd Neubauer, "The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances" (Kodesh Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gulf scholar Sigurd Neubauer’s?The Gulf Region and Israel: Old Struggles, New Alliances?makes a significant contribution to our understanding of what drives shifting alliances in the Middle East, a...
ListenDana Sajdi, “The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her stunning new book The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press, 2012), Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor of History at Boston Co...
ListenL. L. Wynn, "Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability" (U Texas Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
L. L. Wynn’s book Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability (University of Texas Press, 2018) is an interrogation of urban life and gendered mobilities in Cair...
ListenAsma Afsaruddin, “Contemporary Issues in Islam” (Edinburgh UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As the title of the monograph suggests, Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) by Asma Afsaruddin, guides the reader through an organized and compelling narrative of reflec...
ListenScott Levi, "The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th-Century Central Asia" (U Pittsburgh, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th-Century Central Asia (University of Pittsburgh, 2020), Scott Levi brings new perspectives into the historiography of early Modern C...
ListenHillel Cohen, “Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929” (Brandeis UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 (Brandeis University Press, 2015), Hillel Cohen, senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explores the outbreak of violence in Palestine...
ListenNasser Rahmaninejad, "A Man of the Theatre: Survival as an Artist in Iran" (New Village Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nasser Rahmaninejad’s A Man of the Theatre: Survival as an Artist in Iran (New Village Press) provides a fascinating glimpse into the political and artistic life of Iran. This memoir discusses the ...
ListenKenneth Garden, “The First Islamic Reviver: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and his Revival of the Religious Sciences” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is one of the most famous Muslim thinkers in history. His autobiographical account, The Deliverer from Error, tells us of his spiritual crisis and transformative expe...
ListenPernilla Myrne, "Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature" (IB Taurus, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, I talk with Pernilla Myrne about her exciting and excellently researched book Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature, published w...
ListenJason Mokhtarian, “Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran (University of California Press, 2015), Jason Mokhtarian, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Stu...
ListenHafsa Lodi,?"Modesty: A Fashion Paradox" (Neem Tree Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Modest fashion is a growing, global multi-billion-dollar market. As a fashion trend, it has increasingly made its way into high-profile runways, has been endorsed by celebrities, and profiled in ma...
ListenKishwar Rizvi, “The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her excellent new book The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East (UNC Press, 2015), Kishwar Rizvi, Associate Professor of the History of Art at...
ListenGreg Burris, "The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination" (Temple UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is there a link between the colonization of Palestinian lands and the enclosing of Palestinian minds? The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Temple University Press, 2019) ...
ListenRon Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes, as with the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, they are accompanied by a flood of discussion and debate. Other times they are ...
ListenAhmed El-Shamsy, "Rediscovering the Islamic Classics" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ahmed El-Shamsy’s Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020) is an astonishing scholarly feat that pr...
ListenAfsaneh Najmabadi, “Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her fascinating new book Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Duke University Press, 2015), Afsaneh Najmabadi, Professor of History and of Studies of Women...
ListenSa’ed Atshan, "Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In?Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020) anthropologist and activist?Sa’ed Atshan?explores the Palestinian LGBTQ movement and offers a window into the diverse...
ListenMarcia C. Inhorn, “The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East” (Princeton UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Winner of the 2015 American Anthropological Associations Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and the 2014 JMEWS Book Award of the Association for Middle Ea...
ListenLara Harb, "Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lara Harb’s Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a delightful and formidable study on the details and development of poetics and...
ListenYael Raviv, “Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel” (University of Nebraska Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late nineteenth century, Jewish immigrants inspired by Zionism began to settle in Palestine. Their goal was not only to establish a politically sovereign state, but also to create a new, mod...
ListenFadi A. Bardawil, "Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx famously claimed that philosophers had previously only attempted to interpret the world; the point, however, was to change it. In the 20th century, no philosopher h...
ListenZeki Saritoprak, “Islam’s Jesus” (University of Florida Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Islam’s Jesus (University of Florida Press, 2015), Zeki Saritoprak explores an old topic from a fresh perspective. The status of Jesus in Islam has been of interest for centuries, and relates to...
ListenBegüm Adalet, "Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the opening decades of the Cold War, US policymakers and academics used modernization theory to provide an alternative model to communism for improving living standards. As Begüm Adalet demo...
ListenErica Weiss, “Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Erica Weiss, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropo...
ListenGabriel Said Reynolds, "Allah: God in the Qur’an" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Allah: God in the Qur’an (Yale University Press, 2020), Gabriel Said Reynolds argues that contrary to many scholarly and popular claims about the God of the Qur’an as either merciful or vengeful...
ListenRanen Omer-Sherman, “Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film” (Penn State UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), Ranen Omer-Sherman, a professor at the University of Louisville, looks at literar...
ListenJames C. Scott, "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), ...
ListenCarlos Fraenkel, “Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We tend to think of Philosophy as a professional academic subject that is taught in college classes, with its own rather specialized problems, vocabularies, and methods. But we also know that the d...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenJorg Matthias Determann, “Researching Biology and Evolution in the Gulf States: Networks of Science in the Middle East” (I. B. Tauris, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jorg Matthias Determann‘s new book looks at the history of modern biology in the Arab Gulf monarchies, focusing on the treatment of evolution and related concepts in the publications of biologists ...
ListenM’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrated their studies of North Africa on colonial vi...
ListenHina Azam, “Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her shining new book Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Hina Azam, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Unive...
ListenDana El Kurd, "Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What demobilizes a once mobilized society? How does international involvement amplify or suppress these dynamics? In Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine (Oxford Uni...
ListenIlan Zvi Baron, “Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique” (Edinburgh UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Obligation in Exile: The Jewish Diaspora, Israel and Critique (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Ilan Baron, Lecturer in International Political Theory in the School of Government and Internati...
ListenYaacov Yadgar, "Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Yaacov Yadgar discusses his new book, Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2020) with Peter Bergamin. An important and topical contrib...
ListenNaser Ghobadzadeh, “Religious Secularity: A Theological Challenge to the Islamic State” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
While “fundamentalism” and “authoritarian secularism” are commonly perceived as the two mutually exclusive paradigms available to Muslim majority countries Naser Ghobadzadeh‘s new book Religious Se...
ListenSarah M. A. Gualtieri, "Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her latest book, Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California(Stanford University Press, 2019), Sarah M. A. Gualtieri uncovers the dynamic and complex stories of Arabic-speaking migrant communitie...
ListenPaul L. Heck, “Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Skepticism is a familiar term to many of us conjuring up notions of doubt, uncertainty, and perhaps even unbelief. Yet, Skepticism did not always have such a narrow meaning. In fact Skepticism has ...
ListenDerek Penslar, "Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The life of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was as puzzling as it was brief. How did this cosmopolitan and assimilated European Jew become the leader of the Zionist movement? How could he be both an arti...
ListenKaren Bauer, “Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Karen Bauer tackles one of the foremost hot-button questions of the day: What i...
