New Books in Middle Eastern Studies
1,060 episodes - English - Latest episode: 26 days ago - ★★★★ - 28 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of the Middle East about their New Books
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Episodes
Nada Moumtaz, "God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State" (U California Press, 2021)
November 02, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourNada Moumtaz’s God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State (University of California Press, 2021) is an ethnography anchored in deep study of the Muslim scholarly tradition, the urban landscape, and Lebanon across the Ottoman, Mandate, and post-independence periods. At the center of the book is the waqf, often translated as “pious endowment.” An act and a practice exhibiting or embodying both change and stability since the nineteenth century, the waqf allows Moumtaz to reinterpret ma...
Raphael Cormack, "Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s" (Norton, 2021)
November 02, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesOne of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry—as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry. In Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of...
Dilek Kurban, "Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
October 28, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourDilek Kurban’s Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict (Cambridge UP, 2020) considers the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) engagement with Turkey’s ongoing Kurdish conflict. Tracing the legal mobilization of Kurdish people alongside legal and political histories, Kurban’s work highlights the factors enabling ongoing violence in the Kurdish region. As Kurban argues, considering the effectiveness of supranational courts, like the ...
Susan Mokhberi, "The Persian Mirror: French Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2019)
October 28, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWhen I/we think about the early modern relationship between France and Persia, Montesquieu's 1721 Lettres persanes is a text that comes to mind immediately. Susan Mokhberi's The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2019) is a kind of a pre-history of Montesquieu's work that is, in different ways, more of a commentary on France and the French than Persia or Persians during this period. The Persian Mirror's several chapters examine a range of cult...
Carl Rommel, "Egypt’s Football Revolution: Emotion, Masculinity, and Uneasy Politics" (U Texas Press, 2021)
October 27, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesBoth a symbol of the Mubarak government’s power and a component in its construction of national identity, football served as fertile ground for Egyptians to confront the regime’s overthrow during the 2011 revolution. With the help of the state, appreciation for football in Egypt peaked in the late 2000s. Yet after Mubarak fell, fans questioned their previous support, calling for a reformed football for a new, postrevolutionary nation. In Egypt’s Football Revolution: Emotion, Masculinity, and ...
Andrea E. Duffy, "Nomad's Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
October 25, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourChronicling the retreat of mobile pastoralization from Mediterranean coastlines, Andrea Duffy's Nomad's Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World (U Nebraska Press, 2019) investigates a mystery: where did the sheep go? Duffy seeks the answer by exploring the relationship between forestry policy and pasteurization by comparing and contrasting the implementation of French Forestry in France's Provence, French colonial Algeria, and Ottoman An...
Jay Rubenstein, “Apocalypse Then: The First Crusade” (Open Agenda, 2021)
October 22, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourApocalypse Then: The First Crusade is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jay Rubenstein, Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Premodern World at the University of Southern California, and provides us with fascinating insights into medieval society. How did the First Crusade happen? What could have suddenly caused tens of thousands of knights, commoners and even nuns at the end of the 11th century to leave their normal lives behind and trek th...
Leonidas Mylonakis, "Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime Marauders in the Greek and Ottoman Aegean" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
October 20, 2021 08:00 - 35 minutesDr. Leonidas Mylonakis (PhD in History from the University of California, San Diego) is the author of Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime Marauders in the Greek and Ottoman Aegean (Bloomsbury, 2021). This captivating book is based on rich sets of Ottoman, Greek, and other archival sources. Dr. Mylonakis shows that far from ending with the introduction of European powers to the region around the year 1830, Aegean piracy continued unabated into the twentieth century. The book consider...
Rebecca L. Stein, "Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2021)
October 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (Stanford UP, 2021) studies this phenomenon from the vantage point of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Here, cameras have proliferated as political tools in the hands of a broad range of actors and institutions, including Palestinian activists, I...
Dov Zakheim, "The Prince and the Emperors: The Life and Times of Rabbi Judah the Prince" (Maggid, 2021)
October 15, 2021 08:00 - 39 minutesRabbi Judah the Prince transformed the Mishnah into a text, and now Dov Zakheim, culling from a fascinating array of sources, has brought to life the story and historical times of Judah the Prince, offering us a portrait of one of the seminal figures of early Judaism. Join us as we talk with Dov Zakheim about his recent work, The Prince and The Emperors: The Life and Times of Rabbi Judah the Prince, published under the Maggid imprint of Koren Publishers. Dov Zakheim holds a BA from Columbia U...
Harrison Guthorn, "Capital Development: Mandate Era Amman and the Construction of the Hashemite State (1921-1946)" (Gingko Library, 2021)
October 13, 2021 08:00 - 42 minutesAmman, the capital of Jordan, contends with a crisis of identity rooted in how it grew to become a symbol for the Anglo-Hashemite government first, and a city second. As a representation of the new centralized authority, Amman became the seat of the Mandatory government that orchestrated the development of Transjordan, the British protectorate established in 1921. Despite its diminutive size, the city grew to house all the components necessary for a thriving and cohesive state by the end of t...
Mikhael Manekin, "The Dawn of Redemption: Ethics and Tradition in a Time of Power" (Evrit, 2021)
October 13, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesIn The Dawn of Redemption: Ethics and Tradition in a Time of Power (Evrit, 2021), Mikhael Manekin argues that modern Jewish nationalism--widespread today among secular as well as religious Israeli-Jews--is incompatible with traditional Jewish ethics. Manekin, an Orthodox religious Jew and anti-Occupation activist, draws on traditional texts, as well as his own family history, in an attempt to reconcile a religious ethical system created in the diaspora with the political reality of a modern n...
Ozan Ozavci, "Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798-1864" (Oxford UP, 2021)
October 12, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourFrom Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the foreign interventions in the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya today, global empires or the so-called Great Powers have long assumed the responsibility to bring security in the Middle East. The past two centuries have witnessed their numerous military occupations to 'liberate', 'secure' and 'educate' local populations. They staged first 'humanitarian' interventions in history and established hitherto unseen international ...
Richard J. A. McGregor, "Islam and the Devotional Object" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
October 08, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn Islam and the Devotional Object: Seeing Religion in Egypt and Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Richard J. A. McGregor, Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University, offers a history of Islamic practice through the aesthetic reception of medieval religious objects. Elaborate parades in Cairo and Damascus included decorated objects of great value, destined for Mecca and Medina. Among these were the precious dress sewn yearly for the Ka'ba, and large colorful sedans mounted on camels...
Henning Trüper, "Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
October 06, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourAt the turn of the nineteenth century, European philologists were engaged in the study of Semitic languages and Indology, breaking with the past in many ways. To understand this period, Henning Trüper argues for the importance of a broad-ranging investigation into the production of scholarly knowledge, focusing especially on Semitic Orientalism, as a way to understand the deep epistemological crisis facing the field. In Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World (Blooms...
Mirjam Lücking, "Indonesians and Their Arab World: Guided Mobility Among Labor Migrants and Mecca Pilgrims" (SAPP, 2021)
October 04, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourMirjam Lücking's Indonesians and Their Arab World: Guided Mobility Among Labor Migrants and Mecca Pilgrims (Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2021) explores the ways contemporary Indonesians understand their relationship to the Arab world. Despite being home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia exists on the periphery of an Islamic world centered around the Arabian Peninsula. Mirjam Lücking approaches the problem of interpreting the current conservative turn in Indonesi...
Shay Hazkani, "Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War" (Stanford UP, 2021)
September 29, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs came from all over the world to join those already on the ground to fight in the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab Liberation Army. With this book, the young men and women who made up these armies come to life through their letters home, writing about everything from daily life to nationalism, colonialism, race, and the character o...
Nada Moumtaz, "God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State" (U California Press, 2021)
September 27, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn her phenomenal new book God’s Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State (U California Press, 2021), Nada Moumtaz charts the historical continuities and disjunctures as well contemporary paradoxes shadowing the intellectual and sociological career of waqf or Islamic charity/endowment in modern Lebanon. Nimbly moving between layered textual analysis, riveting ethnography, and formidable historical inquiry, Moumtaz demonstrates the secularization and sectarianization of waqf in Lebanon p...
Muhammad Umar Faruque, "Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
September 24, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn his painstakingly researched and splendid new book Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing (U Michigan Press, 2021), Muhammad Faruque charts and examines the multiplicity of ways in which the self and its moral flourishing have been discussed, debated, and examined in the Muslim intellectual tradition. The remarkable aspect of this book though is that he does so in close and extensive conversation with understandings of the self in Western philosophy, Indic thought, and ...
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, "Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society, and Culture" (U Washington Press, 2021)
September 23, 2021 08:00 - 38 minutesOne would think that comparing civilizations as far removed in time and space as Ancient Egypt and Ancient China might not reveal much. Yet Professor Tony Barbieri’s Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society, and Culture (University of Washington Press: 2021) gleans much from a deeply-researched comparison of political structures, diplomatic relations, legal systems, ideas of the afterlife, and other aspects. In other words, despite being separated by thousands of years and thousands of k...
