Middle Eastern history Books

Book SynopsisThe history of capitalism in Egypt has long been synonymous with cotton cultivation and dependent development. From this perspective, the British occupation of 1882 merely sealed the country's fate as a vast plantation for European textile mills. All but obscured in such accounts, however, is Egypt's emergence as a colonial laboratory for financial investment and experimentation. Egypt's Occupation tells for the first time the story of that financial expansion and the devastating crises that followed. Aaron Jakes offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles that raged over the occupation. He traces the complex ramifications and the contested legacy of colonial economism, the animating theory of British imperial rule that held Egyptians to be capable of only a recognition of their own bare economic interests. Even as British officials claimed that "economic development" and the multiplication of new financial institutions would be crucial to the political legitimacy of the occupation, Egypt's early nationalists elaborated their own critical accounts of boom and bust. As Jakes shows, these Egyptian thinkers offered a set of sophisticated and troubling meditations on the deeper contradictions of capitalism and the very meaning of freedom in a capitalist world.Trade Review"Egypt's Occupation offers a richly researched study of finance, racism, and popular politics and an insightful account of the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in the colonial and post-colonial world. With this book, Aaron Jakes makes an important intervention in our understanding of the history of capitalism." -- Andrew Zimmerman * George Washington University *"Aaron Jakes gives us a masterpiece of historical interpretation. Weaving together stories of global finance, imperial rule, the devastations of cash-crop agriculture, and anti-colonial politics, Egypt's Occupation is a rare synthesis: a finely crafted regional study that grasps the worldwide movements of capital and empire at every turn. With elegant prose and extraordinary narrative power, Jakes's insights on modernity's webs of power, capital, and life left me reeling. We will be debating and synthesizing these arguments for many years to come." -- Jason W. Moore * Binghamton University, author of Capitalism in the Web of Life *"An important and engaging rereading of the history of British colonialism in Egypt through the revealing lens of 'colonial economism.' The voices of classic figures, both British and Egyptian, are heard anew as Aaron Jakes guides us smoothly through a forest of thoughts and policies about matters economic and political in British-occupied Egypt." -- Judith E. Tucker * Georgetown University *"Aaron Jakes has written a definitive study of the British occupation of Egypt.[A] magisterial account." -- Robert L. Tignor * Middle East Journal *"Jakes's book is a much-welcomed contribution, reflecting a renewed interest in political economy analysis—and critical political economy as such—that reunites the study of economic theory and interests with that of colonial politics." -- Relli Schechter * Mediterranean Historical Review *"Jakes has produced a well-written, rewarding reinterpretation of Britain's occupation of Egypt from 1882 to WW I in 1914 that will engage serious readers... Egypt's Occupation skillfully ties together important economic and political themes and may become the definitive analysis of Britain in Egypt. Highly recommended." -- B. Harris Jr. * CHOICE *"Like the finest Egyptian long-staple cotton, Egypt's Occupation is an ideal union of strength of argumentation and beauty of prose. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of Egypt or the history of economic thought. It will be of great interest to intellectual historians, colonial historians, and scholars of Middle East Studies and political economy. It deserves to be read by anyone concerned with the inequities and contradictions of global capitalism." -- Johan Mathew * EH.net *"Jakes' powerful merging of economic and intellectual history advances the U.S.-dominated field of 'histories of capitalism' and provides a detailed account of the impact of colonialism on economic underdevelopment through an authoritative study of the British occupation of Egypt. The book adds important new dimensions to this crowded field of scholarship by relying on novel Egyptian archival and press sources to approach the subject through the eyes of the Egyptian population. Jakes argues that the British aimed to improve the fortunes of the ordinary peasant farmer in order to cement their control over Egypt. In a strategy he terms 'economism,' Jakes traces how the British promoted light taxation and increased access to irrigation for cotton cultivation while expressly avoiding efforts to reform the country in the European model, a choice they justified on culturalist grounds. In the end, these policies worsened the fortunes of the fellahin and enhanced the position of large landholders, leaving Egypt in far worse shape than when they originally took over." -- Committee for the Roger Owen Book Award * sponsored by the Middle East Studies Section *"In its theoretical and empirical exposition of the relationship between colonial governance and economism, this ambitious book's reach goes far beyond Middle East studies. It is about the modern global structures of domination and subordination wrought in and through the instantiation of capitalist relations across the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This history is a past, but it has not passed. Those structures—remade as they continuously have been over the last century—continue to shape our world, albeit now with China joining in the global movement toward "formless dismembering" and with economism wedded to culturalism in as potently poisonous a discourse as ever. In mining Egypt's past, Jakes's book contributes hugely to this critique of our present." -- Rebecca E. Karl * Arab Studies Journal *"Given its theoretical breadth and analytical specificity and sophistication, the book's compelling re-examination of the purpose and native reception to Britain's occupation promises to be applicable beyond Egypt and the field of Middle East studies and succeeds in being a fascinating read that deftly weaves together a wide range of subjects." -- Kylie Broderick * Maydan *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Colonial Economism chapter abstractThis chapter introduces two major arguments about the history of capitalism in Egypt that animate much of the narrative that follows. First, prior accounts of Egypt's "cotton economy" have focused on long-term continuities in a global division of labor between agriculture and industry; this approach has made the significance of financialization and other major transformations in the global dynamics of capital accumulation harder to discern. Second, methodological debates about economism have largely obscured the role economism has played as a form of social thought inside the history of capitalism itself. By reconsidering economism as a problem internal to liberal thought, the chapter then explains the occupation's discourse of "colonial economism" as a particular variant that treated the relationship between the economic and the political in terms of a developmental progression. Liberal political economy, on this understanding, could apply in a country like Egypt; liberal political theory could not. 1Infrastructures of Occupation chapter abstractThis chapter recounts the spectacular elaboration of rural infrastructures that nearly all contemporary observers identified as the primary focus of the British occupation in its first decade. According to the accounts of Egypt's recent history that informed this initial phase of British policy, bankruptcy was a predictable consequence of the "despotism" that had tainted every aspect of the old regime. For years, the British claimed, the khedivial dynasty and a privileged class of rural notables had monopolized the fabled resources of the Nile Valley and squandered that vast natural bounty to line their own pockets. By reconfiguring the state as a more perfect instrument for the increase of agricultural wealth, the occupation would unleash the extraordinary productive potential of Egypt's peasant majority. In targeting the smallholding peasantry as the chief beneficiaries of "British justice," this program of infrastructural development gave colonial economism a tangible form in the rural landscape. 2Egypt's Colonial Interior chapter abstractThis chapter identifies the British takeover of the Ministry of Interior as a defining moment in both the colonial reconfiguration of state institutions and the emergence of a coordinated opposition to British rule. The overhaul of the provincial administration that followed the appointment of a British adviser to the Interior in 1894 aimed to evacuate politics from village life. In place of customary village elections, the British imposed a hierarchical system of administrative appointments that would, they promised, make local officials into faithful bureaucratic agents of agrarian reform. But as they wandered the countryside, the network of spies working for Khedive Abbas Hilmi II instead documented what they saw as a deterioration of the mores upon which good government had once rested. Keenly sensitive to the occupation's emphasis on monetary gain, their ribald accounts of drunken shaykhs, lecherous judges, and absentee governors cohere as an early critique of colonial economism. 