ListenIbrahim Fraihat, "Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict" (Edinburgh UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ibrahim Fraihat’s latest book, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) is much more than an exploration of the history of animosity between Saudi Arabia ...
ListenTom Sperlinger, “Romeo and Juliet in Palestine: Teaching Under Occupation” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tom Sperlinger, Reader in English Literature and Community Engagement at the University of Bristol, joins New Books in Education to discuss Romeo and Juliet in Palestine: Teaching Under Occupation ...
ListenÜnver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice that the city’s...
ListenAzizah al-Hibri, “The Islamic Worldview: Islamic Jurisprudence” (ABA Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How can a perspective on Islamic law and jurisprudence be constructed responding to the lives and practices of diasporic Muslims while remaining deeply grounded in the foundational texts of the rel...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenGuy Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge UP, 2015) is a new contribution to the study of Islam and more specifically to the history of Is...
ListenEric Dursteler, "In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Reports on the Early Modern Ottoman Empire" (CRRS, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Reports on the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2018) is Professor Eric Dursteler’s translation of two final diplomat...
ListenNeha Vora, “Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Neha Vora‘s Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2013) is a wonderfully rich and engaging account of middle class Indians who live and work, supposedly temporarily, ...
ListenChristiane Gruber, “The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspape...
ListenGerard Russell, “Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East” (Basic Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this interview Gerard Russell talks about his vivid and timely new book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2014). Russell’s ex...
ListenMax Blumenthal, "The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (Verso, 2019), Max Blumenthal excavates the real, connected story behind the...
ListenLiora R. Halperin, “Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948” (Yale UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948 (Yale University Press, 2015), Liora R. Halperin, an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Pro...
ListenShadaab Rahemtullah, "Qur'an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shadaab Rahemtullah's book Qur'an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a compelling comparative analysis of the works of four Mus...
ListenAysha Hidayatullah, “Feminist Edges of the Qur’an” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are some of the key features and characteristics of the Muslim feminist Qur’an exegetical tradition and what are some of the tensions and ambiguities found in that tradition? Those are the cen...
ListenChristopher Houston, "Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, Christopher Houston's new book Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey (University of California Pre...
ListenKecia Ali, “The Lives of Muhammad” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Muhammad is remembered in a multitude of ways, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. And through each retelling we learn a great deal not only about Muhammad but about the social milieu of the authors. ...
ListenArthur Asseraf, "Electric News in Colonial Algeria" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Arthur Asseraf’s Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the workings of the “news ecosystem” in Algeria from the 1880s to the beginning of the Second World War. ...
ListenBruce B. Lawrence, “Who is Allah?” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his lyrical and brilliant new book Who is Allah? (UNC Press, 2015), the legendary scholar of Islam Bruce B. Lawrence, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Duke University, wrestles with the questio...
ListenJatin Dua, "Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2019) is a pirate story of a different kind. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork in Somalia, the UK ...
ListenJames Gelvin, “The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Professor James Gelvin joins host Jonathan Judaken to discuss the Arab Uprisings, democratization in the Middle-East and Northern Africa, ISIS, al-Qaeda, terrorism, and America’s role imposing neo-...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenEmran El-Badawi, “The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Routledge, 2013) written by Emran El-Badawi, professor and director of the Arab Studies program at the University of Houston, is a recent addition to t...
ListenMichael Fischbach, "The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most divisive international issues in American politics today is over Israel and Palestine. The close ties between Israel and the United States are very strong and see considerable coope...
ListenEbrahim Moosa, “What is a Madrasa?” (U of North Carolina Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Recent years have witnessed a spate of journalistic and popular writings on the looming threat to civilization that lurks in traditional Islamic seminaries or madrasas that litter the physical and ...
ListenAdrian J. Boas, "The Crusader World" (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Crusader World (Routledge, 2015), edited by Adrian J. Boas, is a multidisciplinary survey of the current state of research in the field of crusader studies, an area of study which has become in...
ListenMark S. Wagner, “Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen” (Indiana UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the early twentieth century, Yemeni Jews operated within a legal structure that defined them as dhimmi, that is, non-Muslims living as a protected population under the sovereignty of an Isla...
ListenAhmet T. Kuru, "Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ahmet T. Kuru’s new book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a ground-breaking history and analysis of the evoluti...
ListenM. Alper Yalcinkaya, “Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the 19th-Century Ottoman Empire” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What were Ottomans talking about when they talked about science? In posing and answering that question (spoiler: they were talking about people), M. Alper Yalcinkaya‘s new book Learned Patriots: D...
ListenCarl W. Ernst, “Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr” (Northwestern UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“I am the Real,” is the ecstatic statement often associated with the early Sufi poet Mansur al-Hallaj. In popular narratives about Hallaj this declaration of absolute unity with God is what led to ...
ListenAsaad al-Saleh, “Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories from the Arab Revolutions” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Asaad al-Saleh is assistant professor of Arabic, comparative literature, and cultural studies in the Department of Languages and Literature and the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. His...
ListenSalman Sayyid, "Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order" (Hurst, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his paradigm shifting book, Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order (Hurst, 2014), which was recently translated into Arabic as Isti‘adat al-Khilafa Tafkik al-Isti‘mar wa al-Niza...
ListenJamal Elias, “Aisha’s Cushion” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his remarkable new book Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Practice, and Perception in Islam (Harvard University Press, 2012), Jamal Elias, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Penns...
ListenDarryl Li, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-calle...
ListenLital Levy, “Poetic Trespass: Writing Between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine” (Princeton UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Jewish settlement in Palestine and the revival of Hebrew as a national language have profoundly impacted the relationship between Arabic and Hebrew. In a hi...
ListenJeffrey James Byrne, "Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order" (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his brilliant, category-smashing book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016), Jeffrey James Byrne places Algeria at the center o...
ListenM. Brett Wilson, “Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey” Oxford University Press, 2014 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Muslim debates regarding the translation of the Qur’an are very old. However, during the modern period they became heated because local communities around the globe were rethinking their relationsh...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenAristotle Tziampiris, “The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation” (Springer, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Aristotle Tziampiris is The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation (Springer, 2015). Tziampiris is Associate Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International and Eu...
ListenSohaira Siddiqui, "Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her intimidatingly brilliant new book Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Sohaira Siddiqui conducts a masterful analys...
ListenAlex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, “The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn‘s An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010 (Oxford University Press, reprint edition 2014) offers what is in...
ListenMurad Idris, "War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term itself and the way that it has been considered ...
ListenBedross Der Matossian, “Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire” (Stanford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Young Turk revolution of 1908 restored the Ottoman constitution, suspended earlier by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and initiated a new period of parliamentary politics in the Empire. Likewise, the re...
ListenNicholas Blincoe, "More Noble Than War: A Soccer History of Israel-Palestine" (Bold Type Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nicholas Blincoe’s More Noble Than War: A Soccer History of Israel-Palestine (Bold Type Books, 2019) is a beautifully narrated and written history of a century of conflict between pre-state Jews an...
ListenChristian C. Sahner, “Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present” (Oxford University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Christian C. Sahner‘s Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present (Oxford University Press, 2014) resists easy categorization into genre: it as at once a travel log, an impassioned lecture on Syrian an...
ListenYaakov Katz, "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" (St. Martin's Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the world’s attention riveted to the nuclear threat from Iran, Yaakov Katz’s new book could not be more timely. In Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Pow...
ListenGohar Homayounpour, “Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran” (MIT Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran (MIT Press, 2012) — part memoir, part elegy, and part collection of clinical vignettes — Gohar Homayounpour takes a defiant position against the Orientalizing gaze...
ListenTodd Shepard, "Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979" (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Departing from the bold and compelling claim that we cannot fully understand the histories of decolonization and the so-called “sexual revolution” apart from one another, Todd Shepard’s Sex, France...
ListenGeneral Daniel Bolger, “Why We Lost” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During the past several years, numerous books and articles have appeared that grapple with the legacy and lessons of the recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This development should surprise f...
ListenJulian Bolleter, "Desert Paradises: Surveying the Landscapes of Dubai’s Urban Model" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Desert Paradises: Surveying the Landscapes of Dubai’s Urban Model (Routledge, 2019) explores how designed landscapes can play a vital role in constructing a city’s global image and legitimizing its...
ListenShane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah Shourd, “A Sliver of Light” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the summer of 2009, Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah Shourd were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan when they unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by a border patrol. Accused of espionage...
ListenAyelet Hoffman Libson, "Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud (Cambridge UP, 2018) examines the emergence of self-knowledge as a determining legal consideration among the rabbis of Late Antiquity, from the third to the sev...
ListenJonathan A. C. Brown, “Misquoting Muhammad” (Oneworld Publications, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many people have described Muslims modernities as being fundamentally disrupted by individual and civilizational encounters with western society. Wether rejecting or accepting alternative modes of ...
ListenJonathan A. C. Brown, "Slavery and Islam" (Oneworld Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his majestic and encyclopedic new book Slavery and Islam (Oneworld Academic, 2019), Jonathan A. C. Brown presents a sweeping analysis of Muslim intellectual, political, and social entanglements ...
ListenAmanullah De Sondy, “The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What gets to count as Islam? In the current political climate this question is being repeated in a variety of contexts. The tapestry of various Islamic identities is revealed in an investigation of...
ListenAlex Dika Seggerman, "Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With scholarship in the discipline of history witnessing a shift toward global approaches to local historical processes, new questions are being raised about how to identify commensurate theoretica...
ListenCarlotta Gall, “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan for almost the entire duration of the American invasion and occupation, beginning shortly after 9...
ListenPenny Sinanoglou, "Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of the Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2019) is the first history of the ideological and political forces that led to the idea of partit...
ListenSarah Bowen Savant, “The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peo...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenJoel Migdal, “Shifting Sands: The United States and the Middle East” (Columbia UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Any person who turns on CNN or Fox News today will see that the United States faces a number of critical problems in the Middle East. This reality should surprise few. Stunned by the Al-Qaeda attac...
ListenBenjamin Balint, "Jerusalem: City of the Book" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.” ? Susan Orlean, The Library Boo...
ListenMariam al-Attar, “Islamic Ethics: Divine Command Theory in Arabo-Islamic Thought” (Routledge, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mariam al-Attar, Islamic Ethics: Divine Command Theory in Arabo-Islamic Thought (Routledge, 2010) explores the meaning, origin and development of “Divine Command Theory” in Islamic thought. In the...
ListenArbella Bet-Shlimon, "City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her debut book, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), Arbella Bet-Shlimon explores the vibrant and often troubled history of one ...
ListenNabil Matar, “Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism” (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Nabil Matar masterfully edits an important piece of scholarship from seven...
ListenNarges Bajoghli, "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her book Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press, 2019), Narges Bajoghli takes an inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the deba...
ListenWilliam Chittick, “Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Where does love come from and where will it lead us? Throughout the years various answers have been given to these questions. In Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (Yale University...
ListenLeor Halevi, "Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did Muslims respond to foreign goods in an age characterized by global exchange and European imperial expansion? What sort of legal reasoning did scholars apply in order to appropriate – or rej...
ListenOvamir Anjum, “Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ovamir Anjum explores a timely topic, even though his focus is hundreds of years in the ...
ListenBarbara Spackman, "Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands" (Liverpool UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Barbara Spackman’s riveting study identifies a strand of what it calls “Accidental Orientalism” in narratives by Italians who found themselves in Ottoman Egypt and Anatolia in the late 19th and ear...
ListenRonen Shamir, “Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Pres...
ListenJoyce Dalsheim, "Israel Has a Jewish Problem: Self Determination as Self Elimination" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Israel Has a Jewish Problem: Self Determination as Self Elimination (Oxford University Press, 2019), Joyce Dalsheim considers some of the surprising outcomes of the great Israeli experiment of r...
ListenJohn P. Turner, “Inquisition in Early Islam” (I.B. Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Scholars of Islam and historians have frequently pointed to the Miḥna, translated as ‘trial’ or ‘test,’ as a crossroad in the landscape of Islamic history. Professor John P. Turner of Colby Colle...
ListenStephanie Malia Hom, "Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Italy's current crisis of Mediterranean migration and detention has its roots in early twentieth century imperial ambitions. Stephanie Malia Hom's new book Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes ...
ListenJ. Matthias Determann, “Historiography in Saudi Arabia: Globalization and the State in the Middle East” (Tauris, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Saudi Arabia is, for most Westerners, a mysterious place. It’s home to one of the most conservative forms of Islam around and ruled by one of the least democratic regimes in the world. Yet it’s a g...
ListenSeyed Ali Alavi, "Iran and Palestine: Past, Present, and Future" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Iran and Palestine: Past, Present and Future (Routledge, 2019), Seyed Ali Alavi (SOAS University of London) surveys the history of the relationship between Iran – and especially the Islamic Repu...
ListenHugh Talat Halman, “Where The Two Seas Meet” (Fons Vitae, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Where The Two Seas Meet (Fons Vitae, 2013), Hugh Talat Halman unpacks one of the most provocative narratives in the Islamic tradition. In the 18th chapter of the Qur’an, Surat al-Kahf (The Cave)...
ListenK. B. Berzock, "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The companion publication to the 2019-2020 traveling exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa (Princeton University Press, 2019, pub...
ListenNajam Haider, “The Origins of the Shia: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kufa” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When did groups in Kufa begin forming unique identities leading to the development of Shiism? Najam Haider, professor of Religion at Barnard College of Columbia University, answers this question in...
ListenMartin Nguyen, "Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What precisely is “Muslim theology?” What would a “Muslim theology” in the present day look like? And what then is a “Muslim theology of engagement?” In Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the...
ListenMarwa Elshakry, “Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The work of Charles Darwin, together with the writing of associated scholars of society and its organs and organisms, had a particularly global reach in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cent...
ListenZahra Ali, "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her powerful new book Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (Cambridge UP, 2018), Zahra Ali presents a detailed and fascinating account of Muslim feminist discourse...
