New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

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 state.Zionism: An Emotional State (Rutgers UP, 2023) expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement’s history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world. Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He previously taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was in inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Modern Israel Studies. Penslar has published a dozen books, most recently Zionism: An Emotional State (2023). He is currently writing a book titled The War for Palestine, 1947-1949: A Global History. Penslar is a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

With Christmas approaching, in this episode we reflect on Christian persecution in the Middle East, the historic cradle of Christianity and the birthplace of Jesus, and the very different challenges Christians face in the East versus the West. Annika sits down with Father Benedict Kiely, a Catholic priest who has devoted his ministry to serving Christian communities in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.  Nasarean, his non-profit to help Christians in the Middle East is here.: The Chinese Communist Party's re-translation of John:8 is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Lucia Ardovini to discuss the Brotherhood’s search for identity in a post-2013 context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

An interview with Dr. Alexandre Caeiro in which we discuss Islamic law and institutions in Qatar, secularisation and the Ottomans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The second part of the interview with Prof. Ella Shohat in which ghosts, nationalism/national identity and its role in calls for liberation (amongst other topics). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

A conversation between Prof. Salman Sayyid and Prof. Ella Shohat on (amongst other topics) the significance of 1492, Orientalism and race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

An interview with Professor Shenhav in which the politics of translation is discussed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In this episode, Richard Bulliet talks about his work in world and Islamicate history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

For 40 months, Wang Xiyue was imprisoned in Iran on false charges of espionage. A doctoral candidate in history at Princeton University, Wang Xiyue joins the show to discuss his imprisonment and U.S.-Iranian relations.  Xiyue's essay "What I learned in an Iranian prison" is here. His essay "Don’t let Iran’s human rights be sacrificed at the altar of a nuclear deal is here.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Professor Cathleen Chopra-McGowan examines some the incongruities of our Bible in the context of the Ancient Near East, showing how the stories and traditions of Israel resembled and borrowed from those of Babylon and Assyria. She compares the Genesis narrative to two others, the epics of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis, especially discussing the universal flood narrative and rationale for sacrifice to show the evolution of our ancestors’ religious practice and thinking about God. Professor Chopra-McGowan teaches courses in the Religious Studies Department at Santa Clara University, including Near Eastern languages, literatures, history, and archaeology, as well as uses of the Bible in contemporary society. Professor Chopra-McGowan’s faculty webpage at Santa Clara University. The earthquake that interrupted our talk St. Crispin’s Day Speech by Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, 1989) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Medieval Arabic sources are full of references to the Banu Sasan (Sons of Sasan) and the Ghuraba' (Strangers), an enigmatic but captivating group who begged, told fortunes, trained animals, and practiced medicine throughout the Islamic world from the mid-7th century onwards. These groups constitute peoples who would later come to be known as the Roma. Although they both produced their own texts and were written about by outsiders, relatively little scholarship has been conducted into the Roma in the Middle East. In this episode, Dr. Kristina Richardson joins me to talk about her new book Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021). Drawing on a wide variety of literary and archaeological evidence to illuminate the practices, languages, and lived experiences of the Roma in the Middle Ages, Dr. Richardson's book argues for a central role of the Roma in medieval culture and society. We discuss nomadism and mobility among the medieval Roma, their literary and artistic outputs, languages, trades, relationships with outsiders, and contemporary issues affecting the study of the Roma in the Middle East today. Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Contemporary issues like the refugee crisis, climate refugees, and global restrictions on movement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have brought into stark relief the extent to which our movements, lives, and worldviews are governed by national borders and boundary-making. But these borders and their associated militarization and security infrastructures are a recent phenomenon, the legacy of 20th-century wars and colonialism. Modern borders are also often the result of complex, disputed negotiation processes between governments and other authorities, which rarely take into consideration the local populations living in border zones. What happens when these modern border-making processes interact with nomadic peoples? How is pastoralism affected and circumscribed by nation-state borders and boundary regimes? This episode discusses histories of border formation in the modern Middle East in relation to nomadic pastoralists - the Bedouin - specifically in Iraq and Israel. I talked to a range of scholars working on these topics, and you'll hear from them throughout the episode. We also talk about the effects of these borders on the Bedouin today, as well as evidence for Bedouin alternatives to borders and maps.  Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The British occupation of Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to the creation of Iraq's national boundaries, a process with profound and long-lasting implications for the inhabitants of Iraq's border regions. In his dissertation, "The Origins and Development of Iraq's National Boundaries, 1918-1932: Policing and Political Geography in the Iraq-Nejd and Iraq-Syria Borderlands" (University of Chicago, 2018), Dr. Carl Shook examined how Iraq's modern national borders were formed in relation to the Bedouin and to the policing of Bedouin tribes. In this episode he joins me to discuss the history of Iraq's southern border with Saudi Arabia, the role of Bedouin tribespeople within the border formation process, and the effects of transnational borders on nomadic peoples. Follow Dr. Shook on Twitter. Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

A conversation with Dr. Salah Hatem and Dr. Jaafar Jotheri, professors of archaeology at al-Qadisiyah University, about their research project documenting the intangible cultural heritage of the Bedouin in southern Iraq.  This episode covers topics ranging from the lifestyle of the Iraqi Bedouin to their indigenous knowledge (how to find water in the desert; plants that can be used as medicine) to how cultural heritage can be a tool for social change.  Their research project is funded by the Nahrein Network at University College London, which has as its mission to foster the sustainable development of antiquity, cultural heritage, and the humanities in Iraq. Learn more about the Nahrein network here. Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Dr. Daniel Hummel is a scholar, writer, researcher, and teacher of religion, politics, and foreign policy in the United States and the modern Middle East. He is currently a Robert M. Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hummel is also a specialist in the concept of Christian Zionism and has a forthcoming book from the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, A Covenant of the Mind: Evangelicals, Israel, and the Construction of a Special Relationship. Dr. Hummel’s unique take on the Israel-Palestine situation is tinted with his own expertise in Christian Zionism, and we discuss that issue in a lot of depth in this conversation as well. Dr. Hummel is also a contributor to the Washington Post in middle east current events. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Where does Greece belong? Many look at the ancient Greek ruins of Athens, and see the cradle of Western civilization. But much of Greece’s history actually looks eastward to the rest of the Mediterranean: to Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Palestine. In his book The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East (Hurst: 2025), Sean Mathews argues that it’s best to think about Greece as belonging to the “Near East”—and doubly so with today’s more complicated geopolitics. Sean Mathews is a Greek-American journalist who has covered a wide swath of the Middle East. He is a correspondent with Middle East Eye, and has also written for The Economist and Al-Monitor, among others. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The New Byzantines. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama examines the concept of early modern globality and the development of European toleration discourse through English representations of Persian monarchs and Persianate conceptions of hospitality as paradigms of interreligious and intercultural hospitality for early modern and Shakespearean drama. English playwrights depict Persia and its legendary monarchs, such as Cyrus the Great, Xerxes, and Darius, as alternative figures of cosmopolitanism in the period. By focusing on an archive of plays of Persia staged between 1561 and 1696 in conversation with Shakespeare's works, European peace proposals, legislative acts of toleration, and global traditions of hospitality found in Zoroastrianism, Islam, and the Judeo-Christian traditions, this book pioneers an interdisciplinary methodology, introduces Persianate conceptual lenses for literary analysis of English literature, and constructs capacities to imagine multiple globalities existing in early modernity through a spectrum of imagined and lived experiences on stage and on the ground. Sheiba Kian Kaufman is an Assistant Professor of English at Saddleback College and Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of articles on Shakespeare, Persia, and early modern English drama. She has received fellowships from the UCLA Center for 17th-and 18th Century Studies, Clark Library, the UCI Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture, the UCI Center in Law, Society, and Culture, Somerville College, Oxford, and the American Association of University Women. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Sri Lanka has long sat astride the monsoon winds between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea – a small island at the centre of a very big story. For over a thousand years, Muslim pilgrims, merchants, scholars, and soldiers have passed through “Lanka” or “Sarandib”, leaving traces in Arabic, Tamil, Persian, Malay, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, Dhivehi, and Sinhala. Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean (University of Texas Press, 2026) brings together many of those voices for the first time in English. From medieval travellers marvelling at Adam’s Peak to modern novelists and newspaper editors wrestling with reform, nationalism, and civil conflict. Dr. Nile Green holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is the celebrated author of ten monographs and the editor of seven books and several journal issues, with a particular focus on Islam and the Indian Ocean world. He also hosts the excellent podcast Akbar’s Chamber: Experts Talk Islam. Dr. Ahmed AlMaazmi is Assistant Professor of History at the United Arab Emirates University. His research explores the intersections of empire, occult sciences, slavery, law, environmental infrastructures, and material culture in the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Indian Ocean world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo (Duke University Press, 2025) by Julia Elyachar is a sweeping analysis of the coloniality that shaped—and blocked—sovereign futures for those dubbed barbarian and semicivilized in the former Ottoman Empire. Drawing on thirty years of ethnographic research in Cairo, family archives from Palestine and Egypt, and research on Ottoman debt and finance to rethink catastrophe and potentiality in Cairo and the world today, Elyachar theorizes a global condition of the “semicivilized” marked by nonsovereign futures, crippling debts, and the constant specter of violence exercised by those who call themselves civilized. Originally used to describe the Ottoman Empire, whose perceived “civilizational differences” rendered it incompatible with a Western-dominated global order, semicivilized came to denote lands where unitary territorial sovereignty was stymied at the end of WWI. Elyachar’s theorizing offers a new analytic vocabulary for thinking beyond territoriality, postcolonialism, and the “civilized"/"primitive” divide. Looking at the world from the perspective of the semicivilized, Elyachar argues, allows us to shift attention to embodied infrastructures, collective lives, and practices of moving and acting in common that bypass lingering assumptions of territorialism and unitary sovereign rule.Julia Elyachar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Caste has been a huge topic of conversation in modern India. Yet debates and activism around caste discrimination have spread beyond South Asia. Caste activists looked to African-American literature and leaders to connect their fight with the battle against racism in the U.S. And as Indians moved around the world–to America, to elsewhere in Asia, and to the Middle East–they way they thought about caste changed. Suraj Milind Yengde tackles this global angle in his latest book: Caste: A Global Story (Hurst, 2025) Suraj is Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies and a Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. His prior appointments were W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University, Senior Fellow and postdoc at the Harvard Kennedy School, a non-resident fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and a founding member of the Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability (IARA) at Harvard University. He is also the author of Caste Matters (Penguin Random House India: 2019) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Caste. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies