New Books in Middle Eastern Studies
Interviews with Scholars of the Middle East about their New Books
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies
- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 56 minutes
- Episodes
- 1278
- Years Active
- 2010 - 2025
Yoav Di-Capua, “No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
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 and…
00:43:36 |
Thu 31 May 2018
Alden Young, “Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
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 exist…
00:57:48 |
Tue 29 May 2018
Ethan L. Menchinger, “The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
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 promine…
00:34:32 |
Tue 22 May 2018
Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, “A Taste for Home: The Modern Middle Class in Ottoman Beirut” (Stanford UP, 2017)
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 b…
00:06:03 |
Tue 15 May 2018
Jörg Matthias Determann, “Space Science and the Arab World: Astronauts, Observatories, and Nationalism in the Middle East” (I. B. Tauris, 2018)
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 ins…
01:00:36 |
Fri 11 May 2018
Omina El Shakry, “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2017)
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 i…
00:50:16 |
Tue 01 May 2018
Michael Brenner, “In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea” (Princeton UP, 2018)
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 Uni…
00:31:39 |
Mon 30 Apr 2018
Nadia Yaqub and Rula Quawas, “Bad Girls of the Arab World” (U Texas Press, 2017)
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 vo…
00:47:52 |
Mon 16 Apr 2018
Mehammed Mack, “Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture” (Fordham UP, 2017)
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 s…
01:19:59 |
Thu 29 Mar 2018
Hoda Yousef, “Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870-1930” (Stanford UP,
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 on…
00:35:48 |
Tue 20 Mar 2018
Alexander Orwin, “Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi” (U Penn Press, 2017)
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 “seco…
00:44:58 |
Mon 19 Mar 2018
Didem Havlioglu, “Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History” (Syracuse UP, 2017)
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 sorts…
00:32:02 |
Tue 13 Mar 2018
Ian Black, “Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017)
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 th…
00:43:15 |
Fri 02 Mar 2018
Maha Nassar, “Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World” (Stanford UP, 2017)
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 Brot…
00:48:23 |
Thu 01 Mar 2018
Sara Hirschhorn, “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement” (Harvard UP, 2017)
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 her…
00:29:08 |
Tue 20 Feb 2018
Stephen Sheehi, “The Arab Imago: A Social History of Indigenous Photography 1860-1910” (Princeton UP, 2016)
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 of …
00:50:34 |
Thu 15 Feb 2018
Alexander Knysh, “Sufism: A New History” (Princeton UP, 2017)
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 prod…
00:56:02 |
Thu 01 Feb 2018
Claire Eldridge, “From Empire to Exile” (Manchester UP, 2016)
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 vigo…
00:58:49 |
Fri 26 Jan 2018
Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp, “Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France” (Liverpool UP, 2016)
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 Women …
00:53:36 |
Thu 18 Jan 2018
Ella Shohat, “On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements” (Pluto Press, 2017)
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 challenge…
00:50:36 |
Tue 16 Jan 2018
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are the property of Marshall Poe. This content is not affiliated with or endorsed by eachpod.com.