ListenSean Anthony, “Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle” (American Oriental Society, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Crucifixion is one of the most widely envisioned symbols in history. So much so, that for a contemporary reader the notion almost immediately plants an image of Jesus on the cross. Sean Anthony, As...
ListenPeter Adamson, "Philosophy in the Islamic World: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Volume 3" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is no easy task to survey and present a comprehensive history of philosophy of an entire intellectual tradition to a broad public audience without compromising on the scholarly rigor demanded by...
ListenBarry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, “Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (Yale UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This book tells a remarkable and–to me at least–little known but very important story. In Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East(Yale UP, 2014), Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schw...
ListenMichael Krona and Rosemary Pennington, "The Media World of ISIS" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From efficient instructions on how to kill civilians to horrifying videos of beheadings, no terrorist organization has more comprehensively weaponized social media than ISIS. Its strategic, multi-p...
ListenSa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many Muslim debates regarding women are solely situated in legal or political frameworks. For example, we often find this tendency in conversations about women’s leadership in the mosque or the pol...
ListenMaziyar Ghiabi, "Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Iran has one of the planet's highest rates of addiction. Maziyar Ghiabi's Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a fascinating, n...
ListenAyesha Chaudhry, “Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition” (Oxford University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do people make sense of their scriptures when they do not align with the way they envision these texts? This problem is faced by many contemporary believers and is especially challenging in rel...
ListenLyn Julius, "Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who are the Jews from Arab countries? What were relations with Muslims like? What made Jews leave countries where they had been settled for thousands of years? And what lessons can we learn from th...
ListenAhmad Atif Ahmad, “The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a” (Palgrave, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the book, The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a (Palgrave, 2012), Ahmad Atif Ahmad explores a centuries-old debate about the permanence, or impermanence, of God’s law, and guidance, in the lives of Muslim...
ListenAfshin Matin-Asgari, "Both Eastern and Western: An Intellectual History of Iranian Modernity" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Following the Iranian Revolution of 1978—79, public and scholarly interest in Iran have skyrocketed, with a plethora of attempts seeking to understand and explain the events which led up to that mo...
ListenRebecca Williams, “Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rebecca Williams‘ book Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views (Routledge, 2013) is one of the newest additions to the Routledge Studies in Classic Islam series. Despite the Qur’anic pro...
ListenLior Sternfeld, "Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews ...
ListenJoshua Mitchell, “Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joshua Mitchell is the author of Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age (University of Chicago Press 2013). Mitchell is professor of political science in the Department of Government a...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenAhmed El Shamsy, “The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his brilliant new book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge UP, 2013), Ahmed El Shamsy, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chic...
ListenChristine D. Baker, "Medieval Islamic Sectarianism" (Amsterdam UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do contemporary events shape the ways in which we read, understand, and interpret historical processes of identity formation? How can we resist framing conflicts of the past through frameworks ...
ListenRumee Ahmed, “Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one c...
ListenSimon Wolfgang Fuchs, "In a Pure Muslim Land: Shi’ism between Pakistan and the Middle East" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Scholarly and public discourse on Islamic intellectual thought in the modern period tend to frame it narrowly through the concept of “influence” as it emanates from the Middle Eastern “center” to t...
ListenAgostino Cilardo, “The Early History of Islamili Jurisprudence” (I. B. Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Al-QÄ?á¸?Ä« al-Nu῾mÄ?n (d. 363/974) was the primary architect of IsmÄ?῾īlÄ« jurisprudence which was formed under the Fatamids. The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence (I. B. Tauris, 2013) p...
ListenNajam Haider, "The Rebel and the Imam in Early Islam" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the absence of any real certainty about the nature and intention of the early sources that tell us the story of the early Islamic period, how can we use them? What sort of methodological approac...
ListenMohammed Rustom, “The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra” (SUNY Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the relationship between philosophy, mysticism, and scripture in the Islamic tradition? Mohammed Rustom, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University, has been thinking abo...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenDaniel Jonah Goldhagen, “The Devil That Never Dies” (Little, Brown and Co., 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are 13 million Jews in the world today. There are also 13 million Senegalese, 13 million Zambians, 13 million Zimbabweans, and 13 million Chadians. These are tiny–a realist might say “insigni...
ListenBruce Rydel, "Beirut 1958: How America's Wars in the Middle East Began" (Brookings, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In July 1958, U.S. Marines stormed the beach in Beirut, Lebanon, ready for combat. Farcically. they were greeted by vendors and sunbathers. Fortunately, the rest of their mission—helping to end Leb...
ListenNancy Khalek, “Damascus after the Muslim Conquest” (Oxford University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A top five finalist for the Best First Book in the History of Religion Award, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest (Oxford University Press, 2011) by Nancy Khalek, professor of Religious Studies at B...
ListenDan Jones, "Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands" (Viking, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Much has been written about the Crusades, the religiously-inspired wars that pockmarked the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Yet for all of the many books on the subject there has been surprisin...
ListenRonald Suny et al., “A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hitler famously said about the Armenian genocide “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” For much of the last 75 years, few people did in fact speak of it. When they ...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenR. Kevin Jaques, “Ibn Hajar: Makers of Islamic Civilization” (I. B. Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Robert Kevin Jaques‘ work, Ibn Hajar: Makers of Islamic Civilization (I. B. Tauris, 2013), focuses on the life of one of the most eminent Muslim scholars, Ibn Ḥajar al-‘AsqalÄ?nÄ« (d. 852/1449). ...
ListenMichael Mandelbaum, "The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the twenty-five years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth (Oxford Univiersity Press, 2019), the eminent foreign policy scholar Mich...
ListenMohammad Khalil, “Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (Basic Books, 2013), Peter Gray proposes the following...
ListenJoanna Lillis, "Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan" (I. B. Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joanna Lillis’ Dark Shadows, Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan (I. B. Tauris, 2018) takes the reader on a penetrating, colourfully written journey into the recesses of a little known Central As...
ListenMartin Nguyen, “Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar: Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri and the Lata’if al-isharat” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The famous Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) is well known as one of the most influential figures in the formative period of Sufism. He was part of a network of prominent Sufis in Nishapur that...
ListenMohammed Dajani Daoudi, "Teaching Empathy and Reconciliation In Midst Of Conflict" (Wasatia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Moderation in times of extremism is a revolutionary idea. It is a positive, courageous value, as opposed to a defeatist attitude. It is swimming against the tide, rather than following the crowd o...
ListenMuzammil Hussain and Phillip Howard, “Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring” (Oxford UP 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Muzammil Hussain and Phillip Howard have authored Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2013) which explores the role social media (Twitter, Facebook,...
ListenJennifer L. Derr, "The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of historical northern Nubia and filling the irrigation...
ListenJason Brownlee, “Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades. From t...
ListenUssama Makdisi, "Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Building on nearly two decades of scholarship about sectarianism and communal relations in the Modern Middle East, Ussama Makdisi’s latest book, Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Mak...
ListenAli Ansari, “The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ali Ansari traces the nationalist movement in Iran from the Tobacco Revolt of 1891 up to the current government le...
ListenEskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, "Revolution and Its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this new book, Revolution and its Discontents, Political Thought and Reform in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi’s (of Goldsmiths University of London) studies...
ListenWhitney Bodman, “The Poetics of Iblis: Narrative Theology in the Qur’an” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Qur’an is filled with stories. It chronicles the lives of prophets, the stories of believers and non-believers, and lays out the creation of the cosmos. However, the Qur’an’s narrative qualitie...
ListenPerin Gürel, "The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey" (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In today’s podcast, host Robert Elliott speaks with Dr. Perin Gürel about her new book The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey(Columbia University Press, 2017), which ...
ListenDavid Lesch, “Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad” (Yale UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (Yale University Press, 2012), David Lesch uses his firsthand knowledge of the Assad regime to explain the current crisis. Through the experience gained dur...
ListenHumphrey Davies and Lesley Lababidi, "A Field Guide to the Street Names of Central Cairo" (AU in Cairo Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Guides have been written to the city of Cairo for generations. Whether they’re for foreigners who’ve come to the city or its residents. However, it might be safe to say thatA Field Guide to the Str...
ListenVijay Mahajan, “The Arab World Unbound: Tapping into the Power of 350 Million Consumers” (Jossey-Bass, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Arab World Unbound: Tapping into the Power of 350 Million Consumers (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Vijay Mahajan, a professor of business at the University of Texas at Austin, outlines the opportuniti...
ListenMatthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his splendid military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936-1939...
ListenAvner Ben Zaken, “Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560-1660” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560-1660 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) and Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism (John...
ListenKfir Cohen Lustig, "Makers of Worlds, Readers of Signs: Israeli and Palestinian Literature of the Global Contemporary" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Differently than existing accounts that concentrate on Israeli and Palestinian nationalism, Kfir Cohen Lustig's Makers of Worlds, Readers of Signs: Israeli and Palestinian Literature of the Global ...
ListenFranck Salameh, “Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon” (Lexington Books, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Franck Salameh achieves his goal of revealing “another” version of the Middle East with his book. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon (Lexington Books, 2010). Th...
ListenZahra Ayubi, "Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How are notions of justice and equality constructed in Islamic virtue ethics (akhlaq)? How are Islamic virtue ethics gendered, despite their venture into perennial concerns of how best to live a go...
ListenMark Haas, “The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do ideologies shape foreign policy? That is question Dr. Mark Haas examines in his new book The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security (Oxford University Press, 2012...
ListenSeth J. Frantzman, "After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" (Gefen, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even the murder of reporters on the other. At the same ti...
ListenAnn Elizabeth Mayer, “Islam and Human Rights: Traditions and Politics” (Westview Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the new edition to Islam and Human Rights: Traditions and Politics (Westview Press, 2012), Ann Elizabeth Mayer analyzes the complex issue of international human rights standards in Muslim countr...
ListenCharlie Laderman, "Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2019), Charlie Laderman exposes the way that imperial a...
ListenAllen Fromherz, “Qatar: A Modern History” (Georgetown UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Qatar: A Modern History (Georgetown University Press, 2012), Dr. Allen Fromherz, a professor at Georgia State University, analyzes the cultural and political forces that have shaped...
ListenElizabeth S. Kassab, "Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The "Arab Spring" shook the world in 2011, revealing profound dissatisfaction throughout the Middle East and North Africa, as people throughout the region took to the streets demanding dramatic pol...
ListenLaury Silvers, “A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism” (SUNY Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A broad portrait of early Islamic mysticism is fairly well-know. However, there are only a few key figures that have been explored in great detail and their activities shape how we understand this ...
ListenM. David Litwa, "How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Did the early Christians believe their myths? Like most ancient—and modern—people, early Christians made efforts to present their myths in the most believable ways. In How the Gospels Became Histor...
ListenCarool Kersten, “Cosmopolitans and Heretics: New Muslim Intellectuals and the Study of Islam” (Columbia University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Often when we read about new Muslim intellectuals we are offered a presentation of their politicized Islamic teachings and radical interpretations of theology, or Western readings that nominally re...
ListenDavid Gaunt, "Let Them Not Return" (Berghahn Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sometimes it seems that there’s nothing left to say about mass violence in the 20th century. But the new edited volume Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and C...
ListenCharles Townshend, “Desert Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia” (Harvard University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
An earlier author described the British invasion of Mesopotamia in 1914 as “The Neglected War.” It no longer deserves that title thanks to the brilliant treatment of the subject by Professor Charle...
ListenMichael Lower, "The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why was a Crusade that was initially meant for Syria end up in Tunis? How did the aspirations of the King of France and the Mamluk Sultan, the King of Sicily and the Hafsid Emir of Tunis, get entan...
ListenGreg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, “This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (Wiley, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In their new book, This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), the husband and wife team of Greg Myre and Jennifer Griff...
ListenSean Foley, "Changing Saudi Arabia: Art, Culture and Society in the Kingdom" (Lynne Rienner, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Changing Saudi Arabia, Art, Culture and Society in the Kingdom (Lynne Rienner, 2019), Sean Foley offers eye-opening insights into a changing society that is under the international magnifying gl...
ListenReuel Marc Gerecht, “The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East” (Hoover Institution Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, looks a...
ListenRobert Haug, "The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia" (I. B. Tauris, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Robert Haug’s new book, The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia (I. B. Tauris, 2019) is an in-depth look at the frontier zone of the Sassanian, Umayya...
ListenMichael A. Reynolds, “Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of us live in a world of nations. If you were born and live in the Republic of X, then you probably speak X-ian, are a citizen of X, and would gladly fight and die for your X-ian brothers and ...
ListenViolet Moller, "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found" (Doubleday, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost an...
ListenGiancarlo Casale, “The Ottoman Age of Exploration” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You’ve probably heard of the “Age of Exploration.” You know, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Columbus, etc., etc. But actually that was the European Age of Exploration (and really it wasn’t eve...
ListenDavid Stenner, "Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of Morocco’s independence struggle against France and Spain is a complicated one. Because it occurred around the same time of the long-running war for independence in Algeria, it has rece...
ListenW. Taylor Fain, “American Ascendance and British Retreat in the Persian Gulf Region” (Palgrave-McMillan, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you ask most Americans when the U.S. became heavily involved in the Persian Gulf, they might cite the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1981 or, more probably, the First Gulf War of 1990. Of course the ...
ListenEmrah ?ahin, "Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire" (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Emp...
ListenLesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split” (Doubleday, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sometimes a shallow explanation, the kind you read in newspapers and hear on television, is enough. “The home team was beaten at the buzzer” is probably all you need to know. Sometimes, however, it...
ListenErik Sjöberg, "The Making of the Greek Genocide: Contested Memories of the Ottoman Greek Catastrophe" (Berghahn Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of the time, memory studies focuses on well-known case studies. The result Is that we know lots about commemoration and memory regarding the Holocaust, about slavery, about apartheid, and oth...