3Fields of Finance chapter abstractThis chapter charts the making of Egypt's fin-de-siècle financial boom. The earliest British efforts to attract foreign financial investment rested upon a controversial assertion that Egypt's peasants possessed a basic economic rationality that would allow them to employ mortgage loans as productive capital. By the late 1890s, credit experiments and tax reforms had together generated a mass of new, standardized data about the value of landed property and the extent of the country's mortgage debt. On that basis, a growing crowd of European investors began to calculate that Egypt could offer safe and substantial returns on their idle capital. The country's new financial sector mushroomed, and property values soared. Yet even as the British hailed "the Egyptian boom" as proof of the occupation's success, this wave of financial investment and speculation amplified the very rural inequalities colonial officials had promised repeatedly to alleviate. 4Gilded Speech chapter abstractThis chapter takes up the challenge that Egypt's financial boom posed to the country's fledgling nationalist movement. Confronted with a discourse of economic improvement that appeared to be succeeding on its own terms, commentators in the budding Arabic press vied to articulate an effective and compelling case against the occupation. For some, that predicament led toward an insistence that political legitimacy could not rest on a narrow calculus of quantifiable interests. For others, British claims to economic success themselves begged closer scrutiny. The chapter first examines financial reporting from the leading nationalist papers to explore the political-economic analyses that anchored their accounts of the boom's spatial, temporal, and social unevenness. The second half then reconsiders the central set piece of prewar Egyptian nationalism, the Dinshaway Incident of 1906, to show how the nationalist press first seized upon the incident for the rejoinder it furnished against colonial economism. 5The Many Agents of Azmah chapter abstractThis chapter opens with a detailed account of the financial crisis of 1907, which first manifested as a crash on the Egyptian stock market but soon led to a spate of peasant mortgage defaults. It then tracks the journey of the crisis concept from a term in financial reporting to a category of everyday discourse. Through a close reading of successive efforts in the Egyptian press to explain the crisis and to pin its causes on a particular set of malicious actors, the chapter locates in the protracted experience of the crisis a series of significant shifts in nationalist conceptions of the independence they demanded. New hardship gave the lie to the occupation's claims of material improvement. At the same time, the crisis revealed the extent to which even poor farmers had come to depend on flows of foreign capital, as much as water, to sustain their very existence. 6Unions of Mass Mobilization chapter abstractThe final years of the first decade of the twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented eruption of popular political action, from the establishment of new parties, associations, and unions to the proliferation of mass demonstrations. British officials in Cairo and London fretted about the specter of revolution, and nationalist organizations made new inroads not only among urban working classes but also among peasants in the countryside. Rather than a mechanistic response to economic hardship, this chapter explains, the upsurge in political contestation was the outcome of a complex and extraordinary conjuncture of events that included the departure of Lord Cromer and the startling victory of the Young Turks' constitutional revolution. In Egypt, the keywords of the Ottoman revolution—union and progress— assumed a particular resonance as terms for grappling with the deepening entanglements between political and economic domination and for asking what it might mean to live differently after British rule. 7Punjab on the Nile chapter abstractThis chapter follows British efforts after 1910 to reconfigure the agrarian development regime that had once brought the occupation global accolades. Underlying plans to revive foreign investment and combat the ecological ravages of cotton cultivation, however, was a marked retreat from the premise upon which colonial economism had rested. Where once peasants were assumed to possess an economic rationality that made them capitalist farmers-in-waiting, the occupation now justified coercive farming regulations that appropriated the work of smallholders and their children by denouncing them as an irrational menace to the land and the overall material prosperity of the country. In these same years, new business ventures aimed to profit from crisis conditions by lending to the country's wealthiest landowners at inflated interest rates. The outcome was both a deepening of rural inequalities and a widespread identification of foreign financial institutions as the most immediate threat to Egypt's national wealth. 8The Material Occupation chapter abstractThis chapter explores the form of economic nationalism that emerged in the years immediately prior to World War I. Surveying the prolonged hardship of the 1907 crisis, the leading figures of the nationalist movement lamented that even as its hegemonic pretensions rang hollow, colonial economism had remade Egyptian society in its own image. Subject to the volatilities of global commodity markets and financial flows, Egyptians appeared more and more as the self-interested economic individuals that British officials had once imagined them to be. Independence, in that sense, could no longer be treated in narrowly political terms as the mere substitution of Egyptian for British officials. Ending the occupation, on this understanding, would require as its preconditions a far more sweeping reconstitution of political-economic subjectivities and the creation of institutions to promote the growth of national capital. Conclusion: Economism Militarized chapter abstractThis chapter carries the story of British rule through the years of World War I and the 1919 revolution. As the British scrambled to maintain their wartime protectorate in Egypt after 1919, their account of the popular insurgency reprised the central claims of colonial economism in a minor key. They had once insisted that rising prosperity would translate into political consent. Now they interpreted the eruption of agrarian unrest as the other side of the same coin. The revolt, they alleged, was simply the effect of material hardship and mismanagement of the war economy. Both renderings of the argument denied that most Egyptians were capable of genuine political thought and action. While the British extended Egypt a qualified independence, they therefore constrained popular involvement in the country's newly constituted electoral institutions. This continuation of exclusionary arrangements forged during the occupation would haunt Egyptian politics for decades to come.

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Book SynopsisArgentina lies at the heart of the American hemisphere's history of global migration booms of the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century: by 1910, one of every three Argentine residents was an immigrant—twice the demographic impact that the United States experienced in the boom period. In this context, some one hundred and forty thousand Ottoman Syrians came to Argentina prior to World War I, and over the following decades Middle Eastern communities, institutions, and businesses dotted the landscape of Argentina from bustling Buenos Aires to Argentina's most remote frontiers. Argentina in the Global Middle East connects modern Latin American and Middle Eastern history through their shared links to global migration systems. By following the mobile lives of individuals with roots in the Levantine Middle East, Lily Pearl Balloffet sheds light on the intersections of ethnicity, migrant–homeland ties, and international relations. Ranging from the nineteenth century boom in transoceanic migration to twenty-first century dynamics of large-scale migration and displacement in the Arabic-speaking Eastern Mediterranean, this book considers key themes such as cultural production, philanthropy, anti-imperial activism, and financial networks over the course of several generations of this diasporic community. Balloffet's study situates this transregional history of Argentina and the Middle East within a larger story of South-South alliances, solidarities, and exchanges.Trade Review"A highly original and revealing exploration of the Syrian-Lebanese experience in Argentina, this multi-layered inquiry into the circulation and interplay of migrants, networks, and material culture at various spatial scales makes this book a model for migration and diaspora studies in general."—José C. Moya, Barnard College, Columbia University"Lily Balloffet's work is not only a timely intervention in the social history of Middle Eastern diaspora and Argentina, but also sets an ambitious new course for migration studies. This fascinating study reveals the complexity of transnational identity formation and urges us to rethink our understandings of human mobility and borders."—Jessica Stites Mor, University of British Columbia"The Global South has a deep and concrete history, and every reader will find clues to its origins in this book. Balloffet's is the best study I've seen of transport infrastructures, mobile people, and mobile ideas quite literally creating a new geopolitical space."