New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015) represents years of effort from a team of dedicated translators and editors (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Joseph Lumbard, Maria Dakake, Caner Dagli, and Mohammad Rustom). The book is a remarkable achievement. The text features a complete new translation of the Quran as well as multiple complementary essays written by leading scholars of Quranic studies. The tome also includes over a million words of running commentary from Muslim exegetes across the centuries including contributions from Sunni, Shii, and Sufi schools of thought among others. This feature, in particular, showcases its encompassing and truly oceanic scope. The text proves noteworthy as well, given its intersection between confessional scholarship and Western academic approaches to Islamic studies. The text has already begun to make waves across North America and beyond and has set a new precedent as not only a translation but also a reference work on Quran. Its user-friendly organization, moreover, will make the text accessible to just about anyone as it offers levels of depth according to what the reader seeks. Elliott Bazzano is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College. His research and teaching interests include theory and methodology in the study of religion, Islamic studies, Quranic studies, mysticism, religion and media, and religion and drugs. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at (bazzanea@lemoyne.edu). Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

American culture is ubiquitous across the globe. It travels to different social contexts and is consumed by international populations. But the relationship between American culture and the meanings attached to the United States change over time. During the 20th century, the American Century, American culture generally aided in the positive global perception of U.S. policies and governance. In After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2016), Brian T. Edwards, Crown Professor in Middle East Studies and Professor of English at Northwestern University, demonstrates how this relationship altered in recent decades. Technological innovation and the emergence of the digital age have drastically changed the nature of cultural circulation and production. Edwards explores the innovative play between global culture and local subjects in Egypt, Iran, and Morocco. He explores the exchange and interpretations between multiple publics that engage culture situated within various assumptions and social expectations. What he shows is that local cultural production often creates the ends of circulation, which are not always visible to an American audience. In our conversation we discussed the relationship between culture and politics, Egyptian fiction and graphic novels, Iranian directors Asghar Farhadi and Abbas Kiarostami, Shrek, digital piracy, Moroccan film controversies, the logics of film production, interpreting audiences, American Orientalism in television, literature, and Ben Affleck’s Argo. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespread popularity of Sufism was marked by a public adoption of practices that satisfied the masses in ways the religious elite were not fully addressing. In The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325 (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Nathan Hofer, Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, critiques the social binary that these assumptions create, as well as, rethinks the mechanisms within the social production of Sufi culture. He explores these concerns in the context of the Ayyubid and Mamluk states and their relationships with Sufi masters and communities. First, a state-sponsored Sufi lodge serves as the site for professionalization of Sufis and the public consumption of Sufi culture that aligns with state objectives. The emergence of the Shādhilīya sufi order serves as a case of the textualization of an idealized sufi identity, and its subsequent popularization through the production of a collective community. Finally, Hofer explores the unique context of Upper-Egyptian Sufism, which relied on charismatic authority and miraculous work in the creation of a community. In our conversation we discussed the notion of Popular Culture in the medieval world, hagiography and biography, miracles, the khanqah of Cairo, state religious sponsorship, professional sufis, and contemporary methods for investigating the past. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Last week featured a year-end-round up of books in American politics. This week I looked back to the past year on the podcast in other subfields. I start with an interview I enjoyed with Prerna Singh. Her book examines sub-nationalism in India. Prerna’s book is How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India and was published by Cambridge University Press. Next up is Marc Lynch who came on the podcast to talk about international relations in the Middle East. Here is an excerpt from our interview. Marc’s book is titled The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East and was published by Public Affairs in 2016. In a year with Republicans on the rise in Washington, I enjoyed Bob Lacey’s book of political theory. Bob’s book is Pragmatic Conservatism. Palgrave MacMillan published the book this year. And finally, Deepa Iyer came on the podcast to talk about social movements and South Asian American politics. Deepa’s book, with my favorite cover of the year, is We Too Sing America, published by The New Press. I hope you enjoyed the podcast in 2016 and come back in 2017 for more. Remember to rate the podcast on iTunes and share on social media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

