New Books Network
Middle Eastern Studies
Islamic Studies February 26, 2021

Terror Epidemics

Islamophobia and the Disease Poetics of Empire

Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
Terrorism is a cancer, an infection, an epidemic, a plague. For more than a century, this metaphor has figured insurgent violence as contagion in order to contain its political energies …

Subscribe to

Middle Eastern Studies

on the NBN

RSS Spotify Stitcher Apple
Islamic Studies February 19, 2021

Women and Gender in the Qur'an

Celene Ibrahim

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
In Women and Gender in the Qur’an (Oxford University Press in 2020), Celene Ibrahim explores key themes related to gender in the Qur’an, focusing on women, such as female sexuality …
Jewish Studies February 18, 2021

The Jews of Ottoman Izmir

A Modern History

Dina Danon

Hosted by Makena Mezistrano
Across Europe, Jews were often confronted with the notion that their religious and cultural distinctiveness was somehow incompatible with the modern age. Yet the view from Ottoman Izmir invites a …
Communications February 12, 2021

How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring

The Politics of Narrative in Egypt and Tunisia

Nathaniel Greenberg

Hosted by Marci Mazzarotto
On January 28 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London published one of the memos with …
Architecture February 11, 2021

Architecture in Global Socialism

Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War

Łukasz Stanek

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East …
Middle Eastern Studies February 9, 2021

Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt

The Politics of Hegemony

Sara Salem

Hosted by Yi Ning Chang
In this conversation, Sara Salem, author of Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (Cambridge University Press, 2020), talks to host Yi Ning Chang about temporality, capitalism, and hegemony …
Genocide Studies February 9, 2021

The Resistance Network

The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918

Khatchig Mouradian

Hosted by Steven Seegel
The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918 (Michigan State University Press, 2020) is the history of an underground network of humanitarians, missionaries, and diplomats …
Middle Eastern Studies February 8, 2021

Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East

International Relations in the Interwar Period

Amit Bein

Hosted by Reuben Silverman
To better understand the lasting legacy of international relations in the post-Ottoman Middle East, Amit Bein's Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East: International Relations in the Interwar Period (Cambridge University Press, 2017), reexamines Turkey’s engagement …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel February 8, 2021

Harpoon

Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
Covid-19 is the global threat that owns today’s headlines, but the threat of international and domestic terrorism is still very much with us. Specifically, the widespread upheaval, uncertainty and global …
Indian Ocean World January 28, 2021

Imperial Mecca

Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj

Michael Christo Low

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases …
Political Science January 25, 2021

Delta Democracy

Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond

Catherine E. Herrold

Hosted by Susan Liebell
Ten years from the uprising in Egypt, Dr. Catherine E. Herrold, an associate professor at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and a Faculty Affiliate of the Indiana …
Central Asian Studies January 21, 2021

Polymaths of Islam

Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia

James Pickett

Hosted by Nicholas Seay
James Pickett's new book, Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia (Cornell University Press, 2020) analyzes the social and intellectual power of religious leaders who created a …
Anthropology January 20, 2021

Channeling Moroccanness

Language and the Media of Sociality

Becky L. Schulthies

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
What does it mean to connect as a people through mass media? This book approaches that question by exploring how Moroccans engage communicative failure as they seek to shape social …
Literature January 20, 2021

I'll Go

War, Religion, and Coming Home, From Cairo to Kansas City

Alexs Thompson

Hosted by Eric LeMay
Today I interview Alexs Thompson about his new memoir, I'll Go: War, Religion, and Coming Home, from Cairo to Kansas City (2020). Let me begin with a moment of honesty …
Islamic Studies January 15, 2021

The Bruce B. Lawrence Reader

Islam Beyond Borders

Bruce B. Lawrence and Ali Altaf Mian

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
For more than four decades, Bruce Lawrence’s multivalent and fulsomely prolific scholarship has influenced and imprinted the Western study of Islam and Religious Studies more broadly in singularly profound ways …
Drugs, Addiction and Recovery January 13, 2021

Intoxicating Zion

A Social History of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel

Haggai Ram

Hosted by Lucas Richert
When European powers carved political borders across the Middle East following World War I, a curious event in the international drug trade occurred: Palestine became the most important hashish waystation …
Indian Ocean World January 11, 2021

The Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral, 1640–1945

Steven Serels

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
The African Red Sea Littoral, currently divided between Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, is one of the poorest regions in the world. But the pastoralist communities indigenous to this region …
Political Science January 11, 2021

Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear 'Crisis'

Theoretical Approaches

Halit M. E. Tagma and Paul E. Lenze Jr.

Hosted by Susan Liebell
How can multiple theoretical approaches yield a better understanding of international political politics? In Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear 'Crisis': Theoretical Approaches (Lexington Books, 2020), Dr. Halit M. E. Tagma …
Interpretive Political and Social Science January 11, 2021

Authoritarian Apprehensions

Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria

Lisa Wedeen

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
How has the Syrian regime been able to bear the brunt of the challenges raised against it? And, what can we learn about the seductions of authoritarian politics more generally …
Islamic Studies January 8, 2021

Say What Your Longing Heart Desires

Women, Prayer and Poetry in Iran

Niloofar Haeri

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer & Poetry in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Niloofar Haeri is a stunning and absorbing ethnography of the lived ritual experiences …