Kristin Swenson, "A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible" (Oxford UP, 2021)
September 21, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe Bible is not only a book but also a collection of books. It has many authors but also at the same time many editors. It has not only been translated from one language to another but also translated with different doctrinal and methodological frameworks. It is not only a product of history but also a product of conglomeration of cultures, religions, beliefs, and practices. It is read with intense devotion by hundreds of millions of people, stands as authoritative for Judaism and Christiani...
Rachel Rojanski, "Yiddish in Israel: A History" (Indiana UP, 2020)
September 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourYiddish in Israel: A History (Indiana UP, 2020) challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in I...
Emmanuel Navon, "The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
September 16, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutesThe first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel (Jewish Publication Society, 2020) retraces and explains the interactions of Jews with other nations from the ancient kingdoms of Israel to modernity. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Navon argues that one cannot grasp Israel’s interactions with the world without understanding how Judaism’s founding document has shaped the...
Shlomit Naim Naor, "The Things We Are Not Talking About" (2020)
September 13, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesShlomit Naim Naor’s poetry is a unique voice in Israel. She is inviting the readers to delve deeper and engage in a dialogue with the Jewish religion and texts which are relevant to the most banal, everyday life. In her poetry, Naim Naor searches for places to which the Divine is NOT welcome, like abortions or the Oncology Department. She openly speaks about the (un)meaningful lives of single (religious) women and more. In her sensitive way she shares with us her personal journey as an Orthod...
Edmund Richardson, "Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City Beneath the Mountains" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
September 09, 2021 08:00 - 36 minutesThe story of Alexander the Great has inspired conquerors and would-be conquerors throughout history. Alexander’s sweep through the Middle East and Central Asia left behind evidence of his mark on history--namely, in the several cities that he founded, and that sprung up to govern the kingdoms he left behind. One man looking for evidence of Alexander was Charles Masson: a deserter from the East India Company who reinvented himself as an archaeologist and scholar in Afghanistan. Academic, trave...
Ori Yehudai, "Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
September 09, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourOri Yehudai's erudite examination of Jewish emigration from Israel in the early years of the state presents a fascinating study of the lived experiences of Israeli refugees from Israel. This book makes a precious contribution to the migration history of Israel. The story of Israel's foundation has often been told from the perspective of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II (Cambridge UP, 2020) turns this histor...
Nile Green, “Religious Entrepreneurs?” (Open Agenda, 2021)
August 31, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourReligious Entrepreneurs? is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nile Green who holds the Ibn Khaldn Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. Nile Green is an expert on Islamic History and religion in the world. He has traveled extensively in India, Turkey, Pakistan, China, Myanmar, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Morocco and many more countries, to get a deep sense of the reality of situations on the ground. The basis of this wide-ranging conversation is Nile Green’s ...
Simonetta Calderini, "Women as Imams: Classical Islamic Sources and Modern Debates on Leading Prayer" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
August 31, 2021 08:00 - 48 minutesWhat does Islam say about women’s leadership of prayer? What sources have Muslim scholars used historically to answer this question, and what do those sources say exactly? What are the conditions under which women can lead prayers, and which types of prayers can they lead, if at all? Do Sunnis and Shi’is differ on the matter? How do contemporary Muslims respond to and deal with the issue? These are some of the questions that Simonetta Calderini explores in her new book, Women as Imams: Classi...
Lev Luis Grinberg, "Mo(ve)ments of Resistance: Politics, Economy and Society in Israel/Palestine, 1931-2013" (Academics Studies Press, 2014)
August 31, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourLev Luis Grinberg presents a penetrating contribution to Israeli political economic history. In Mo(ve)ments of Resistance: Politics, Economy and Society in Israel/Palestine, 1931-2013 (Academics Studies Press, 2014), Grinberg summarizes both his own work and that of other political economists, providing a coherent historical narrative covering the time from the beginning of Socialist Zionism (1904) to the Oslo Accords and the neoliberalization of the economy (1994–1996). The theoretical appro...
David J. Goldberg, “Rabbi With A Cause: Israel and Identity” (Open Agenda, 2021)
August 27, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourRabbi With A Cause: Israel and Identity is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and David J. Goldberg (1939-2019), former Senior Rabbi Emeritus of London’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue and author and columnist. This wide-ranging conversation is based on Goldberg’s book, This Is Not The Way: Jews, Judaism and Israel, which boldly explores a number of themes that interweave religion, politics, culture and identity in a way that is relevant to all of us, regardless of our c...
Aaron Y. Zelin, "Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad" (Columbia UP, 2020)
August 27, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourTunisia became one of the largest sources of foreign fighters for the Islamic State—even though the country stands out as a democratic bright spot of the Arab uprisings and despite the fact that it had very little history of terrorist violence within its borders prior to 2011. In Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad (Columbia UP, 2020), Aaron Y. Zelin uncovers the longer history of Tunisian involvement in the jihadi movement and offers an in-depth examination of the ...
Naphtaly Shem-Tov, "Israeli Theatre: Mizrahi Jews and Self-Representation" (Routledge, 2021)
August 25, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourNaphtaly Shem-Tov's book Israeli Theatre: Mizrahi Jews and Self-Representation (Routledge, 2021) introduces readers to the stagecraft produced by Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) directors and artists. Describing the work of Yemenite, Iraqi, Moroccan and other minorities whose trauma was represented on Israeli stages, dramaturgy known to local Israeli audiences is made known to readers through this monograph. This book draws on the theoretical insights Israeli directors who theorized their phi...
Antonio Panaino: What is Zoroastrianism?
August 25, 2021 08:00 - 2 hoursHoward speaks with University of Bologna Iranian specialist Antonio Panaino about Zorastrianism: What is it? How was it influenced by, and in turn influence, other religious and cultural traditions? And what did it mean for the people of ancient Iran? Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a pr...
Gökten Dogangün, "Gender Politics in Turkey and Russia: From State Feminism to Authoritarian Rule" (I. B. Tauris, 2019)
August 23, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourBoth Russia and Turkey were pioneering examples of feminism in the early 20th Century, when the Bolshevik and Republican states embraced an ideology of women's equality. Yet now these countries have drifted towards authoritarianism and the concept of gender is being invoked to reinforce tradition, nationalism and to oppose Western culture. Gökten Dogangün's book Gender Politics in Turkey and Russia: From State Feminism to Authoritarian Rule (Bloomsbury, 2019) explores the relationship between...
Beverly A. Tsacoyianis, "Disturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon" (U Notre Dame Press, 2021)
August 19, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourDisturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon by Beverly A. Tsacoyianis (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021) investigates the psychological toll of conflict in the Middle East during the twentieth century, including a discussion of how spiritual and religious frameworks influence practice and theory. Blending social, cultural, and medical history research methods with approaches in disability and trauma studies, it demonstrates that the history of men...
Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, "ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters Along the Silk Roads" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
August 16, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThere's been a lot of resurgent interest in the Silk Routes lately, particularly looking at the cultural, political, and economic connections between "East" and "West" that challenge long held narratives of a world that only became interconnected in the last half millennium. Even so, it's been rarely appreciated how much of the history of Eurasian medicine in the premodern period hinges on cross-cultural interactions and knowledge transmissions along these same lines of contact. Using manuscr...
Nivi Manchanda, "Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
August 13, 2021 08:00 - 48 minutesOver time and across different genres, Afghanistan has been presented to the world as potential ally, dangerous enemy, gendered space, and mysterious locale. These powerful, if competing, visions seek to make sense of Afghanistan and to render it legible. In Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Nivi Manchanda, Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, uncovers and critically explores Anglophone practices of knowle...
Soner Çaǧaptay, "A Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey's Uncontainable Forces" (I. B. Tauris, 2021)
August 12, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesA Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey's Uncontainable Forces (I. B. Tauris, 2021) is a primer for anybody who wants to understand modern Turkish politics and its central player Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who, for better or worse, has shaped Turkish politics and society for the last two decades. The book breaks down various elements of his administration and policy and is a vital resource for understanding the direction of Turkey and its president. Soner Çağaptay is the director of the Turkish Re...
Mark Farha, "Lebanon: The Rise and Fall of a Secular State under Siege" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
August 11, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesWhy has secularism faced such challenges in the Middle East and in Lebanon in particular? In light of dominating headlines about the spread of sectarianism and the so-called death of Arab secularism, Mark Farha addresses the need for a thorough examination of the history of secular thought and practice in the region. In Lebanon: The Rise and Fall of a Secular State under Siege (Cambridge UP, 2019), Farha provides a new understanding of the historical roots of secularism as well as the potenti...
Mika Ahuvia, "On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture" (U California Press, 2021)
August 09, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesAngelic beings can be found throughout the Hebrew Bible, and by late antiquity the archangels Michael and Gabriel were as familiar as the patriarchs and matriarchs, guardian angels were as present as one’s shadow, and praise of the seraphim was as sacred as the Shema prayer. Mika Ahuvia recovers once-commonplace beliefs about the divine realm and demonstrates that angels were foundational to ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish practice centered on humans' relationships with invisible beings who a...
Angela Williams, "Hip Hop Harem: Women, Rap and Representation in the Middle East" (Peter Lang, 2020)
August 06, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesAlthough hip hop culture has widely been acknowledged as a global phenomenon that has spread far beyond its roots in American African-Caribbean-Latinx cultures, there are few studies that have examined the participation of women in global hip hop, and even fewer that examine the reception of female artists by other women. Angela Williams's book Hip Hop Harem: Women, Rap and Representation in the Middle East (Peter Lang, 2020) explores the social reception of seven prominent female rappers fr...
Heather N. Keaney, "'Uthman ibn 'Affan" (Oneworld Academic, 2020)
August 06, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWho is ‘Uthman ibn Affan, and why does he matter? Why was his election as the third successor to the Prophet Muhammad so controversial? In fact, why is he a controversial figure in Islamic history? Who killed him, and was his murder the fault of his own leadership and character flaws or was he a victim of the time and context he lived in, of the legacy he inherited from his predecessors? In her excellent new book, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan: Legend or Liability, published with OneWorld 2021. Heather ...
James E. Lindsay and Suleiman Mourad, "Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology" (Hackett, 2021)
August 04, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn the West, the study of the phenomenon known as the Crusades has long been dominated by European concerns: European periodization, European selection of important moments and personages, and, most of all, European sources. In recent years, scholars such as Carole Hillenbrand, Paul Cobb, and Michael Lower have mined Arabic-language material with the purpose of creating a more balanced view of the Crusades--one that gives the Muslim experiences a voice in the English language. Now, Dr. Suleim...
Deanna Ferree Womack, "Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
July 29, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. Deanna Ferree Womack's book Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria (Edinburgh UP, 2020) offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda, from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, it challenges historiography t...
Ryan J. Lynch, "Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh Al-Buldan of Al-Baladhuri" (I. B. Tauris, 2021)
July 28, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourOf the available sources for Islamic history published before the 9th century of the Christian Era, few are of greater importance than Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands), by al-Baladhuri, a ninth-century administrator at the Abbasid court. The text has been heavily relied upon by scholars for centuries as they have compiled the history of the early Islamic empires. In Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-Buldan of al-Baladhuri (I. B. Tauris, 202...
Cynthia J. Becker, "Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity Through Music and Visual Culture" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
July 16, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutesFor more than thirteen centuries, caravans transported millions of enslaved people from Africa south of the Sahara into what is now the Kingdom of Morocco. Today there are no museums, plaques, or monuments that recognize this history of enslavement, but enslaved people and their descendants created the Gnawa identity that preserves this largely suppressed heritage. This pioneering book describes how Gnawa emerged as a practice associated with Blackness and enslavement by reviewing visual repr...
Anna Bigelow et al., "Islam Through Objects" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
July 16, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesIslam through Objects (Bloomsbury, 2021) represents the state of the field of Islamic material cultural studies. With contributions from scholars of religion, anthropologists, art historians, folklorists, historians, and other disciplines, Anna Bigelow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University, brings together a wide range of perspectives on Islamic materiality to debunk myths of Islamic aversion to material aspects of religion. Each chapter focuses on a single object i...
David Arnovitz, "Samuel: The Making of the Monarchy, Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel" (Koren Publishers, 2021)
July 14, 2021 08:00 - 18 minutesSamuel: The Making of the Monarchy, a volume of The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel with Koren Publishers, offers an innovative and refreshing approach to the Hebrew Bible. By fusing extraordinary findings by modern scholars on the ancient Near East with the original Hebrew text and a brand new English translation, The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel clarifies and explains the Biblical narrative, laws, events, and prophecies in context with the milieu in which it took place. The Koren T...
Ayse Parla, "Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey" (Stanford UP, 2019)
July 07, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThere are more than 700,000 Bulgaristanlı migrants residing in Turkey. Immigrants from Bulgaria who are ethnically Turkish, they assume certain privileges because of these ethnic ties, yet access to citizenship remains dependent on the whims of those in power. Through vivid accounts of encounters with the police and state bureaucracy, of nostalgic memories of home and aspirations for a more secure life in Turkey, Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey (Stanford UP, 2...
Katherine Pangonis, "Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule" (Hachette, 2021)
July 01, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesAny study of the Crusades — the religious wars waged by Latin Catholics to recapture the Holy Land — is primarily an exploration of men and their military deeds, with scant consideration of women, save perhaps the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine who accompanied her husband, King Louis VII of France, on the Second Crusade. But the history of the Christian Crusader states established after the success of the First Crusade is a different matter. From 1099 to 1187, the four polities, known colle...