For over 40 years, Jack M. Sasson has been studying and commenting on the cuneiform archives from Mari on the Euphrates River, especially those from the age of Hammurabi of Babylon. Among Mari’s wealth of documents, some of the most interesting are letters from and to kings, their advisers and functionaries, their wives and daughters, their scribes and messengers, and a variety of military personnel. The letters are revealing and often poignant. Sasson selects more than 700 letters as well as several excerpts from administrative documents, translating them and providing them with illuminating comments. In distilling a lifetime of study and interpretation, Sasson hopes to welcome readers into the life of a world entombed for four millennia, making the realities of ancient life tangible, giving it a human perspective that is at once instructive and entertaining. All that and more on today’s show as we speak with Jack Sasson about his recent publication, From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters (Eisenbrauns, 2015). Jack M. Sasson is Werthan Professor emeritus of Judaic and Biblical Studies at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn), and professor emeritus at UNC Chapel Hill. Sasson has held numerous posts, elected and nominated, at universities and at professional societies, among them President of the American Oriental Society (1998) and of the International Association for Assyriology (2005-2010). He has edited the “Bible and Ancient Near East” pages of the Journal of the American Oriental Society (1976-1984; 1996-2000) and has joined the editorial boards of several journals and serials. He was chief editor of Scribner’s Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, a 4-volume reference set that appeared in 1995 and that has received many awards since then. L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (MIT Press, 2015), Sharon Rotbard, Senior Lecturer in the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, examines the dual histories of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. He offers a nuanced and compelling deconstruction of the myth of the White City and the erasure of what he deems the Black City. This book is a compelling contribution, bringing critical urban studies into conversation with critical histories of Zionism in innovative and provocative ways. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Much of the existing literature on Mandatory Palestine adheres to a dual society model which assumes that the Palestinian Arab community and the Jewish Yishuv had separate economic, social, and cultural systems, and that interaction between them was quite limited. In their new book, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Brandeis UP, 2016), Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor focus on Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews in order to challenge this model. As power shifted away from the traditional politics of notables, Sephardic and Oriental Jews attempted to position themselves as the ideal mediators between Jewish and Arab societies. Oriental Neighbors examines these attempts in the political and cultural spheres, in mixed neighborhoods, and in the security arena, to highlight Middle Eastern Jewish-Palestine interaction as a site of both cooperation and conflict. In doing so, this book calls the dual society model into question, integrates the history of Palestine into that of the greater Middle East, and makes a valuable contribution to the literatures of Middle Eastern and Israeli history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

In Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford University Press, 2016) Devin Naar delves deep into the archives to produce this intimate and exciting portrait of Salonica’s Jewish community between the late 19th century until World War II, when the overwhelming majority of the population was deported to their deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Naar’s study takes readers into institutional hallways and homes of Jewish elites and ordinary citizens, revealing a community rapidly adjusting to changes in its relationship to political regimes claiming Salonika and its diverse residents as their own. Jewish Salonica offers readers an opportunity to consider Jewish communal agency and vibrancy in a period and place too often missing from modern Jewish historical narratives.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Victor Taki’s Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (I.B. Taurus, 2016) invites the reader to explore the captivating story of the relationship of the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the 19th century, and highlights the role the Oriental world played in the shaping of Russian national idea and Russia’s relationship with Europe. Dedicated to the study of previously less well known sources such as diplomatic correspondence, military memoirs, or former captives narratives, this book argues that, for Russia, the relationship with the Ottoman Empire served as a way to establish the image of self as a superior, more progressive westernized state. The book also talks about the transformation of the image of the Ottoman Empire in Russian cultural imagination over the course of the 19th century as well as Russian attitudes towards Christian co-religionists living outside Christian lands. Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empireis particularly interesting as a multidisciplinary attempt to re-consider the concept of Russian Orientalism, and interpret Orientalism outside the framework suggested by Edward Said. Olga Breininger is a PhD candidate in Slavic and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Her research interests include post-Soviet culture and geopolitics, with a special focus on Islam, nation-building, and energy politics. Olga is the author of the novel There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union and columnist at Literratura. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

What is the relationship between state power and self-destructive violence as a mode of political resistance? In her book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia University Press, 2016), Banu Bargu (Politics, The New School) analyzes the Turkish death fast movement and explores self-inflicted death as a political practice. Amid a global intensification of the “weaponization of life,” Bargu argues for conceptualizing this self-destructive use of the body as a complex political and existential act. In doing so, she theorizes a reconfiguration of sovereignty into biosovereignty and of resistance into necroresistance. To accomplish this, the book innovatively weaves together political and critical theory with ethnography in a way that enables the self-understanding and self-narration of those in and around the death fast movement to speak to canonical thinkers and concepts. John McMahon is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Beloit College. He is a former Fellow at the Center for Global Ethics and Politics at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY, which sponsors the podcast. In addition to NB Global Ethics and Politics, he also co-hosts the Always Already critical theory podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies