About Nancy Ko

Nancy Ko is a PhD student in History at Columbia University, where she works at the intersection of Jewish and Middle East Studies.

Nancy's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Nancy:

Aaron G. Jakes, "Egypt's Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism" (Stanford UP, 2020)

March 23, 2021

Egypt's Occupation

Aaron G. Jakes
Hosted by Nancy Ko

The story is a familiar one. In 1882, the British invaded Egypt to secure payment on the country’s crippling foreign debts and quash the movement for …

Marina Rustow, "The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue" (Princeton UP, 2020)

January 5, 2021

The Lost Archive

Marina Rustow
Hosted by Nancy Ko

What does it mean that our single greatest source of medieval Islamic government documents comes from the attic of a Jewish synagogue in Cairo? This…

Robert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy" (Stanford UP, 2020)

November 10, 2020

Oilcraft

Robert Vitalis
Hosted by Nancy Ko

We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this str…

M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020)

May 25, 2020

A Slave between Empires

M’hamed Oualdi
Hosted by Nancy Ko

In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrat…

Darryl Li, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" (Stanford UP, 2020)

March 4, 2020

The Universal Enemy

Darryl Li
Hosted by Nancy Ko

No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national…

Iyko Day, "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2016)

February 17, 2020

Alien Capital

Iyko Day
Hosted by Nancy Ko

In our efforts to comprehend the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or I…