Since 9/11 there has been a cultural and political blossoming among those of the Afghan diaspora, especially in the United States, revealing a vibrant, active, and intellectual Afghan American community. And the success of Khaled Hosseni's The Kite Runner, the first work of fiction written by an Afghan American to become a bestseller, has created interest in the works of other Afghan American writers. One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (University ...
May 31, 2025•1 hr 8 min
Reading Mohamed Choukri’s Narratives: Hunger in Eden (Routledge, 2024) presents an intricate exploration into the life and literary universe of Mohamed Choukri, a towering figure in 20th-century Moroccan literature. Known primarily for his groundbreaking autobiographical work “al-Khubz al-Ḥāfī” (For Bread Alone), Choukri’s literary influence extends well beyond this single work. Reading Mohamed Choukri’s Narratives seeks to cast a light on his broader body of work, examining the cultural, societ...
May 30, 2025•1 hr 5 min
The Silk Road may be the most famous trade network in history. But the flow of silk from China to the Middle East and Europe isn’t the only textile trade that’s made its mark on Central Asia, the subject of Chris Aslan’s latest book Unravelling the Silk Road: Travels and Textiles in Central Asia (Icon Books, 2024), recently published in paperback. Drawing on over a decade’s worth of experience in countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Aslan notes that there’s really three “roads”: In addition...
May 29, 2025•47 min
The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2024) is a narrative of a Christian family in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Based on diary entries and interviews from 2000 to 2023, the Dutch author--an anthropologist and peace activist--chronicles the spontaneous reactions of his Palestinian children and wife navigating the challenges posed by curfews and checkpoints. Problems of Palestinian school life are shown from the perspective of teachers and students. Against the backgro...
May 23, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 302
Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli stat...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 2 min
This is the first Syriac reader for the New Testament. It guides the reader through the Syriac New Testament Peshitta, glossing the uncommon words and parsing difficult word forms. It is designed for two groups of people. First, for students learning Syriac after a years’ worth of study this series provides the material to grow in reading ability from the primary texts. Second, this series is designed for scholars, linguists, theologians, and curious lay people looking to refresh their Syriac, o...
May 19, 2025•31 min•Ep. 192
Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai (Stanford UP, 2020) by Todd Reisz is a critical historical account of Dubai’s transformation into a global urban spectacle. Reisz examines how architecture, master planning, and international expertise contributed to the construction of Dubai’s modern image, focusing particularly on the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Rather than narrating Dubai’s development as a spontaneous miracle of oil wealth, Reisz reveals it as a meticulously crafted project...
May 18, 2025•43 min•Ep. 301
Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2025) analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, studies of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions for a comprehensive history of Jewish responses to and justifications of their diasporas. It shows that Diaspora Jews through the ages insisted that God joined them in their exiles, that "Zion" was found in Babylon and Eastern Europe, and that, as citizens of the world, Jews could only ...
May 17, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 32
Rav Kook’s Vision: Halakhah, Secular Knowledge, and the Renewal of Judaism. Those of us who know something about Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook’s life and philosophy know about his being stuck outside of the Land of Israel during WWI, being the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, and his encouragement of the secular Zionists who turned swamps into vegetation. But not many of us have analyzed the personal notebooks that the Rav left, commonly known as Shemonah Kevatzim (...
May 14, 2025•50 min•Ep. 642
Syrian Poets and Vernacular Modernity (Edinburgh UP, 2025) examines a poetic movement that rose from under official state discourse in 1970s Syria Closely examines a wealth of unknown primary poetic texts from Syria that make up a new poetics which challenges received ideas about modern Arabic poetry Rereads along transnational lines the works of famous Arabo-Syrian poets such as Nizār Qabbānī and Muḥammad al-Māghūṭ Offers a substantial rethinking of key terms in comparative literary studies — t...
May 14, 2025•30 min•Ep. 300
Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm (University of Michigan Press, 2024) is the first environmental history of Egypt’s Fayyūm depression. The book examines human relationships with flowing water from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. Until the arrival of modern perennial irrigation in the nineteenth century, the Fayyūm was the only region of premodern Egypt to be irrigated by a network of artificial canals. By linking large numbers of rural commu...
May 06, 2025•59 min•Ep. 299
A powerful new history detailing the most significant military clashes between Islam and Christendom over the 1,300 years of the Muslim caliphate. From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. In this powerful new hi...
May 03, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 268
Geographic labels are sometimes misnomers. The Dead Sea’s name is not, for the most part. Its high salinity levels kill most forms of life, barring a couple hardy microbes and algae—and even these are threatened by environmental change. Except the Dead Sea has been part of human history for millennia. Jericho, the world’s oldest city, sits nearby. It features prominently in the Bible. Greeks, Romans, Jews, Arabs, Europeans all interact with the Dead Sea. And it’s now a tourist hotspot, a source ...
Apr 13, 2025•41 min•Ep. 229
Israel’s citizens have had to cope with the emotional challenges of the threats their country has faced during its first two decades. Emotions of Conflict, Israel 1949-1967 (Oxford UP, 2024) unpacks the history of citizens’ emotions—an analysis of the reports about how they felt and of the emotional regime—the emotional repertoire designed by political leaders and cultural agents wishing to mold the feelings of Israeli citizens. The perspective of the history of emotions leads to hitherto untapp...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 631
How were Moroccan Muslim and Jewish cultures depicted in Spanish literature, journalism, and photography during the Rif War and what did this portrayal reveal about conflicting visions of Spanish identity? Runner-up for the 2017-18 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize Spanish National Identity, Colonial Power, and the Portrayal of Muslims and Jews During the Rif War (1909-27) (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), examines how anxieties about colonial power and national identity are reflected in Spani...
