New Books Network
Mobilities and Methods
Mobilities and Methods May 3, 2021

Bolivia in the Age of Gas

Bret Gustafson

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, won reelection three times on a leftist platform championing Indigenous rights, anti-imperialism, and Bolivian control over the country's natural gas reserves. In Bolivia in …

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Mobilities and Methods May 3, 2021

Queer in Translation

Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam

Evren Savci

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
In Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam (Duke UP, 2021), Evren Savcı analyzes the travel and translation of Western LGBT political terminology to Turkey in order to illuminate …
Anthropology April 13, 2021

Waiting Town

Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories

Lisa Björkman

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in the Indian city of Mumbai, Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories (Association for Asian Studies, 2020) is an …
Mobilities and Methods March 10, 2021

Building Socialism

The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam

Christina Schwenkel

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Following a decade of U.S. bombing campaigns that obliterated northern Vietnam, East Germany helped Vietnam rebuild in an act of socialist solidarity. In Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German …
Mobilities and Methods February 3, 2021

Maxwell Street

Writing and Thinking Place

Tim Cresswell

Hosted by Benjamin Linder
What is the nature of place, and how does one undertake to write about it? To answer these questions, geographer and poet Tim Cresswell looks to Chicago’s iconic Maxwell Street …
Mobilities and Methods January 5, 2021

Coming Out to the Streets

LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness

Brandon Andrew Robinson

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth are disproportionately represented in the U.S. youth homelessness population. In Coming Out to the Streets, Brandon Andrew Robinson examines their lives.Based on …
Mobilities and Methods December 21, 2020

The Ends of Kinship

Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York

Sienna R. Craig

Hosted by Benjamin Linder
In The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York (University of Washington Press, 2020), anthropologist Sienna Craig examines the inter-generational shifts that increasingly transform the Mustang …
Mobilities and Methods November 18, 2020

Beyond Exception

New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula

Ahmed Kanna, Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Over the nearly two decades that they have each been conducting fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula, Ahmed Kanna, Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora have regularly encountered exoticizing and exceptionalist …
Middle Eastern Studies November 6, 2020

Return to Ruin

Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia

Zainab Saleh

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
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 …
Mobilities and Methods October 23, 2020

Love in the Drug War

Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border

Sara Luna

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Sex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. During the years 200 …
Middle Eastern Studies September 28, 2020

Street Sounds

Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

Ziad Fahmy

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
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 cacophony of everyday life grew louder …
Mobilities and Methods September 21, 2020

Indian Sex Life

Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Durba Mitra

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. In …
Art September 3, 2020

Insurgent Aesthetics

Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War

Ronak K. Kapadia

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
In Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke University Press), Ronak K. Kapadia theorizes the world-making power of contemporary art responses to US militarism in …
Film August 20, 2020

Arab Americans in Film

From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-representation

Waleed Mahdi

Hosted by Josephine Chaet
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 Americans in film …
Gender and Sexuality August 20, 2020

Work! A Queer History of Modeling

A Queer History of Modeling

Elspeth H. Brown

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
From the haute couture runways of Paris and New York and editorial photo shoots for glossy fashion magazines to reality television, models have been a ubiquitous staple of twentieth- and …
Mobilities and Methods August 17, 2020

Disruptive Situations

Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut

Ghassan Moussawi

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
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 highlighting everyday life in a …
African Studies August 10, 2020

The Fixer

Visa Lottery Chronicles

Charles Piot

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
In the West African nation of Togo, applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery is a national obsession, with hundreds of thousands of Togolese entering each year. From the street …
Music August 3, 2020

The Globally Familiar

Digital Hip-Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi

Gabriel Dattatreyan

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
In his book The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip-Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi (Duke University Press, 2020), Gabriel Dattatreyan departs from the existing literature on masculinity in India, which …
Literary Studies July 30, 2020

Fashioning Diaspora

Beauty, Femininity and South Asian American Culture

Vanita Reddy

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
Vanita Reddy, in her book Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity and South Asian American Culture (Temple University Press, 2016), locates diasporic transnationality, affiliations and intimacies through the analytic of beauty. Through …
Mobilities and Methods July 17, 2020

Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt

Navigating the Margins of Respectability

L .L. Wynn

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
L.L. Wynn’s book Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt: Navigating the Margins of Respectability (University of Texas Press) is an interrogation of urban life and gendered mobilities in Cairo …