ListenAmanda Podany, “Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I have a (much beloved) colleague who calls all history about things before AD 1900 “that old stuff.” Of course she means it as a gentle jab at those of us who study said “old stuff.” Gentle, but i...
ListenJeremy F. Walton, "Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The social history of Turkey across the twentieth century has produced a tension between state governance and religion. This history informs and shapes modern subjects as they try to live out an au...
ListenBotakoz Kassymbekova, "Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Botakoz Kassymbekova’s Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) is a terrific study of early Soviet rule in Tajikistan based on extensive archival re...
ListenStacy Fahrenthold, "Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her debut book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Stacy Fahrenthold sheds a timely light o...
ListenPaul Thomas Chamberlin, "The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace" (Harper, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Thomas Chamberlin has written a book about the Cold War that makes important claims about the nature and reasons for genocide in the last half of the Twentieth Century. In The Cold War's Killi...
ListenVahram Ter-Matevosyan, "Turkey, Kemalism and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Vahram Ter-Matevosyan new book Turkey, Kemalism and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation (Palgrave Macmillan, examines the Kemalist ideology of Turkey from two ...
ListenAmira Mittermaier, "Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her stunning new book, Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times (University of California Press, 2019), Amira Mittermaier, Associate Professor of Religion and Anthropology at the Un...
ListenAaron Rock-Singer, "Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Discussions of Middle East politics will inevitably bring Islamism to the table and with it, questions of how Islam in its current iterations came to be. In most cases, the Islamic revival is empha...
ListenJennifer Dixon, "Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkish states’ narratives of their “dark pasts,” the Nan...
ListenDaniel Hershenzon, "The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean" (U Penn Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For hundreds of years, people living on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea enslaved one another. Moslems from North Africa captured Italians, French, and Spaniards; and North African Moslems were...
ListenMimi Hanaoka, "Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Periphery" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do peripheral places assert the centrality of their identity? Why are fanciful events, like dreams and myths, useful narrative elements for identity construction and arguments about authority, ...
ListenGökçe Günel, "Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Whether in space colonies or through geo-engineering, the looming disaster of climate change inspires no shortage of techno-utopian visions of human survival. Most of such hypotheses remain science...
ListenScott S. Reese, “Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839-1937” (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Religion and empire are often intertwined. Regarding Muslims there are well known dynasties like the Umayyad, the Abbasid, the Fatimid, the Ottoman, and many others. But the empire governing the la...
ListenAndreas Krieg, "Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Andreas Krieg’s edited volume, Divided Gulf: The Anatomy of a Crisis(Palgrave, 2019), brings together a group of prominent Gulf scholars to discuss the Gulf crisis that pits a Saudi-United Arab Emi...
ListenHouri Berberian, "Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian and Ottoman Worlds" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her newest book, Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian and Ottoman Worlds (University of California Press, 2019), Dr. Houri Berberian uses a tra...
ListenWendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili, "Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors" (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the post–Cold War era, states increasingly find themselves in conflicts with nonstate actors. Finding it difficult to fight these opponents directly, many governments instead target states that ...
ListenAriel I. Ahram, "Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Resshaping of the Middle East" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have wracked the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national identity and political borders. In Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Ressh...
ListenDilip Hiro, "Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In recent years, the concept of a ‘Cold War’ has been revived to describe the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two most influential states occupying positions of geopolitical importance i...
ListenCraig Benjamin, "Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE-250 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late second century BCE, a series of trading route developed between China in the east and Rome’s empire in the west. Craig Benjamin’s Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 1...
ListenPaul J. Kosmin, "Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to the Persian Gulf. In a radical move to impose uni...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenOded Nir, "Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a new understanding on Israeli literature and literary history. Using Marxist theorization of the...
ListenJessica Trisko Darden, Alexis Henshaw, and Ora Szekley, "Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars" (Georgetown UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2019), investigates the mobilization of female fighters, women’s roles in combat, and what happens to women when confl...
ListenAhmad Atif Ahmad, "Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ahmad Atif Ahmad’s Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) is a unique reflection on the field of Islamic studies. It is not quite a memoir, although it is...
ListenAimée Israel-Pelletier, "On the Mediterranean and the Nile: The Jews of Egypt" (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In On the Mediterranean and the Nile: The Jews of Egypt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Aimée Israel-Pelletier, Professor and Head of French at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the...
ListenPhilip Zelikow and Ernest May, "Suez Deconstructed: An Interactive Study in Crisis, War, and Peacemaking" (Brookings Institution, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Experiencing a major crisis from different viewpoints, step by step: the Suez crisis of 1956— one of the major crises of the 1950s offers a potential master class in statecraft and the politics of...
ListenJamal Elias, "Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his groundbreaking new book, Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies (University of California Press, 2018), Jamal Elias takes his readers on a riveting in...
ListenElizabeth A. Fraser, "Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839" (Penn State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Elizabeth A. Fraser's Mediterranean Encounters: Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839 (Penn State University Press, 2017) takes its readers on a journey through six illustrated t...
ListenJonathan Fulton, "China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Fulton's China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) sheds light on China’s increasing economic role at a moment that the traditionally dominant role in international oil ...
ListenOmid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this 13th-century Muslim have largely detached him ...
ListenAngelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian(Harvard University Press, 2018), An...
ListenMichael Fischbach, "Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the great animating foreign policy issues of the twenty-first century, one that provokes fierce divisions across the world. In the United States, the issu...
ListenDenis Provencher, "Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations" (Liverpool UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sometimes a book can take inspiration from a (not so) simple map. At the end of his previous book, Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship (Routledge, 2007), Denis Provencher ...
ListenSuzanne Schneider, "Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of Palestine is overly political; most studies, especially of the Mandate period, when the British effectively colonized Palestine, focus on the political actors. In Mandatory Separatio...
ListenJonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim, "External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim’s edited volume, External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies(Routledge, 2018) is a timely contribution to understanding the increasingly diversified relations between th...
ListenTill Mostowlansky, "Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In eastern Tajikistan, the Trans-Pamir Highway flows through the mountains creating a lunar-like landscape. In his latest work, Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir High...
ListenHarry O. Maier, "New Testament Christianity in the Roman World" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I had the opportunity to catch up with Harry O. Maier, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Vancouver School of Theology, to discuss his new book, New Testament Christianity in ...
ListenAlessandro Arduino and Xue Gong, "Securing the Belt and Road" (Red Globe Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong’s Securing the Belt and Road, Risk Assessment, Private Security and Special Insurances Along the New Wave of Chinese Outbound Investments (Red Globe Press, 2018) sig...
ListenSeth Anziska, "Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political Histo...
ListenHüseyin Y?lmaz, "Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Islamic intellectual history, it is generally assumed that the Ottomans did not contribute much to Islamic thought. With his new book, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenAlireza Doostdar, "The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2018 Albert Hourani Book Award, Alireza Doostdar’s The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton University P...
ListenAasim Sajjad Akhtar, "The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar’s The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan(Cambridge University Press, 2018) is an incisive study of continuity as well as change in Pakistan that ha...