—Donna Gabaccia, University of Toronto"Within the broader literature on migration and diaspora histories on the Middle East, Balloffet's study, Argentina in the Global Middle East, is the first of its kind. In charting the history of Middle Eastern migration to Argentina starting in the late 19th century, and the subsequent formation of a thriving diaspora community with enduring significance to Argentina, Latin America, and the Middle East to this day, Balloffet offers an excellent and creative example of the richness of writing transnational historical narratives."—Nadim Bawalsa, International Journal of Middle East Studies"Lily Pearl Balloffet's detailed and multifaceted historical account of Middle Eastern migration to Argentina is a welcome addition to the literature on global migration. ... [T]he book is a model for scholars interested in broadening the scope of Global South studies."—Emilio A. Parrado, Middle Ground Journal"Argentina in the Global Middle East is an insightful interdisciplinary study that models the reconceptualization of migrant histories along the lines of a movement through space that is 'continuous and connective'. More specifically, this book contributes to the shift beyond traditional frameworks focused on the one-way trajectory from sending country to receiving country, and instead centers on how the movement back and forth between those two points and within the receiving country are ongoing and constitutive of human experience."—Christina Civantos, Mashriq & MaharTable of ContentsIntroduction: Introduction: Transregional Migration and Mobility 1. Imagining Nation and Migration 2. From Mesopotamia to Patagonia 3. Art in Motion, Motion in Art 4. Moving Money, Mobilizing Networks 5. South-South Visions in the Cold War 6. Enduring Ties Epilogue: Somos Sur

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Book SynopsisAs the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street vendors, the music of wedding processions, and even the traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while "listening" to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets. Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also reveals a political dimension of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes used sound to distinguish themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound, layering historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.Trade Review"With considerable skill, Ziad Fahmy listens to listeners in a place and time wholly underexplored by historians of the senses. In the process, he offers us an important and trenchant interpretation of the sensory definition of modernity." -- Mark Smith * University of South Carolina *"Street Sounds brings the boisterous soundscape of modernizing Egypt to life. Ziad Fahmy has an ear for the noise of history in motion—street hawkers, calls to prayer, braying donkeys, wagon wheels, claxons and screeching tires, recorded song, and the ever-present buzz of electricity. He allows us to hear an Egypt we might otherwise discount." -- Joel Gordon * University of Arkansas *"In this fascinating and highly original study, Ziad Fahmy takes sound seriously as both a primary source and a qualitatively distinct phenomenon of modernity. Street Sounds apprehends sonic and scopic regimes as interrelated aspects of a larger sensorium, thereby pioneering a new and extraordinarily rich form of Middle Eastern cultural history." -- Walter Armbrust * University of Oxford *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Introduction: Historicizing Sounds and Soundscapes chapter abstractIn the Introduction I briefly examine the importance of the field of sound studies and the need for historians of the Middle East to engage with the sounds of the past. I discuss the importance of "listening" to the sources, in order to mine the archives for sonic events. Finally, Street Sounds proposes that by taking into account the changing sounds of the past, and by examining how people dealt with their daily sounded environment, we can be brought closer to a more embodied microlevel analysis of mundane street life. This is especially true in a period of rapid sonic transition, which exemplified the infrastructural and technological transformations during the first half of the twentieth century. 1Walking the City: Street Voices, Traffic, and the Mundane Sounds of Everyday Life chapter abstractInspired in part by Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life, in Chapter 1, I describe life in early- to mid-twentieth-century Cairo from a pedestrian's perspective. "Walking the City: Street Voices, Traffic, and the Mundane Sounds of Everyday Life" is devoted to the sounds of pedestrians and commuters as I analyze the ways that they used, occupied, and walked through those public spaces to commute, work, sell, and shop, and to entertain and be entertained. The first part of the chapter examines some of the social implications of embodied noises, from jingling anklets and bracelets to footsteps, as ordinary Cairenes were negotiating their way through a rapidly changing city. The second half of the chapter focuses on the calls of street hawkers, entertainers, and merchants who relied on their voices to advertise their goods and services. 2Silencing the Streets: Classism, Fear of the Crowd, and Regulating Sounds and Bodies chapter abstractChapter 2, "Silencing the Streets: Classism, Fear of the Crowd, and Regulating Sounds and Bodies," examines both the Egyptian government's attempts at regulating and silencing public spaces and the class implications of these policies. New anti-begging and anti-homelessness discourses invoked fears of an imminent breakdown of public order and even public health. In this chapter, I also document the interrelated and ever-present class bias in the Egyptian press, especially with regard to its coverage of the urban streets, street hawkers, and the itinerant poor. 3Roads and Tracks: Modern Traffic and the Sensory and Social Impact of Trams and Automobiles chapter abstractChapter 3, "Roads and Tracks: Modern Traffic and the Sensory and Social Impact of Trams and Automobiles," examines the modernization of Egypt's urban infrastructure, especially roads and tramways. The changing sounds and the social impact of growing urban traffic is carefully examined, with an emphasis on the introduction of tramways and motor vehicles. The chapter also documents and elaborates on the sonic impact of new urban spaces from large city squares to bustling transportation hubs. The problems of dramatically increased motor traffic and early attempts at regulating car horn noise are especially investigated. 4The Soundscapes of Modernity: Electricity, Lights and the Sounds of Nightlife chapter abstractChapter 4, "The Soundscapes of Modernity: Electricity, Lights and the Sounds of Nightlife," begins by examining the professional lighting of Egyptian cities by private gas utilities and the introduction of electricity and electric lighting. The sonic implication of electricity was of course enormous as it not only allowed the eventual proliferation of radios, loudspeakers, and tramways, but just as importantly brought the electric lights that forever changed the sounds of the Egyptian night. The growth of a regularly boisterous nightlife and the establishment of newer places of public leisure, from amusement parks to cabarets and movie theaters catering to diverse audiences, are closely examined. 5The Sounds of Weddings and Funerals: From Brass Bands to Wails and Ululations chapter abstractChapter 5 examines the evolving street sounds of traditional Egyptian weddings and funerals, which involved elaborate street processions and a variety of auditory and visual displays. It examines the changing roles of street music, singing, loud funerary grieving, and other important verbal and nonverbal vocalizations. The chapter concludes by examining some of the attacks directed against many of the embodied and auditory aspects of these traditional ceremonies by the government and by both secular and Islamic modernists. The one point all the "modernizing" camps agreed on was their belief in the general ignorance of the vast majority of the population and the urgent need for education, reform, and uplift. The chapter also addresses how many of these vulgarizing discourses played a role in the class distinction of Egypt's growing middle classes as they self-consciously attempted to define and separate themselves from the masses through sensory differentiation. 6Sounding Out State Power: Cannons, Music, and Loudspeakers chapter abstractIn Chapter 6, "Sounding Out State Power: Cannons, Music and Loudspeakers," I examine the Egyptian state's appropriation of large religious and secular celebrations and festivals. The chapter centers exclusively on the official sounds and spectacles performed and sponsored by the Egyptian state in an ongoing effort to legitimize its secular and religious authority in the eyes and ears of the masses. As I demonstrate in this chapter, drums, cannons, and twenty-one gun salutes are as important as uniforms, flags, and propaganda posters. I will particularly focus on the state's use of music, microphones, and radio speeches broadcast over loudspeakers during parades, festivals, and other large public gatherings. Conclusion: Conclusion: Class Distinction and Remembering Lost Sounds chapter abstractThe Conclusion briefly summaries some of the key arguments of the book and delves into the interrelationship between memory, class, nationalism, and the senses. It discusses the contradiction between an apparent nostalgia for street sounds of the past and a simultaneous vulgarization of contemporary street sounds.