Apr 06, 2025•49 min•Ep. 15
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi’ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak C...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 101
Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry and chancery, which would have a long-lasting influence on Arabic literature. His decades of service at the court of at least three caliphs give him a unique perspective as an historian of his own time, although he is often valued as an observer rather than an interpreter of events for posterity. In History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writin...
Mar 31, 2025•52 min•Ep. 354
Those of us who have some background in Jewish history are taught that the Ottoman Empire encouraged Jews, particularly those of the Spanish and Portuguese Expulsions, to settle in Ottoman Lands. In Ottoman Jewry: Leadership, Charity, and Literacy (Brill, 2024), Professor Ayalon debunks what he calls that myth. The Ottomans, according to Yaron, were interested in stability - economic and otherwise. Minorities, with their additional taxes, would bring more financial benefits. Many were merchants ...
Mar 30, 2025•44 min
In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor sits down with Marc Owen Jones, associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, to explore the complex world of digital deception in the Middle East, as outlined in his book Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2021). Marc draws on years of experience growing up in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, as well as living and working in Sudan, Syria, Germany, and the UK....
Mar 29, 2025•27 min•Ep. 6
In this episode, Chella Ward and Hizer Mir spoke to Leila Abdelrazaq about her artistic practice and its themes of Palestinian futurism. Their discussion centred on Leila’s artistic work, and probed the role that reimagining the past can play in a more just future. Leila Abdelrazaq is a Chicago-born Palestinian artist and cultural organizer whose debut graphic novel ‘Baddawi’ was published in 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a prem...
Mar 28, 2025•56 min
Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt’s Incarcerated (U California Press, 2025), edited by Collective Antigone, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by political prisoners in Egypt. It offers a unique lens on the global rise of authoritarianism during the last decade. This book contains letters, poetry, and art produced by Egypt’s incarcerated from the eruption of the January 25, 2011, uprising. Some are by journalists, lawyers, activists, and artists imprisoned for expressing thei...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 7 min
The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2023) chronicles the earliest histories of familiar tropical Asian crops in the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean, from rice and cotton to citruses and cucumbers. Drawing on archaeological materials and textual sources in over seven ancient languages, The Tropical Turn unravels the breathtaking anthropogenic peregrinations of these familiar crops from their homelan...
Mar 23, 2025•43 min•Ep. 42
Ahmed M. Abozaid’s Counterterrorism Strategies in Egypt: Permanent Exceptions in the War on Terror (Routledge, 2021) reveals how counterterrorism discourses and practices became the main tool of a systematic violation of human rights in Egypt after the Arab Uprising. It examines how the civic and democratic uprising in Egypt turned into robust authoritarianism. By interrogating Egypt’s counterterrorism legislation, the book identifies a correlation between counterterrorism narratives and the sys...
Mar 22, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 298
The untold history of Czechoslovakia's complex relations with Middle Eastern terrorists and revolutionaries during the closing decades of the Cold War In the 1970s and 1980s, Prague became a favorite destination for the world's most prominent terrorists and revolutionaries. They arrived here to seek refuge, enjoy recreation, or hold secret meetings aimed at securing training, arms, and other forms of support. While some were welcome with open arms, others were closely watched and were eventually...
Mar 18, 2025•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 123
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Salman Sayyid and Chella Ward spoke to Professor Marc Van De Mieroop about Sumerian history. They discussed the role that the so-called ‘Ancient Near East’ might play in reorienting history, from redefining the history of philosophy to telling a less Eurocentric story about writing and textual evidence. Marc is Professor of the Ancient Near East from the beginning of writing to the age of Alexander of Macedon, at Columbia University. His many important books an...
Mar 15, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 96
This book discusses hagiographic, historiographical, hymnological, and theological sources that contributed to the formation of the sacred picture of the physical as well as metaphysical Jerusalem in the literature of two Eastern Christian denominations, East and West Syrians. Popa analyses the question of Syrian beliefs about the Holy City, their interaction with holy places, and how they travelled in the Holy Land. He also explores how they imagined and reflected the theology of this itinerary...
Mar 14, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 297
Unruly Labor: A History of Oil in the Arabian Sea (Stanford UP, 2024) by Andrea Wright offers a critical and nuanced examination of the labor regimes that sustain the oil economies of the Arabian Peninsula. Challenging dominant narratives centered on state-building, elite wealth, and resource control, Wright focuses on the transnational laborers whose work has been essential to the region’s economic development. She explores how oil extractive economies depend not only on physical resources but ...
Mar 14, 2025•32 min•Ep. 296
When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, seventh century BCE ruler of a huge swathe of the ancient Middle East known as Mesopotamia. After his death, vengeful rivals burned Ashurbanipal’s library to the ground - yet the texts, carved on clay tablets, were baked and preserved by the heat. Buried for millennia, the tablets were written in cun...
Mar 13, 2025•38 min•Ep. 43
Tahrir Hamdi is a Professor of Resistance Literature at the Arab Open University in Jordan. She is the author of the award-winning Imagining Palestine and serves as an assistant editor of Arab Studies Quarterly. National identities are inherently fluid, shaped as much by collective beliefs and cultural practices as by official borders and territory. For Palestinians, whose national status remains contested, the articulation and imagination of national identity take on particular urgency. Imagini...
Mar 12, 2025•53 min•Ep. 338
Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What acquired habits and conveniences allow us to turn a blind eye with an air of detachment? Using examples from the hottest places on earth, Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet (U California Press, 2024) shows how scientific methods of accounting for heat and modern forms of acclimatization have desensitized us to clima...
Mar 10, 2025•43 min•Ep. 138