ListenSumantra Bose, "Secular States, Religious Politics, India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sumantra Bose's new book Secular States, Religious Politics, India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a fascinating comparison of the rise of religious parti...
ListenJ.R. Osborn, “Letters of Light: Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Arabic script is astounding! Not only because it represents one of the most commonly spoken languages today –that is, the Arabic language– but because it has represented dozens of other languages ...
ListenEdward J. Watts, “Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny” (Basic Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite enduring for nearly five centuries, the Roman Republic ended in a series of crises and wars that discredited the idea of republics in the West for centuries. In Mortal Republic: How Rome Fe...
ListenDaniel Stolz, “The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Both a history of science and a history of Islam, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Daniel Stolz tells the s...
ListenMiranda Kaufmann, “Black Tudors: The Untold Story” (Oneworld, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptized in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage ...
ListenM. L. Rozenblit and J. Karp, “World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America” (Berghahn, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How was Jewish life affected by the First World War? How did Jews around the world understand, engage with, and influence the Great War and surrounding events? And why has the impact of World War I...
ListenPatricia Lorcin and Todd Shepard, “French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories” (U Nebraska Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Following a 2011 meeting of the annual Mediterranean Workshop at the University of Minnesota, Patricia Lorcin (a co-convener) approached Todd Shepard (one of the workshop participants that year) ab...
ListenSmadar Lavie, “Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Revised Edition)” (U Nebraska Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Revised Edition) (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), Smadar Lavie analyzes the racial and gender justice protest...
ListenRachel Harris, “Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema” (Wayne State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Warriors, Witches, Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema (Wayne State University Press 2017), Rachel Harris presents one of the first comprehensive studies of the place and role of women...
ListenThomas Schmidinger, “Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds” (Pluto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thomas Schmidinger‘s Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds (Pluto Press, 2018) is an exploration of the history and present of Syrian Kurdistan. It is an excellent introduction to...
ListenSamuel Helfont, “Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Samuel Helfont‘s Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018) makes an invaluable contribution to an understanding of Iraqi st...
ListenTala Jarjour, “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Religious music can be a source of comfort and release, but also a remembrance of sadness and loss. In Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press, 2018), Tala Jarjour analyz...
ListenJames M. Dorsey, “China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For all that China’s twenty-first-century ‘rise’ is a much-discussed notion both within the country and globally, it is an increasingly difficult concept to grasp or keep pace with. As a result, bo...
ListenRobert D. Miller II, “Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament: Assyrian Propaganda and Israelite Faith” (Gorgias Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How would Israelites have understood their nation’s covenant relationship with Yahweh? Dr. Robert Miller II offers a study of the Old Testament language of covenant within its ancient context, espe...
ListenEllen R. Wald, “Saudi Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Power and Profit” (Pegasus Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ellen R. Wald’s timely, well-written history of the Saudi national oil company, Saudi Inc. The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Power and Profit (Pegasus Books, 2018), is as much the story of the Saudi...
ListenJoseph Ben Prestel, “Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Joseph Ben Prestel talks with us about Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910 (Oxford University Press, 2017), blending together history of emotions, urban history...
ListenCourtney Freer, “Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies” (OUP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Courtney Freer‘s new book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies (Oxford University Press, 2018) contributes significantly to an understanding of one of the mo...
ListenPeter Heather, “Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the 6th century CE, the Roman emperor Justinian embarked upon a series of wars that seemed to herald the restoration of the Roman empire in the western Mediterranean. In his book Rome Resurgent:...
ListenLev Weitz, “Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Recent years have seen new waves of research in Syriac studies, the medieval Middle East, and family history. Combining all three, Lev Weitz’s Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christia...
ListenMadiha Afzal, “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State” (Brookings, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State (Brookings, 2018) provides a unique insight into Pakistan’s complex and multi-layered relationship with militancy and the role of the state i...
ListenCyrus Ali Zargar, “The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism” (Oneworld, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Cyrus Ali Zargar, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, is the author of The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism (Oneworld, ...
ListenAhmad Dallal, “Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Middle Eastern and Islamic intellectual history, there has long been an assumption of decline in the eighteenth century, right before the nineteenth century, when the nahda or Arabic intellectua...
ListenGary Fields, “Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Inspired by the usage of the term ‘enclosure’ to describe the Separation Wall in Israel-Palestine on a visit he made to the West Bank, Gary Fields in Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historic...
ListenStephen Tankel, “With Us and Against Us: How America’s Partners Help and Hinder the War on Terror” (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With Us and Against Us: How America’s Partners Help and Hinder the War on Terror (Columbia University Press, 2018) offers readers a fresh, insightful and new perspective on US counterterrorism coop...
ListenDuane W. Roller, “Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Other Royal Women of the Augustan Era” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the most part women in the classical world have suffered from what Duane W. Roller terms “near-invisibility,” obscuring the consequential roles that at times they played in government and polit...
ListenEve Krakowski, “Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Women’s Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
History is only recently opening up to previously marginalized groups: it is only just now that women’s history is being explored across different historical fields. Eve Krakowski in Coming of Age ...
ListenEran Kaplan, “Beyond Post-Zionism” (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Beyond Post-Zionism (SUNY Press, 2015), Eran Kaplan locates the post-Zionist debates, which have brought into question some of the core tenets of Zionist ideology, within the context of the chan...
ListenAta Anzali, “‘Mysticism’ in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept” (U South Carolina Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his sparkling new book, “Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept (University of South Carolina Press, 2017), Ata Anzali, Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, ...
ListenJamie Stern-Weiner, “Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions” (OR Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jamie Stern-Weiner’s new edited volume, Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions (OR Books, 2018) seeks to clarify what it would take to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict...
ListenGuy Laron, “The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The title of Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2017) says it all. As Laron notes in this interview, the fact that the war led to ongoing conflicts...
ListenAlexander Bevilacqua, “The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2018), Alexander Bevilacqua uncovers a different side of the European Enlightenment, at least with...
ListenLaura Robson, “States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The First World War ended over four centuries of Middle East rule by the expansive, multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual Ottoman Empire. In its wake, Britain, France, and some groups withi...
ListenFrank L. Holt, “The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most studies of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander III focus on the military aspects of his life and reign. Yet Alexander’s campaigns would not have been possible had it not been for the enormous p...
ListenZoltan Pall, “Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Zoltan Pall‘s Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a just published ethnographic investigation of the rise of Salafism among Lebanese Sunni Mus...
ListenElias Muhanna, “The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Described as a small book about a very large book, The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2017) by Elias Muhanna tells the story of an e...
ListenMehrzad Boroujerdi and Kourosh Rahimkhani, “Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook” (Syracuse UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mehrzad Boroujerdi and Kourosh Rahimkhani‘s new book, Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook (Syracuse University Press, 2017), traces the political events that mark almost four decades of re...
ListenHans-Lukas Kieser, “Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As a graduate student, I spent quite a bit of time explaining to people how we needed to pay much more attention to the history of World War One in the East. What I didn’t realize is that we neede...