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Book SynopsisCompleted in 1938, the Trans-Iranian Railway connected Tehran to Iran's two major bodies of water: the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. Iran's first national railway, it produced and disrupted various kinds of movement—voluntary and forced, intended and unintended, on different scales and in different directions—among Iranian diplomats, tribesmen, migrant laborers, technocrats, railway workers, tourists and pilgrims, as well as European imperial officials alike. Iran in Motion tells the hitherto unexplored stories of these individuals as they experienced new levels of mobility. Drawing on newspapers, industry publications, travelogues, and memoirs, as well as American, British, Danish, and Iranian archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi traces contested imaginations and practices of mobility from the conception of a trans-Iranian railway project during the nineteenth-century global transport revolution to its early years of operation on the eve of Iran's oil nationalization movement in the 1950s. Weaving together various individual experiences, this book considers how the infrastructural megaproject reoriented the flows of people and goods. In so doing, the railway project simultaneously brought the provinces closer to Tehran and pulled them away from it, thereby constantly reshaping local, national, and transnational experiences of space among mobile individuals.Trade Review"Amid the recent transnational turn in Middle East Studies, Iran in Motion is a subtle treatment of the unintended consequences of the Trans-Iranian Railway project. Mikiya Koyagi reveals the centrifugal forces unleashed by a project that was designed to bind a nation together."—Nile Green, University of California, Los Angeles"Iran in Motion exemplifies the gains of approaching modern Iran not through the lens of methodological statism but with a feel for state and non-state actors alike. The Trans-Iranian Railway, Mikiya Koyagi shows, made Iran both more fragmented and more homogeneous. A fascinating read."—Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva"With fresh insights drawn from a wealth of new archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi transports us through the various stations that dotted Iran's path to modernity. Much more than a narrative of the railway project, Iran in Motion reveals a deep understanding of the mobility networks that connected and divided Middle Eastern communities. A groundbreaking book."—Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, University of Pennsylvania"Iran in Motion is a welcome addition to our understanding of technological modernization in the Middle East. The book sits at the intersection of the modern history of Iran and mobility studies... Koyagi tactfully moves from macro to micro, and the other way around, to make sense of nuances within the big picture. Iran in Motion appeals to general readers who seek non-Eurocentric histories of technology, but also, to scholars who are interested in the local and transnational histories of infrastructure and mobility."—Samin Rashidbeigi, Technology and Culture"Iran in Motion is a model of social and labor history, well sourced in the ample Persian-language material...Highly recommended."—P. Clawson, CHOICE"[Koyagi's] work matter-of-factly integrates Iranian studies scholarship from Japanese academia, giving anglophone (and Persophone) students rare access to content of which we have been ignorant or neglectful. The result is a master narrative of social transformation in modern Iran composed of a mosaic of distinct episodes, each adding color and clarity to the bigger picture."—Camron Michael Amin, American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Building a Transimperial Infrastructure 2. The Road to Salvation 3. Nationalizing the Railway 4. Redirecting Mobilities 5. Death on the Persian Corridor 6. Workers of the Victory Bridge 7. Traveling Citizens Conclusion

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Book SynopsisWhen European powers carved political borders across the Middle East following World War I, a curious event in the international drug trade occurred: Palestine became the most important hashish waystation in the region and a thriving market for consumption. British and French colonial authorities utterly failed to control the illicit trade, raising questions about the legitimacy of their mandatory regimes. The creation of the Israeli state, too, had little effect to curb illicit trade. By the 1960s, drug trade had become a major point of contention in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and drug use widespread. Intoxicating Zion is the first book to tell the story of hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Trafficking, use, and regulation; race, gender, and class; colonialism and nation-building all weave together in Haggai Ram's social history of the drug from the 1920s to the aftermath of the 1967 War. The hashish trade encompassed smugglers, international gangs, residents, law enforcers, and political actors, and Ram traces these flows through the interconnected realms of cross-border politics, economics, and culture. Hashish use was and is a marker of belonging and difference, and its history offers readers a unique glimpse into how the modern Middle East was made.Trade Review"Offering a major contribution to the interdisciplinary 'New Drug History,' Haggai Ram masterfully illuminates the social and cultural fissures left by colonialism in the Levant as hashish trade transgressed new national borders. Like the drug it explores, Intoxicating Zion is both a pleasure and act of subversion." -- Paul Gootenberg * Stony Brook University, author of Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (2008) *"Vividly written and drawing on a wide array of sources, Intoxicating Zion is packed with colorful characters, from Palestinian coffeehouse and Israeli bohemian tokers, to traffickers, to corrupt politicians profiting from the trade, to the Palestinian and Israeli police who fought to contain it. A fascinating and revelatory tale." -- Ted R. Swedenburg * University of Arkansas *"[A] singular, original work of research." -- Yossi Melman * Haaretz *"Informative, though (pun intended) sobering, this book is suited for academic libraries." -- Hallie Cantor * Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1The Drug Trade in the Levant chapter abstractThis chapter explores the evolution of the Levant hashish trade between Lebanon in the north and Egypt in the south. This trade was a classic case of unintended consequences. It was brought about by local and international drug regulatory regimes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the 1925 League of Nations Opium Convention, which extended global controls over cannabis products. These controls denied Egypt access to its main hashish supply source in the Greek archipelago. As supplies from Greece declined, Egyptians turned to Lebanese-grown cannabis to compensate for the loss of Greek supply. This shift in supply source inevitably led to a shift in supply routes to Egypt, which from this point on had to pass through Palestine, whether by land, sea, or air. 2Smuggling in Mandatory Palestine chapter abstractThis chapter examines Mandatory Palestine's enmeshment in the Levant hashish trade. It reconstructs the "biographies" or "life histories" of the henceforth illicit commodities crossing the Levant through the Lebanon-Palestine-Egypt axis, demonstrating that political boundaries were of no concern for smugglers and traffickers. At the same time, it focuses on the subterfuges and ruses employed by hashish traffickers trespassing in Palestine to get their contraband across Egypt's borders, and on the failure of the Palestine Police Force to deal with these circumstances effectively. Combined, these perspectives underscore the perforated nature of the borders between the Mandate states, which eroded the legitimacy of the colonial state. 3The Underworld of Users chapter abstractContrary to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalist representations, hashish consumption in late-Ottoman Palestine was negligible. This state of affairs changed dramatically in the course of the mandatory period due to the territory's emergence as a critical link in the Levant hashish trade between Lebanon in the north and Egypt in the south. With some of the Egypt-bound supply left behind for the local market, the availability of hashish caused a significant rise in consumption, mainly by the country's urban working-class Arab population. By the 1930s, hashish smoking had spread throughout Palestine's towns and cities. Venues for consumption–makeshift hashish dens, coffeehouses, brothels–proliferated in these towns, and many a person could be seen wandering the streets intoxicated. The Palestine Police Force was unequipped to deal with this circumstance effectively. 4Jews, and Interwar Oriental Fantasies chapter abstractMandatory Palestine's Jews tended to steer well clear of hashish. By exploring the public discourse of Palestine's burgeoning Jewish community and drawing on interwar colonial knowledge produced by the League of Nations, I demonstrate that the underlying reason for this abstention was fear of accommodating an "alien" Oriental artifact. Not unlike sodomy and homosexuality in pre-1948 Zionist discourse, hashish came to symbolize for Jews a stereotypical marker of Oriental barbarism. Jews considered hashish taking a form of "backwardness" linked to the realities of living among Arabs in the Middle East. It appeared to expose Jewish bodies to the dangerous temptations of an alien space, culminating in Jewish overassimilation into the Levantine environment. 5Hashish Trafficking in Israel chapter abstractThis chapter follows the changing patterns of hashish smuggling and antihashish enforcement in the transition to the State of Israel up to 1967. The enduring Egyptian demand for hashish and the Lebanese capacity to satisfy it ensured the survival of the Levant hashish trade after 1948. With Israel's new borders superimposed on existing smuggling routes, and with the Israel Police suffering from several constraints, the trade was not radically disrupted, hashish traffickers (Jews and Arabs alike) coming up with new deceptions to get their contraband safely to Egypt. Also discussed is the alleged intensive involvement of the Israeli military in hashish trafficking operations from Lebanon to Egypt, from the late 1950s to as recently as the mid-1980s. The attributed objective of this long-standing and highly confidential enterprise was to immerse and immobilize the Egyptian population, and specifically the Egyptian military, with hashish. 6Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion ties together the various perspectives discussed in the book: the movement of hashish supplies across and beyond Palestine-Israel, the culture of hashish use by Jews and Arabs, drug-control efforts, and the discourses in which they were all embedded. It argues that, despite evolving circumstances and changing regulatory regimes, the hashish trade continued unabated, new outlets emerging continuously as the number of hashish users also continued to rise. At the same time, the conclusion explains why the 1967 Arab-Israeli War should be considered a watershed in the history of hashish in the region, and it offers a brief, albeit first-of-its-kind-review of hashish use in Israel from 1967 to the present, tracing the slow process of cannabis's normalization in Jewish Israeli society.

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Book SynopsisBetween Empire and Nation tells the story of the transformation of the Muslim community in modern Bulgaria during a period of imperial dissolution, conflicting national and imperial enterprises, and the emergence of new national and ethnic identities. In 1878, the Ottoman empire relinquished large territories in the Balkans, with about 600,000 Muslims remaining in the newly-established Bulgarian state. Milena B. Methodieva explores how these former Ottoman subjects, now under Bulgarian rule, navigated between empire and nation-state, and sought to claim a place in the larger modern world. Following the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877–1878, a movement for cultural reform and political mobilization gained momentum within Bulgaria's sizable Muslim population. From 1878 until the 1908 Young Turk revolution, this reform movement emerged as part of a struggle to redefine Muslim collective identity while engaging with broader intellectual and political trends of the time. Using a wide array of primary sources and drawing on both Ottoman and Eastern European historiographies, Methodieva approaches the question of Balkan Muslims' engagement with modernity through a transnational lens, arguing that the experience of this Muslim minority provides new insight into the nature of nationalism, citizenship, and state formation.Trade Review"Impressive and original, Between Empire and Nation shows how Muslims shaped the new Bulgarian order. Milena B. Methodieva reveals how Ottoman confessional communities became reconstituted as national minorities; how Ottoman social and political norms shaped societies that succeeded the empire; and how Bulgaria's Muslims maneuvered within a shifting international order to claim power—political, religious, and cultural—within their new polities. By connecting local Muslim movements to global networks, Methodieva redefines the people and places that shaped the early twentieth century."—Emily Greble, Vanderbilt University"Milena B. Methodieva's carefully researched account of the history of the Muslim minority of Bulgaria invites us to rethink our key scholarly concepts from nationalism, cosmopolitanism, citizenship and minority rights to religious freedom and Pan-Islamism. This important new book is set to redefine the entanglements of modern history of Europe and the Middle East."—Cemil Aydin, University of North Carolina"[Methodieva]'s meticulous research provides a valuable contribution to the study of Muslim communities in Bulgaria and the broader post-Ottoman context. The readable and well-structured work is a valuable resource for historians and others interested in Muslim reformism and minority studies."—Ninja Bumann, Austrian History YearbookTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Ottoman Imperial Context 2. Untangling from Empire 3. Doing Away With Empire 4. A Quiet Upheaval 5. Negotiating Modernity 6. Navigating Politics 7. Homeland, Nation, and Community Conclusion

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Book SynopsisHousehold anthologies of seventeenth-century Isfahan collected everyday texts and objects, from portraits, letters, and poems to marriage contracts and talismans. With these family collections, Kathryn Babayan tells a new history of the city at the transformative moment it became a cosmopolitan center of imperial rule. Bringing into view people's lives from a city with no extant state or civic archives, Babayan reimagines the archive of anthologies to recover how residents shaped their communities and crafted their urban, religious, and sexual selves. Babayan highlights eight residents—from king to widow, painter to religious scholar, poet to bureaucrat—who anthologized their city, writing their engagements with friends and family, divulging the many dimensions of the social, cultural, and religious spheres of life in Isfahan. Through them, we see the gestures, manners, and sensibilities of a shared culture that configured their relations and negotiated the lines between friendship and eroticism. These entangled acts of seeing and reading, desiring and writing converge to fashion the refined urban self through the sensual and the sexual—and give us a new and enticing view of the city of Isfahan.Trade Review"The City as Anthology is a landmark of early modern history. It is both a generative model for future scholars and among the best portals to understanding Iran for readers at any level. A testament to Kathryn Babayan's status as one of the most engaging historians of Iran working today."—Shahzad Bashir, Brown University"The City as Anthology is a surprising, nuanced, and deeply absorbing contribution to the history of sexuality and queer studies. Meticulously researched and elegantly argued, Kathryn Babayan's reading of early modern Isfahan by means of anthologies reveals a complex eroticism at the center of city life and its manuscript inscription."—Valerie Traub, University of Michigan"In The City as Anthology, Kathryn Babayan masterfully demonstrates the intertwining of personhood, love, and sociability in early modern Iran. This innovative study sheds important light on the lives of literate Isfahanis who, through epistles, poems, and sketches, imagined a world at the threshold of modernity."—Kishwar Rizvi, Yale UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Adab of Urbanity 1. Imperial Visions of Sovereignty 2. Collecting, Self-Fashioning, and Community 3. Disturbing the City 4. Cultivating and Disciplining Friendship Letters 5. Family Archives and Female Spaces of Intimacy Conclusion: The Erotics of Urbanity

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Book SynopsisPoetry has long dominated the cultural landscape of modern Iraq, simultaneously representing the literary pinnacle of high culture and giving voice to the popular discourses of mass culture. As the favored genre of culture expression for religious clerics, nationalist politicians, leftist dissidents, and avant-garde intellectuals, poetry critically shaped the social, political, and cultural debates that consumed the Iraqi public sphere in the twentieth century. The popularity of poetry in modern Iraq, however, made it a dangerous practice that carried serious political consequences and grave risks to dissident poets. The Dangers of Poetry is the first book to narrate the social history of poetry in the modern Middle East. Moving beyond the analysis of poems as literary and intellectual texts, Kevin M. Jones shows how poems functioned as social acts that critically shaped the cultural politics of revolutionary Iraq. He narrates the history of three generations of Iraqi poets who navigated the fraught relationship between culture and politics in pursuit of their own ambitions and agendas. Through this historical analysis of thousands of poems published in newspapers, recited in popular demonstrations, and disseminated in secret whispers, this book reveals the overlooked contribution of these poets to the spirit of rebellion in modern Iraq.Trade Review"Public life in twentieth-century Iraq was thoroughly colored by the contexts, conventions, and critiques of poetic performances. Kevin Jones offers for the first time in English a cogent account of the modern literary giants—such as Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri and Muhammad Salih Bahr al-'Ulum—whose compositions and performances electrified publics and created a unique language for a range of political movements and situations. The Dangers of Poetry is a valuable contribution to our understandings of the social and cultural history of modern Iraq." -- Elliott Colla * Georgetown University *"Through beautiful translations and insightful commentary, The Dangers of Poetry demonstrates how poetic works expressed the hopes, desires, and anxieties of colonized subjects, from tribal landscapes to prison cells. This perceptive book is a welcome addition to recent scholarship on cultures and poetics in Ottoman, Arab, and Persian societies, and will interest all those concerned with non-Western modernities and anticolonial resistance." -- Orit Bashkin * University of Chicago *

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Book SynopsisJustice in the Question of Palestine is often framed as a question of law. Yet none of the Israel-Palestinian conflict's most vexing challenges have been resolved by judicial intervention. Occupation law has failed to stem Israel's settlement enterprise. Laws of war have permitted killing and destruction during Israel's military offensives in the Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accord's two-state solution is now dead letter. Justice for Some offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures—from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza—Noura Erakat shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions. Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel's interests than the Palestinians'. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable. Law is politics, and its meaning and application depend on the political intervention of states and people alike. Within the law, change is possible. International law can serve the cause of freedom when it is mobilized in support of a political movement. Presenting the promise and risk of international law, Justice for Some calls for renewed action and attention to the Question of Palestine.Trade Review"Noura Erakat's incisive exploration of the role of law in shaping the development of Israel/Palestine reveals the consistent genuflection of international legal institutions to Israel's reliance on well-established colonial practices. She also forcefully argues that the skillful use of international law as a tool of struggle can be generative of hope and possibility—for Palestine and the world. Justice for Some is precisely the book we need at this time."—Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement"A radical rethinking of the role of law and legal advocacy in the struggle for Palestinian rights. Noura Erakat tells how a refugee problem became a national liberation movement, and the tragic story of how initiative and momentum were squandered after Oslo. Brilliant, inspiring, coldly realistic—and hopeful."—Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Emeritus, Harvard Law School"Without any doubt, Justice for Some is the best book on the law and politics of the Palestine/Israel struggle—sophisticated, learned, humane, and creative. Noura Erakat makes a profound contribution to our general understanding of the paradoxical role of law in the contemporary world."—Richard Falk, Former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, author of Palestine's Horizon: Toward a Just Peace"Anyone wondering how and why international law has failed so miserably to curb Israeli violations in Palestine and the deleterious effect this has had on the law itself should read this book. Noura Erakat communicates...with the skill of a lawyer and the passion of an activist. Justice for Some is both enriching and inspiring."—Raja Shehadeh, founder of Al-Haq, author of Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine"Through a brilliant and bracing analysis of the Palestine question and settler colonialism, Noura Erakat offers a compelling story of how the antinomies of structure and indeterminacy shaped international law and its possibilities. Justice for Some is a vital lens into movement lawyering on the international plane. At once tragic and inspiring, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in decolonization and the politics of international law."—Vasuki Nesiah, New York University, founding member of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)"Noura Erakat brings a sophisticated understanding of the role of international law over the last century in the Question of Palestine. This brilliant book will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand why the outcome, thus far, to the disposition of the Palestine problem has not been a just one."—Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017"Erakat's dissection of these legal and political histories is careful and captivating....This book asks that the Palestinian liberation struggle and Jewish-Israeli society each reckon with the impossibility of a two-state future, reimagining what their interests are—and what they could become. In rejecting the zero-sum formula's inevitability, Erakat sees, and demands, an alternative."—Amanda McCaffrey, Jewish Currents"[A] major scholarly contribution to the critical literature devoted to resolving the Israel/Palestine struggle in line with the dictates of justice....[I] urge a careful reading of Justice for Some by all those interested in the Palestinian struggle as well as those curious about the way law works for and against human wellbeing."—Richard Falk, Mondoweiss"[Erakat] meticulously reveals how Israel ignored international law, the laws of war, duties of an occupying power, and efforts brought through the United Nations to censure its actions....The book will interest those concerned with the law and ethics of war, international law, terrorism laws, and observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its treatment by international bodies. Highly recommended."—S. Zuhur, Choice"Erakat's detailed analysis paints a dismal reality, yet it is one that must be acknowledged and worked from. Her meticulous discussion on the inherent injustice in international law propels attention towards what so far remains overlooked and calls the reader to reflect upon action that veers away from what the international community keeps demanding of Palestinians."—Ramona Wadi, Middle East Monitor"That international law is not an effective starting point for achieving justice in Palestine is a vital insight for leftists developing a progressive foreign policy.Justice for Somemakes clear that winning Palestinian freedom will require confronting the geopolitical power structure that gives international law its meaning."—Gunar Olsen, Jacobin"Noura Erakat eloquently shows that, yes, the Israeli state project has been consolidated and expanded on a platform of might making right since 1948—but not only that. Israeli governments have also actively sought to craft legal justifications for the conquest and colonisation of territory, and to harness international law in their favour....[Erakat] has written a book that is a story of Palestine but is also a story of international law itself. Some of its most important insights are more universal than specific. They are major conceptual contributions with value well beyond the immediate case study."—John Reynolds, Dublin Review of Books"Erakat's critical perspective on international law and the focus on how Palestinians have used it to support their cause is a much-needed addition to the international law literature on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict....This is a book brimming with acute insights that deserves the widest possible readership."—Markus Gunneflo, Journal of Conflict and Security Law"Justice for Some challenges the not infrequent characterization of efforts to resolve the struggle over Palestine as a dichotomy between law/politics, principle/pragmatism or an imposed/negotiated solution. As [Erakat's] incisive analysis points out, these binaries, while not completely inaccurate, are incomplete in that they mask Israel's skilled use of the law to advance its interests while overlooking the political reasons for shortcomings in the Palestinian leadership's use of law as a form of resistance."—Terry Rempel, The Middle East Journal"In this elegantly written and carefully argued book, Erakat strikes a delicate balance that makes an important contribution to the scholarly literature on both Palestine and critical international law....[Her] clear-eyed analysis is not only an excellent account of the law and politics of the Palestinian struggle but also a remarkable and often inspiring assessment of the relationship between law and liberation."—Asla Bâli, Journal of Palestine StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Colonial Erasures and the Struggle for Self-Determination 2. Permanent Occupation 3. Pragmatic Revolutionaries 4. The Oslo Peace Process 5. From Occupation to Warfare 6. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and '60s, and how they survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy to ultimately become heroic emblems of state-sponsored Muslim-Jewish tolerance. The figures at the center of Heckman's narrative stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. Their stories unfolded in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War, while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. The Sultan's Communists contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East and provides a new history of twentieth-century Jewish Morocco.Trade Review"With meticulousness and fervor, Alma Rachel Heckman offers a unique historical entry to North Africa's Jewish communities. Written from the perspective of a marginal group within the Jewish community of Morocco, The Sultan's Communists provides a new and refreshing understanding of minority politics in colonial and post-colonial societies. A significant contribution to Jewish studies in the Middle East and North Africa."—Aomar Boum, University of California, Los Angeles"The Sultan's Communists tells the paradoxical and largely unknown story of a group of Moroccan Jewish militants who identified with Morocco's national liberation movement and remained in Morocco as patriotic citizens after independence when the majority of Jews were emigrating to Israel. Alma Rachel Heckman's riveting account of political activism, imprisonment, torture, exile, and cooptation reveals the possibilities and limitations of Jewish belonging in an Arab Muslim country."—Daniel J. Schroeter, University of Minnesota"In this innovative study about Moroccan communist Jews, Alma Rachel Heckman explores radical leftist movements, their struggles against fascism, and their battles for national liberation and social justice. The book masterfully reconstructs the nonsectarian vision these Jewish radicals developed, illustrating how communism served as a patriotic option for Moroccan Jews. A unique and compelling tribute to the activism and heroism of Moroccan radical Jews."—Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"Alma Rachel Heckman has written an original and important book concerning the role that radicalized Jews played in Morocco's struggle for independence from France and in newly independent Morocco."—Sheldon Kirschner, The Times of Israel"As a historian, Heckman does a very fine job in offering to the reader a detailed account of the delicate twists and turns of every actor. She manages to see both the structural similarities between them as well as the peculiar idiosyncrasies. Equally important, she contextualizes these marginal actors so to comprehend their actions and utterances in the broader picture. By doing so, she demonstrates how one can focus on a marginal—some would say neglected—group of people and understand grand-scale processes in Morocco."—André Levy, Journal of Church and State"Alma Rachel Heckman has written an original and important book concerning the role that radicalized Jews played in Morocco's struggle for independence from France and in newly independent Morocco."—Sheldon Kirshner, Sheldon Kirshner Journal"[The Sultan's Communists] is an outstanding study, which is based on intensive research of a wealth of information that the author gathered in archives, interviews, the contemporary press and scholarly books. [Heckman] brings all these data together and analyzes it brilliantly. Accordingly, the book is an essential contribution to the historiography of Moroccan Jewry."—Orit Ouaknine Yekutieli, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish HistoryTable of ContentsThe Sultan's Communists: An Introduction 1. Choices: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Interwar Morocco 2. Possibilities: World War II and Moroccan Jewish Belonging 3. Tactics: Jews and Moroccan Independence 4. Splinters: Disillusion and Jewish Political Life in the New Morocco 5. Co-optation: The Moroccan Cold War, Israel, and Human Rights Scarification: A Conclusion

