New Books Network Podcast

Interpretive Political and Social Science September 20, 2023

Rooted Globalism

Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries

Kevin Funk

Hosted by Nick Cheesman

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Triumphant capitalism has in our time engendered a new global class that lives and works in a borderless world, beyond the reach of national politics or sovereign power. Or has …

Genocide Studies September 20, 2023

Remnants

Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide

Elyse Semerdjian

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

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Foremost among the images of the Armenian Genocide is the specter of tattooed Islamized Armenian women. Blue tribal tattoos that covered face and body signified assimilation into Muslim Bedouin and …

Middle Eastern Studies September 19, 2023

In the Shadow of the Wall

The Life and Death of Jerusalem's Maghrebi Quarter, 1187-1967

Vincent Lemire

Hosted by Roberto Mazza

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The Maghrebi Quarter of Jerusalem long sat in the shadow of the Western Wall, the last vestige of the Second Temple. Three days after the June '67 War, Israeli forces …

Intellectual History September 17, 2023

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)

A Very Short Introduction

Peter Adamson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh

Peter Adamson's book Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna): a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2023) provides an introduction to the most important philosopher of the Islamic world, Ibn Sīnā, often known in English …

Middle Eastern Studies September 17, 2023

A Sephardi Turkish Patriot

Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic

Anthony Gad Bigio

Hosted by Reuben Silverman

In A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (Hamilton Books, 2023), Anthony Gad Bigio explores the life of Gad Franco (1881–1954), a prominent Sephardi journalist …

Literary Studies September 15, 2023

Pamuk's Istanbul

The Self and the City

Pallavi Narayan

Hosted by Sanjay Kumar

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Pallavi Narayan's book Pamuk's Istanbul: The Self and the City (Routledge, 2022) reconstructs Istanbul through the prism of Orhan Pamuk’s fiction. It navigates the multiple selves and layers of Istanbul to present …

Asian Review of Books September 14, 2023

Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther

Achaemenid Court Culture in the Hebrew Bible

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon

The Book of Esther, one of the historical books in the Torah and the Old Testament, is known as a story of community, discrimination, and human ingenuity. It’s core to …

Jewish Studies September 13, 2023

The Sultan's Communists

Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging

Alma Rachel Heckman

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

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The Sultan's Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging (Stanford UP, 2020) uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews …

Middle Eastern Studies September 12, 2023

Inventing the Middle East

Britain and the Persian Gulf in the Age of Global Imperialism

Guillemette Crouzet

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh

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The “Middle East” has long been an indispensable and ubiquitous term in discussing world affairs, yet its history remains curiously underexplored. Few question the origin of the term or the …

Middle Eastern Studies September 10, 2023

The East India Company in Persia

Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century

Peter Good

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh

In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty …

Literary Studies September 10, 2023

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures

Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry

Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh

The stories in the Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, are familiar to many of us: from the tales of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and his …

Middle Eastern Studies September 8, 2023

Famine Worlds

Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon's Great War

Tylor Brand

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

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World War I was a catastrophe for the lands that would become Lebanon. With war came famine, and with famine came unspeakable suffering, starvation, and mass death. For nearly four …

Military History September 3, 2023

Out of Mesopotamia

Salar Abdoh

Hosted by AJ Woodhams

Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia (Akashic Books, 2020), is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep …

Environmental Studies September 2, 2023

Night on Earth

A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East, 1918–1930

Davide Rodogno

Hosted by Eyad Houssami

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Night on Earth: A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East, 1918–1930 (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a broad-ranging account of international humanitarian programs in Central and Eastern Europe, the …

Islamic Studies September 1, 2023

Wives and Work

Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity

Marion Holmes Katz

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani

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In this interview, I speak with Marion Holmes Katz about her latest book Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity (Columbia UP, 2022). This fascinating book explores the …

Art August 30, 2023

The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary

Hamid Keshmirshekan

Hosted by Kaveh Rafie

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Hamid Keshmirshekan's book The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary (Edinburgh UP, 2023) deals with the exploration and theorization of Modern and Contemporary …

Middle Eastern Studies August 28, 2023

When Democracy Died

The Middle East's Enduring Peace of Lausanne

Hans-Lukas Kieser

Hosted by Roberto Mazza

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The Treaty of Lausanne, signed in Switzerland in July 1923, officially settled the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied forces. Not only did the Treaty establish the borders …

Jewish Studies August 26, 2023

The Specter of the Jews

Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch

Ari Finkelstein

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

In the generation after Constantine the Great elevated Christianity to a dominant position in the Roman Empire, his nephew, the Emperor Julian, sought to reinstate the old gods to their …

Middle Eastern Studies August 26, 2023

Afterlives of Revolution

Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman

Alice Wilson

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

The Dhufar Revolution was fought between 1965–1976, in an attempt to depose Oman's British-backed Sultan and advance social ideals of egalitarianism and gender equality. Dhufar, the southernmost governorate in today's …

Indian Ocean World August 24, 2023

Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said

Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906

Lucia Carminati

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi

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Lucia Carminati's book Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906 (U California Press, 2023) probes migrant labor's role in shaping the …