ListenGuy Burton, “Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947” (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1947 (Lexington Books, 2018), Guy Burton, who teaches politics and international relations at the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government, stud...
ListenSamuel England, “Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts” (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his thrilling and sparkling new book, Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Samuel England, Assista...
ListenHala Auji, “Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut” (Brill, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Pr...
ListenYoav Di-Capua, “No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Yoav Di-Capua‘s new book, No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is narrative intellectual history at its best: a tale of friendship a...
ListenAlden Young, “Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Telling the story of a former colony post-independence is tricky, no matter if it’s a colony in Latin America, the Middle East or East Asia. Where does the idea of the ’nation’ slot in? Does it exi...
ListenEthan L. Menchinger, “The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ethan L. Menchinger‘s The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif (Cambridge University Press, 2017) traces the life and career of Ahmed Vasif (ca. 1735-1806), a promi...
ListenToufoul Abou-Hodeib, “A Taste for Home: The Modern Middle Class in Ottoman Beirut” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Toufoul Abou-Hodeib‘s A Taste for Home: The Modern Middle Class in Ottoman Beirut (Stanford University Press, 2017) is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the urban history of Beirut precisely...
ListenJörg Matthias Determann, “Space Science and the Arab World: Astronauts, Observatories, and Nationalism in the Middle East” (I. B. Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Space Science and the Arab World, Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East (I. B. Tauris, 2018) a recently published history of Arab exploration of space, offers a fascinating i...
ListenOmina El Shakry, “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Often, when writing the intellectual history of the Middle East, we make assumptions about the influence of ideas from other places on the Middle East itself. We assume what ideas are being adapted...
ListenMichael Brenner, “In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2018), Professor Michael Brenner, a historian of Jews and of Israel who teaches both at Ludwig Maximilian U...
ListenNadia Yaqub and Rula Quawas, “Bad Girls of the Arab World” (U Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Modeled on Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Bad Girls of the Arab World (University of Texas Press, 2017), edited by Nadia Yaqub and the late Rula Quawas stands apart from the edited ...
ListenMehammed Mack, “Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture” (Fordham UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the recent past, anti-Muslim hate crimes and rhetoric have surged across America and Europe. Much of this public discourse revolves around questions of assimilation and where Muslim positions on...
ListenHoda Yousef, “Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870-1930” (Stanford UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Literacy is often portrayed as a social good. Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870-1930 (Stanford University Press, 2016), Hoda Yousef has a different take ...
ListenAlexander Orwin, “Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi” (U Penn Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) a philosopher who wrote on politics, metaphysics, and logic as well as mathematics, psychology, and music, was known by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the “se...
ListenDidem Havlioglu, “Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History” (Syracuse UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press, 2017) by Didem Havlioglu is at once an intellectual history and biography of sor...
ListenIan Black, “Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017), Ian Black, the former Middle East Editor of the Guardian, offers a comprehensive view of ...
ListenMaha Nassar, “Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The study of Palestine and Israel has been largely shaped by the politics of the conflict and thus, many scholars start with political history, often using Israeli state sources. Maha Nassar, in Br...
ListenSara Hirschhorn, “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who are the American Jews behind many of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank? This is the question that Dr. Sara Hirschhorn, Research Lecturer at the University of Oxford, seeks to answer in h...
ListenStephen Sheehi, “The Arab Imago: A Social History of Indigenous Photography 1860-1910” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the Arab world, photography is often tied to the modernizing efforts of imperial and colonial powers. However, indigenous photography was itself a major aspect of the cultural and social lives o...
ListenAlexander Knysh, “Sufism: A New History” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sufism, like many terms in the study of Islam, can be difficult to define and even more difficult to handle, but Alexander Knysh, in Sufism: A New History (Princeton University Press, 2017), has pr...
ListenClaire Eldridge, “From Empire to Exile” (Manchester UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The French-Algerian War that erupted in 1954 ended with the emergence of an independent Algeria in 1962, but it was not until decades later that a broader French public turned its attention with vi...
ListenLeslie Kealhofer-Kemp, “Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France” (Liverpool UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Connections between France and North Africa have long been shaped by colonialism, nationalism, and economics. This intercultural relationship has also been mediated through the arts. In Muslim Wome...
ListenElla Shohat, “On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements” (Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Spanning several decades, the work of Ella Shohat, a Professor of Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University, has introduced conceptual frameworks that fundamentally challen...
ListenAdam Mestyan, “Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Studies of Arab nationalism populate the field of Middle Eastern studies, perhaps even overpopulate it. However, what Adam Mestyan does in Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late...
Listenmiriam cooke, “Dancing in Damascus: Creativity, Resilience, and the Syrian Revolution” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Syrian Revolution, which began in March 2011, has since resulted in what can be described as a civil war, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the forced migrations of millions of...
ListenElizabeth Bucar, “Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve featured a few books on fashion and the Muslim world recently, all part of an effort to re-orient the study of women in the Muslim and Arabic-speaking worlds. Elizabeth Bucar’s Pious Fashion:...
ListenReza Zia-Ebrahimi, “The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it mea...
ListenKevan Harris, “A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevan Harris is the author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017). Harris is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cal...
ListenMarie Grace Brown, “Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much mor...
ListenKen Tully and Chad Leahy, "Jerusalem Afflicted: Quaresmius, Spain, and the Idea of a 17th-century Crusade" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On Good Friday, 1626, Franciscus Quaresmius delivered a sermon in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem calling on King Philip IV of Spain to undertake a crusade to 'liberate' the Holy Land...
ListenSophia Rose Arjana, “Pilgrimage in Islam: Traditional and Modern Practices” (Oneworld Publications, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book Pilgrimage in Islam: Traditional and Modern Practices (Oneworld Publications, 2017), Sophia Rose Arjana explores the diverse array of pilgrimage practices in the Muslim world. Pilg...
ListenRobert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this strategic resource; that the "special" relationshi...
ListenNeda Maghbouleh, “The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does a group become defined as white? And does that group define themselves that way as well? Neda Maghbouleh‘s new book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of...
ListenPedro Machado, "Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds" (Ohio UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean Worlds (Ohio University Press, 2020), co-edited by Pedro Machado, Joseph Christensen, Steve Mullins) is the first book to examine the trade, dis...
ListenKaren Ross, “Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity and Social Change” (Syracuse UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity and Social Change (Syracuse University Press, 2017), Karen Ross conducts an in-depth analysis of Jewish-Palestinian youth enc...
ListenAmanda Podany, “Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2010-08-19T18:28:34
I have a (much beloved) colleague who calls all history about things before AD 1900 “that old stuff.” Of course she means it as a gentle jab at those of us who study said “old stuff.” Gentle, but i...
ListenAmanda Podany, “Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2010-08-19T18:28:34
I have a (much beloved) colleague who calls all history about things before AD 1900 “that old stuff.” Of course she means it as a gentle jab at those of us who study said “old stuff.” Gentle, but i...
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