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About Ari Barbalat

Ari Barbalat holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of California in Los Angeles. He lives in Toronto with his family.

NBN Episodes hosted by Ari:

Israel Studies May 27, 2022

Searching for Peace

A Memoir of Israel (Part 2 of 2)

Ehud Olmert

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
NB: This is part 2 of a two part interview with Ehud Olert. Part 1 is here. Written almost entirely from inside a prison cell, Searching for Peace: A Memoir …
African American Studies May 13, 2022

Black Dragon

Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination

Zachary F. Price

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination (Ohio State UP, 2022), Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian …
African Studies May 11, 2022

Africa’s Joola Shipwreck

Causes and Consequences of a Humanitarian Disaster

Karen Samantha Barton

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In 2002, a government-owned Senegalese ferry named the Joola capsized in a storm off the coast of The Gambia in a tragedy that killed 1,863 people and left 64 survivors …
Latin American Studies May 9, 2022

Bad Mexicans

Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

Kelly Lytle Hernández

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (Norton, 2022)tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States …
Israel Studies May 5, 2022

Searching for Peace

A Memoir of Israel (Part 1 of 2)

Ehud Olmert

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
NB: This is part 1 of a two part interview with Ehud Olert. Part 2 is here. Written almost entirely from inside a prison cell, Searching for Peace: A Memoir …
Literature April 21, 2022

Sista, Stanap Strong!

A Vanuatu Women's Anthology

Mikaela Nyman, Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen, and Nicole Colmar

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Sista, Stanap Strong!: A Vanuatu Women's Anthology (Te Herenaa Waka UP, 2021) is an anthology of new writing from Vanuatu by three generations of women—and the first of its kind …
Jewish Studies April 19, 2022

Belonging and Betrayal

How Jews Made the Art World Modern

Charles Dellheim

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause célèbre. In Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern (Brandeis UP, 2021), Charles Dellheim …
African Studies April 8, 2022

The War That Doesn't Say Its Name

The Unending Conflict in the Congo

Jason K. Stearns

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"--a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds …
Latin American Studies April 7, 2022

Colonial Kinship

Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay

Shawn Michael Austin

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay (U New Mexico Press, 2020), historian Shawn Michael Austin traces the history of conquest and colonization in Paraguay during the sixteenth and …
African American Studies March 30, 2022

Hawai'i Is My Haven

Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific

Nitasha Tamar Sharma

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Hawai'i Is My Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific (Duke UP, 2021) maps the context and contours of Black life in the Hawaiian Islands. This ethnography emerges from …
Caribbean Studies March 16, 2022

The Creole Archipelago

Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean

Tessa Murphy

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021), Tessa Murphy traces how generations of Indigenous Kalinagos, free and enslaved Africans, and settlers from a …
Jewish Studies March 7, 2022

Isaac Polqar

A Jewish Philosopher or a Philosopher and a Jew?

Racheli Haliva

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
To date, scholars have skilfully discussed aspects of Polqar’s thought, and yet none of the existing studies offers a comprehensive examination that covers Polqar’s thought in its entirety. Isaac Polqar …
Jewish Studies February 25, 2022

Jewish Childhood in Kraków

A Microhistory of the Holocaust

Joanna Sliwa

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (Rutgers UP, 2021) is the first book to tell the history of Kraków in the second World War through the lens …
Caribbean Studies February 10, 2022

Island Futures

Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene

Mimi Sheller

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke UP, 2020), Mimi Sheller delves into the ecological crises and reconstruction challenges affecting the entire Caribbean region during a time of …
Latin American Studies February 2, 2022

Amnesty in Brazil

Recompense After Repression, 1895-2010

Ann M. Schneider

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In 1895, forty-seven rebel military officers contested the terms of a law that granted them amnesty but blocked their immediate return to the armed forces. During the century that followed …
Literature January 31, 2022

I Have Seen the Moon

Reflections on Nauru

Bron Williams

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Today I talked to Bron Williams about her book I Have Seen the Moon: Reflections on Nauru (2017).Mary Anne Radmacher wrote, "I am not the same having seen the moon shine on …
Jewish Studies January 5, 2022

Revolutionary Visions

Jewish Life and Politics in Latin American Film

Stephanie M. Pridgeon

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Stephanie M. Pridgeon's book Revolutionary Visions: Jewish Life and Politics in Latin American Film (U Toronto Press, 2020) examines recent cinematic depictions of Jewish involvement in 1960s and 1970s revolutionary movements …
African Studies December 29, 2021

Lucy's People

An Ethiopian Memoir

Mesfin Tadesse and Ianet Bastyan

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Lucy's People: An Ethiopian Memoir (Yerada Lij,2021) is the inspiring story of a country and a life. Young engineer Mesfin grows up under Emperor Haile Selassie I in Ethiopia. She …
African Studies December 21, 2021

Apartheid's Black Soldiers

Unnational Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa

Lennart Bolliger

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
New oral histories from Black Namibian and Angolan troops who fought in apartheid South Africa’s security forces reveal their involvement, and its impact on their lives, to be far more …
Music December 21, 2021

From This Broken Hill I Sing to You

God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen

Marcia Pally

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Leonard Cohen's troubled relationship with God is here mapped onto his troubled relationships with sex and politics. Analysing Covenantal theology and its place in Cohen's work, Marcia Pally's From This …
Israel Studies December 17, 2021

Death Tango

Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and Three Fateful Days in March

Yossi Alpher

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Death Tango: Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and Three Fateful Days in March (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) traces the Middle East dynamic back to the events of March 27-29, 2002. March …
Jewish Studies December 13, 2021

We Are Not Alone

A Maimonidean Theology of the Other

Menachem Kellner

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other (Academic …
African American Studies December 13, 2021

We Are Bridges

A Memoir

Cassandra Lane

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
When Cassandra Lane finds herself pregnant at thirty-five, the knowledge sends her on a poignant exploration of memory to prepare for her entry into motherhood. She moves between the twentieth-century …
Jewish Studies November 29, 2021

Hadassah

An American Story

Hadassah Lieberman

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Born in Prague to Holocaust survivors, Hadassah Lieberman and her family immigrated in 1949 to the United States. She went on to earn a BA from Boston University in government …