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About Nadirah Mansour

Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.

NBN Episodes hosted by Nadirah:

Middle Eastern Studies April 21, 2021

When We Were Arabs

A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History

Massoud Hayoun

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History (New Press, 2019) is part-memoir, part-history of Jewish Arabs. We follow Massoud Hayoun as he documents his family’s history, their place …
Middle Eastern Studies March 24, 2021

The Literary Qur'an

Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb

Hoda El Shakry

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Hoda El Shakry’s book The Literary Qurʾan: Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb (Fordham University Press, 2019) was awarded the ACLA’s 2018 Helen Tartar Book Subvention Award and the MLA’s 202 …
Middle Eastern Studies March 22, 2021

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba'thist State

Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968-2003

Hawraa Al-Hassan

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Hawraa Al Hassan’s Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba’thist State: Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968-2003 (University of Edinburgh Press, 2020) is unique because it both explores discourse concerning women …
Middle Eastern Studies April 28, 2020

Ottoman Baroque

The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul

Ünver Rüstem

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice …
African Studies December 23, 2019

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time

Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa

Kathleen Bickford Berzock

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
The companion publication to the 2019-2020 traveling exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa (Princeton University Press, 2019, published in association with …
Middle Eastern Studies September 25, 2019

A Field Guide to the Street Names of Central Cairo

Humphrey Davies and Lesley Lababidi

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Guides have been written to the city of Cairo for generations. Whether they’re for foreigners who’ve come to the city or its residents. However, it might be safe to say …
Middle Eastern Studies June 7, 2019

Practicing Islam in Egypt

Print Media and Islamic Revival

Aaron Rock-Singer

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Discussions of Middle East politics will inevitably bring Islamism to the table and with it, questions of how Islam in its current iterations came to be. In most cases, the …
Middle Eastern Studies February 7, 2019

Pitfalls of Scholarship

Lessons from Islamic Studies

Ahmad Atif Ahmad

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Ahmad Atif Ahmad’s Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) is a unique reflection on the field of Islamic studies. It is not quite a memoir, although …
Middle Eastern Studies December 31, 2018

Mandatory Separation

Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine

Suzanne Schneider

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
The history of Palestine is overly political; most studies, especially of the Mandate period, when the British effectively colonized Palestine, focus on the political actors. In Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education …
Middle Eastern Studies December 17, 2018

Preventing Palestine

A Political History from Camp David to Oslo

Seth Anziska

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine …
Middle Eastern Studies December 7, 2018

Caliphate Redefined

The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought

Hüseyin Yılmaz

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
In Islamic intellectual history, it is generally assumed that the Ottomans did not contribute much to Islamic thought. With his new book, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political …
Middle Eastern Studies November 12, 2018

Letters of Light

Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design

J.R. Osborn

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Arabic script is astounding! Not only because it represents one of the most commonly spoken languages today –that is, the Arabic language– but because it has represented dozens of other …
Middle Eastern Studies November 5, 2018

The Lighthouse and the Observatory

Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt

Daniel Stolz

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Both a history of science and a history of Islam, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Daniel Stolz …
Middle Eastern Studies September 12, 2018

Emotional Cities

Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910

Joseph Ben Prestel

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Joseph Ben Prestel talks with us about Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910 (Oxford University Press, 2017), blending together history of emotions, urban history, global …
Middle Eastern Studies September 4, 2018

Between Christ and Caliph

Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam

Lev Weitz

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Recent years have seen new waves of research in Syriac studies, the medieval Middle East, and family history. Combining all three, Lev Weitz’s Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and …
Middle Eastern Studies August 21, 2018

Islam without Europe

Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought

Ahmad Dallal

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
In Middle Eastern and Islamic intellectual history, there has long been an assumption of decline in the eighteenth century, right before the nineteenth century, when the nahda or Arabic intellectual …
Middle Eastern Studies August 16, 2018

Enclosure

Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror

Gary Fields

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Inspired by the usage of the term ‘enclosure’ to describe the Separation Wall in Israel-Palestine on a visit he made to the West Bank, Gary Fields in Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes …
Middle Eastern Studies August 9, 2018

Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt

Women’s Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture

Eve Krakowski

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
History is only recently opening up to previously marginalized groups: it is only just now that women’s history is being explored across different historical fields. Eve Krakowski in Coming of …
Middle Eastern Studies July 16, 2018

The Republic of Arabic Letters

Islam and the European Enlightenment

Alexander Bevilacqua

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
In The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2018), Alexander Bevilacqua uncovers a different side of the European Enlightenment, at least with regards to …
World Affairs July 11, 2018

What is Global History?

Sebastian Conrad

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
The last two decades have seen a surge in global histories, be they global histories of food, of ideas, or social movements. But why this move away from strictly national …
Middle Eastern Studies July 2, 2018

The World in a Book

Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

Elias Muhanna

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Described as a small book about a very large book, The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2017) by Elias Muhanna tells the …
Middle Eastern Studies June 5, 2018

Printing Arab Modernity

Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut

Hala Auji

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
In Middle Eastern history, the printing press has been both over- and under-assigned significance as an agent of social change. Hala Auji’s Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American …
World Affairs June 4, 2018

Vanguard of the Revolution

The Global Idea of the Communist Party

A. James McAdams

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
Is there a difference between the Communist Party as an idea and the Communist Party in practice? A. James McAdams thinks so and takes the global approach to history to …
Middle Eastern Studies May 29, 2018

Transforming Sudan

Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation

Alden Young

Hosted by Nadirah Mansour
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 …