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PODCAST

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

58:39

Franck Salameh, "Lebanon’s Jewish Community:...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/27

This was an interview that I felt only scratched the surface not only of the book, Lebanon’s Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) but of Professor Salameh's knowledge and understanding of the region. Our discussion spanned the ancient roots of the people of Lebanon through his personal story growing up in the multicultural city of Beirut through the current state of affairs in Lebanon. Growing up as a Maronite his first exposure to Jews in Lebanon was an absentee

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66:10

Anne K. Bang, "Zanzibari Muslim Moderns: Islamic...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/18

Zanzibari Muslim Moderns: Islamic Paths to Progress in the Interwar Period (Oxford UP, 2024) is a historical study of Zanzibar during the interwar years. This was a period marked by rapid intellectual and social change in the Muslim world, when ideas of Islamic progress and development were hotly debated. How did this process play out in Zanzibar?Based on a wide range of sources—Islamic and colonial, private and public—Anne K. Bang examines how these concepts were received and promoted on the

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62:06

Yaacov Yadgar, "To Be a Jewish State: Zionism as the...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/16

In one of the first books to ask head-on what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state, Yaacov Yadgar delves into what the designation "Jewish" amounts to in the context of the sovereign nation-state, and what it means for the politics of the state to be identified as Jewish. The volume interrogates the tension between the notion of Israel as a Jewish state--one whose very character is informed by Judaism--and the notion of Israel as a "state of the Jews," with the sole criterion the maintenance of

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78:00

Azad Essa, "Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/13

Under Narendra Modi, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with its trajectory towards authoritarianism and a 'Hindu Rashtra' (Hindu State), little attention has been paid to the linkages between Modi's India and the governments from which it has drawn inspiration, as well as military and technical support.India once called Zionism racism, but, as Azad Essa argues, the state of Israel has increasingly become a cornerstone of India's foreign policy. Looking to replicate

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62:38

Samuel Hodgkin, "Persianate Verse and the Poetics of...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/12

At the height of literary nationalisms in the twentieth century, leftist internationalists from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and the Soviet East bonded over their shared love of the classical Persian verses of Hafiz and Khayyam. At writers' congresses and in communist literary journals, they affirmed their friendship and solidarity with lyric ghazals and ruba'iyat. Persianate poetry became the cultural commons for a distinctively Eastern internationalism, shaping national literatures in the

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67:34

Wendy Pearlman, "The Home I Worked to Make: Voices...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/10

War forced millions of Syrians from their homes. It also forced them to rethink the meaning of home itself.In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria’s refugee outflow as its point of departure. Based on hundreds of

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51:15

Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/07

Today I talked to Joy McCorriston about Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar (Archaeopress Publishing, 2023).In the Dhofar region of southern Oman, pastoralists have constructed monuments in discrete pulses over the past 7,500 years. From small-scale stone burial markers to platforms to settlements, these constructions could have been used as sites of gathering, landmarks, mnemonic devices, and religious rituals. Dr. Joy McCorriston’s archaeological

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53:12

Yochai Ataria, "Not in Our Brain: Consciousness,...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/04

Yochai's book, Not in Our Brain: Consciousness, Body, World (Magnes Press, 2019), examines the meaning of psychology and life based on the premise (following Merleau-Ponty's theory) that we are present in the world through our bodies. We are not merely rational beings or machines, but our existence in the world is through the body. While the book examines Merleau-Ponty's theory through stories of prisoners and people dedicated to meditation, our conversation took a different and fascinating

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73:51

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿs "Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/12/02

Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, translated by Michael Fishbein and James E. Montgomery, with a foreword by Marina Warner (Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press, 2022), is a vibrant new rendition of a literary classic that has captivated readers for centuries. Rooted in ancient Indian storytelling and adapted into Arabic literature, this collection of fables uses allegorical tales of animals to convey profound lessons on ethics, leadership, and the human condition

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39:13

Middle East on the Brink: Escalation, Diplomacy, and...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/24

Recent developments in the Middle East have raised concern about the potential for a wider regional war. What do escalating tensions in Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond mean for the future? Join RBI Director John Torpey as he discusses the complexities of the contemporary Middle East with Win Dayton, a retired senior member of the U.S. Foreign Service and former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Beirut. Mr. Dayton shares insights from his decades of diplomatic experience, exploring the shifting

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88:30

Phillip Lieberman, "The Fate of the Jews in the Early...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/23

In The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West (Cambridge UP, 2022), Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood based on agriculture and move into urban crafts and long-distance trade. Here, he presents an alternative account that reveals the complexity of interfaith

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54:04

Allen James Fromherz, "The Center of the World: A...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/21

Whether it’s in commerce or conflict, today’s world pays rapt attention to the Persian Gulf. But the centrality of the Gulf to world history stretches far beyond the oil age–its ancient ports created the first proper trading system and the launching point for the spread of global Islam.Allen James Fromherz’s new book The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present (University of California Press, 2024) puts the Gulf at the center of a centuries-long

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60:30

Masha Kirasirova, "The Eastern International: Arabs,...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/19

In the first few years after the Russian Revolution, an ideological project coalesced to link the development of what Stalin demarcated as the internal "East"—primarily Central Asia and the Caucasus—with nation-building, the overthrow of colonialism, and progress toward socialism in the "foreign East"—the Third World. Support for anti-colonial movements abroad was part of the Communist Party platform and shaped Soviet foreign policy to varying degrees thereafter.The Eastern International: Arabs,

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46:01

Scott J. Weiner, "Kinship, State Formation and...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/13

Tribe-state relations are a foundational element of authoritarian bargains in the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf States. However, the structures of governance built upon that foundation exhibit wide differences. What explains this variation in the salience of kinship authority? Through a case comparison of Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, in Kinship, State Formation and Governance in the Arab Gulf States (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) Dr. Scott Weiner shows that variation in tribal access to

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114:16

Lisa Nielson, "Music and Musicians in the Medieval...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/12

During the early medieval Islamicate period (800–1400 CE), discourses concerned with music and musicians were wide-ranging and contentious, and expressed in works on music theory and philosophy as well as literature and poetry. But in spite of attempts by influential scholars and political leaders to limit or control musical expression, music and sound permeated all layers of the social structure. Lisa Nielson here presents a rich social history of music, musicianship and the role of musicians in

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57:55

Parker Palmer on the Israel-Gaza War

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/09

In times of profound crisis, when violence and hatred seem to dominate our world, we often search for voices that can help us navigate through the darkness while holding onto our humanity. Today's conversation with Parker Palmer, one of America's most respected Quaker elders and thought leaders, explores the complex landscape of faith, hope, and healing in the context of the Israel-Gaza war. As an Israeli educator now living in America, I sit down with Parker to explore not only the devastating

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38:34

Amín Pérez, "Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire:...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/09

How did the Algerian war of independence shape contemporary sociology? In Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle (Polity Press, 2023), Amin Perez, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Quebec in Montreal, explores the sociological practice and friendship of Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad. Using a range of archival and contemporary methods, the book shows the impact of anticolonialism on these key figures in sociology and demonstrates the

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53:10

Roni Henig, "On Revival: Hebrew Literature Between...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/07

On Revival: Hebrew Literature Between Life and Death (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) is a critique of one of the most important tenets of Zionist thinking: "Hebrew revival," or the idea that Hebrew--a largely unspoken language before the twentieth century--was revitalized as part of a broader national "revival" which ultimately led to the establishment of the Israeli nation-state. This story of language revival has been commemorated in Israeli popular memory and in Jewish historiography as a triumphant

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73:07

Doyle D. Calhoun, "The Suicide Archive: Reading...

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/06

A note about content: This episode involves discussion of suicide, specifically in the contexts of slavery, colonization and empire. Please use your discretion and take care if you decide to listen. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, you are not alone. You can reach out to the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. Thank you for taking care of yourself. This episode is a conversation with Dr. Doyle Calhoun,

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39:49

The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7

New Books in Middle Eastern Studies ·

2024/11/05

The essay "The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7" (Mosaic Magazine) by Shany Mor, dated October 7, 2024, examines the intellectual and policy failures leading up to the October 7 attack on Israel. Mor critiques several conceptual frameworks that have guided Israeli and international policy, particularly in dealing with Gaza and Hamas. These failed ideas include: 1. Netanyahu’s Leadership - Mor argues that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-standing skepticism,

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364 results

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