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Book SynopsisA new history of Middle East oil and the deep roots of American violence in Iraq. Iraq has been the site of some of the United States' longest and most sustained military campaigns since the Vietnam War. Yet the origins of US involvement in the country remain deeply obscured—cloaked behind platitudes about advancing democracy or vague notions of American national interests. With this book, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt exposes the origins and deep history of US intervention in Iraq. The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy weaves together histories of Arab nationalists, US diplomats, and Western oil execs to tell the parallel stories of the Iraq Petroleum Company and the resilience of Iraqi society. Drawing on new evidence—the private records of the IPC, interviews with key figures in Arab oil politics, and recently declassified US government documents—Wolfe-Hunnicutt covers the arc of the twentieth century, from the pre-WWI origins of the IPC consortium and decline of British Empire, to the beginnings of covert US action in the region, and ultimately the nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry and perils of postcolonial politics. American policy makers of the Cold War era inherited the imperial anxieties of their British forebears and inflated concerns about access to and potential scarcity of oil, giving rise to a "paranoid style" in US foreign policy. Wolfe-Hunnicutt deconstructs these policy practices to reveal how they fueled decades of American interventions in the region and shines a light on those places that America's covert empire builders might prefer we not look.Trade Review"In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq on the basis of lies. Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt's The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy is a gripping backstory that reveals the historical truths of U.S.-Iraqi relations. American cold warriors inherited Britain's imperial role but failed to stop Iraqis from pursuing natural resource sovereignty."—Nathan J. Citino, Rice University, author of Envisioning the Arab Future"Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt's riveting account of US policy in 1960s Iraq, the rise of Saddam Hussein, and the end of the West's oil monopoly reads like a John Le Carré novel with footnotes, where the moral compromises and paranoia of the Cold War drive the action."—Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft"Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt illuminates the stories of visionary, radical Iraqi politicians who sought control over their country's oil and tested the limits of American power. The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy provokes readers to rethink what they think they know about Iraq's encounters with US imperialism."—Arbella Bet-Shlimon, University of Washington, author of City of Black Gold"Wolfe-Hunnicutt has crafted an engaging account that makes a substantive contribution to the evolving history of the global oil order. It stands as an impressive work on U.S.-Iraqi relations, a factor in international relations that is crucial to the broader history of the twentieth century and the evolution of American empire. And it provides a provocative thesis, suggesting a Cold War landscape in which paranoia drove policy, added to the upheavals that influenced the postwar petroleum order, and set the stage for the oil revolution of the 1970s and the transformation of the global political economy."—Gregory Brew, Passport"Producing a book that successfully knits three disparate strands of a story together is no mean feat. Yet that is exactly what Wolfe-Hunnicutt has done. This is a book well worth the time invested in reading it. It definitely deserves a very wide readership."—Mary Ann Heiss, Passport"Wolfe-Hunnicutt has written an important study that contributes greatly to our understanding of U.S.-Iraqi relations in a transitional era and illuminates the dynamics of natural resource nationalism and the consolidation of transnational oil elites in the post-imperial and Cold War years. It will certainly be on my graduate students' reading lists!"—W. Taylor Fain, Passport"Wolfe-Hunnicutt has produced an ambitious, wide-ranging, nuanced, yet hard-hitting critique of the U.S. approach to Arab and Iraqi nationalism; of the international oil industry; and of the authoritarian tendencies within Iraqi politics that, alas, surged to the fore during this three-cornered diplomatic encounter."—Salim Yaqub, Passport"The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy is an important work within the growing body of scholarship that provides equal attention to both sides of the relationship between the Arab world and the United States. The book will be required reading for those who seek to understand the history of Iraqi-US relations, as well as be of interest more broadly to those studying the political economy of oil, US empire, and decolonization."—David Wight, H-Diplo"Drawing information from primary sources including the IPC archives, US State Department records, and recollections of the Iraqi government officials central to the politics of the era, Wolfe-Hunnicutt weaves an engaging narrative as convincing as it is well researched."—Philippe Atallah, H-War"In this crisply written, nuanced, and unusual book, historian Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt reframes relations between the United States and Iraq primarily from 1960 to 1980 and offers a multifaceted account by combining histories that typically are not brought into conversation with each other... Indeed, the biggest contribution of this book is that it does not offer up a classic either/or story, i.e., either a US foreign policy narrative or an Iraqi political or cultural history, but rather deftly merges together various threads that often are treated as disparate. This is what makes this book novel and exciting."—Magnús T. Bernhardsson, The Middle East JournalTable of Contents1. The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Monarchy 2. The Free Officers' Revolution 3. The Emergence of OPEC 4. The Overthrow of Qasim 5. The Rise and Fall of the Ba'th 6. The Emergence of the Iraq National Oil Company 7. The Arab-Israeli June War 8. The Return of the Ba'th 9. The Nationalization of the IPC

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Book SynopsisThis book offers the first critical engagement with the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. Challenging conventional wisdom on the origins and contemporary dynamics of capitalism in the region, these cutting-edge essays demonstrate how critical political economy can illuminate both historical and contemporary dynamics of the region and contribute to wider political economy debates from the vantage point of the Middle East. Leading scholars, representing several disciplines, contribute both thematic and country-specific analyses. Their writings critically examine major issues in political economy—notably, the mutual constitution of states, markets, and classes; the co-constitution of class, race, gender, and other forms of identity; varying modes of capital accumulation and the legal, political, and cultural forms of their regulation; relations among local, national, and global forms of capital, class, and culture; technopolitics; the role of war in the constitution of states and classes; and practices and cultures of domination and resistance. Visit politicaleconomyproject.org for additional media and learning resources.Trade Review"A thorough and timely collection of essays by some of the top practitioners of Middle East political economy, this book lays bare the human insecurity that is at the root of much of the discontent in the region."—James Gelvin, University of California, Los Angeles"This new canonical text will open pathways for research and make the job of educators infinitely easier by reasserting the enduring value of political economy. For too long scholarship has been enchanted by the shibboleths of orientalism and modernization theory—now there is a better way. A tour de force synthesis."—Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, California State University, StanislausTable of ContentsIntroduction —Joel Beinin 1. Landed Property, Capital Accumulation, and Polymorphous Capitalism: Egypt —Kristen Alff 2. State, Market, and Class: Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia —Max Ajl, Bassam Haddad, and Zeinab Abul-Magd 3. Ten Propositions on Oil —Timothy Mitchell 4. Regional Militaries and the Global Military-Industrial Complex —Shana Marshall 5. Rethinking Class and State in the Gulf Cooperation Council —Adam Hanieh 6. Capitalism in Egypt, Not Egyptian Capitalism —Aaron Jakes and Ahmad Shokr 7. State, Oil, and War in the Formation of Iraq —Nida Alahmad 8. Colonial Capitalism and Imperial Myth in French North Africa —Muriam Haleh Davis 9. Lebanon Beyond Exceptionalism —Ziad M. Abu-Rish 10. The US-Israeli Alliance —Joel Beinin 11. Repercussions of Colonialism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories —Samia Al-Botmeh

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Book SynopsisWhen European powers carved political borders across the Middle East following World War I, a curious event in the international drug trade occurred: Palestine became the most important hashish waystation in the region and a thriving market for consumption. British and French colonial authorities utterly failed to control the illicit trade, raising questions about the legitimacy of their mandatory regimes. The creation of the Israeli state, too, had little effect to curb illicit trade. By the 1960s, drug trade had become a major point of contention in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and drug use widespread. Intoxicating Zion is the first book to tell the story of hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Trafficking, use, and regulation; race, gender, and class; colonialism and nation-building all weave together in Haggai Ram's social history of the drug from the 1920s to the aftermath of the 1967 War. The hashish trade encompassed smugglers, international gangs, residents, law enforcers, and political actors, and Ram traces these flows through the interconnected realms of cross-border politics, economics, and culture. Hashish use was and is a marker of belonging and difference, and its history offers readers a unique glimpse into how the modern Middle East was made.Trade Review"Offering a major contribution to the interdisciplinary 'New Drug History,' Haggai Ram masterfully illuminates the social and cultural fissures left by colonialism in the Levant as hashish trade transgressed new national borders. Like the drug it explores, Intoxicating Zion is both a pleasure and act of subversion." -- Paul Gootenberg * Stony Brook University, author of Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (2008) *"Vividly written and drawing on a wide array of sources, Intoxicating Zion is packed with colorful characters, from Palestinian coffeehouse and Israeli bohemian tokers, to traffickers, to corrupt politicians profiting from the trade, to the Palestinian and Israeli police who fought to contain it. A fascinating and revelatory tale." -- Ted R. Swedenburg * University of Arkansas *"[A] singular, original work of research." -- Yossi Melman * Haaretz *"Informative, though (pun intended) sobering, this book is suited for academic libraries." -- Hallie Cantor * Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1The Drug Trade in the Levant chapter abstractThis chapter explores the evolution of the Levant hashish trade between Lebanon in the north and Egypt in the south. This trade was a classic case of unintended consequences. It was brought about by local and international drug regulatory regimes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the 1925 League of Nations Opium Convention, which extended global controls over cannabis products. These controls denied Egypt access to its main hashish supply source in the Greek archipelago. As supplies from Greece declined, Egyptians turned to Lebanese-grown cannabis to compensate for the loss of Greek supply. This shift in supply source inevitably led to a shift in supply routes to Egypt, which from this point on had to pass through Palestine, whether by land, sea, or air. 2Smuggling in Mandatory Palestine chapter abstractThis chapter examines Mandatory Palestine's enmeshment in the Levant hashish trade. It reconstructs the "biographies" or "life histories" of the henceforth illicit commodities crossing the Levant through the Lebanon-Palestine-Egypt axis, demonstrating that political boundaries were of no concern for smugglers and traffickers. At the same time, it focuses on the subterfuges and ruses employed by hashish traffickers trespassing in Palestine to get their contraband across Egypt's borders, and on the failure of the Palestine Police Force to deal with these circumstances effectively. Combined, these perspectives underscore the perforated nature of the borders between the Mandate states, which eroded the legitimacy of the colonial state. 3The Underworld of Users chapter abstractContrary to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalist representations, hashish consumption in late-Ottoman Palestine was negligible. This state of affairs changed dramatically in the course of the mandatory period due to the territory's emergence as a critical link in the Levant hashish trade between Lebanon in the north and Egypt in the south. With some of the Egypt-bound supply left behind for the local market, the availability of hashish caused a significant rise in consumption, mainly by the country's urban working-class Arab population. By the 1930s, hashish smoking had spread throughout Palestine's towns and cities. Venues for consumption–makeshift hashish dens, coffeehouses, brothels–proliferated in these towns, and many a person could be seen wandering the streets intoxicated. The Palestine Police Force was unequipped to deal with this circumstance effectively. 4Jews, and Interwar Oriental Fantasies chapter abstractMandatory Palestine's Jews tended to steer well clear of hashish. By exploring the public discourse of Palestine's burgeoning Jewish community and drawing on interwar colonial knowledge produced by the League of Nations, I demonstrate that the underlying reason for this abstention was fear of accommodating an "alien" Oriental artifact. Not unlike sodomy and homosexuality in pre-1948 Zionist discourse, hashish came to symbolize for Jews a stereotypical marker of Oriental barbarism. Jews considered hashish taking a form of "backwardness" linked to the realities of living among Arabs in the Middle East. It appeared to expose Jewish bodies to the dangerous temptations of an alien space, culminating in Jewish overassimilation into the Levantine environment. 5Hashish Trafficking in Israel chapter abstractThis chapter follows the changing patterns of hashish smuggling and antihashish enforcement in the transition to the State of Israel up to 1967. The enduring Egyptian demand for hashish and the Lebanese capacity to satisfy it ensured the survival of the Levant hashish trade after 1948. With Israel's new borders superimposed on existing smuggling routes, and with the Israel Police suffering from several constraints, the trade was not radically disrupted, hashish traffickers (Jews and Arabs alike) coming up with new deceptions to get their contraband safely to Egypt. Also discussed is the alleged intensive involvement of the Israeli military in hashish trafficking operations from Lebanon to Egypt, from the late 1950s to as recently as the mid-1980s. The attributed objective of this long-standing and highly confidential enterprise was to immerse and immobilize the Egyptian population, and specifically the Egyptian military, with hashish. 6Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion ties together the various perspectives discussed in the book: the movement of hashish supplies across and beyond Palestine-Israel, the culture of hashish use by Jews and Arabs, drug-control efforts, and the discourses in which they were all embedded. It argues that, despite evolving circumstances and changing regulatory regimes, the hashish trade continued unabated, new outlets emerging continuously as the number of hashish users also continued to rise. At the same time, the conclusion explains why the 1967 Arab-Israeli War should be considered a watershed in the history of hashish in the region, and it offers a brief, albeit first-of-its-kind-review of hashish use in Israel from 1967 to the present, tracing the slow process of cannabis's normalization in Jewish Israeli society.

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Book SynopsisWith the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraqis abroad, hoping to return one day to a better Iraq, became uncertain exiles. Return to Ruin tells the human story of this exile in the context of decades of U.S. imperial interests in Iraq—from the U.S. backing of the 1963 Ba'th coup and support of Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, to the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 invasion and occupation. Zainab Saleh shares the experiences of Iraqis she met over fourteen years of fieldwork in Iraqi London—offering stories from an aging communist nostalgic for the streets she marched since childhood, a devout Shi'i dreaming of holy cities and family graves, and newly uprooted immigrants with fresh memories of loss, as well as her own. Focusing on debates among Iraqi exiles about what it means to be an Iraqi after years of displacement, Saleh weaves a narrative that draws attention to a once-dominant, vibrant Iraqi cultural landscape and social and political shifts among the diaspora after decades of authoritarianism, war, and occupation in Iraq. Through it all, this book illuminates how Iraqis continue to fashion a sense of belonging and imagine a future, built on the shards of these shattered memories.Trade Review"Writing exiled and diasporic Iraqis into the imperial history of the United States, Zainab Saleh exposes the long-term effects of American action on sovereignty and nation-building attempts in Iraq. Powerful and heartbreaking, Return to Ruin is a must-read for all who are interested in the fraught relationships between colonial durability and political action."—Deborah A. Thomas, University of Pennsylvania"In this outstanding book, we encounter the poignant life stories of Iraqis, stories too often reduced to statistics and stereotypes when they are visible at all. If Iraq is an open wound, as one of the interlocutors in this book says, these narratives sketch the wound's history and its visceral depth. Return to Ruin is an illuminating study of Iraqi diasporic subjectivities."—Sinan Antoon, author of The Book of Collateral Damage"[Saleh] effectively does justice to each story's nuances and contradictions while also using the stories as springboards to discussing Iraqi history, politicization, and diasporic experiences in depth... While many scholars of the Middle East know basic facts about Iraq, learning from Iraqis themselves is both illuminating and tragic. As an American, Return to Ruin was necessary reading, highlighting how my own imperial subjectivity is inextricably intertwined with theirs."—Neha Vora, International Journal of Middle East StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Empire and Subjectivity One: Emancipation and Revolution Two: Revisionist Politics Three: Religious Paths, Secular Pasts Four: Itineraries of Homecomings Five: Dispossession and Authenticity Conclusion: Enduring Legacies

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Book SynopsisThe Middle East plays a major role in the history of genetic science. Early in the twentieth century, technological breakthroughs in human genetics coincided with the birth of modern Middle Eastern nation-states, who proclaimed that the region's ancient history—as a cradle of civilizations and crossroads of humankind—was preserved in the bones and blood of their citizens. Using letters and publications from the 1920s to the present, Elise K. Burton follows the field expeditions and hospital surveys that scrutinized the bodies of tribal nomads and religious minorities. These studies, geneticists claim, not only detect the living descendants of biblical civilizations but also reveal the deeper past of human evolution. Genetic Crossroads is an unprecedented history of human genetics in the Middle East, from its roots in colonial anthropology and medicine to recent genome sequencing projects. It illuminates how scientists from Turkey to Yemen, Egypt to Iran, transformed genetic data into territorial claims and national origin myths. Burton shows why such nationalist appropriations of genetics are not local or temporary aberrations, but rather the enduring foundations of international scientific interest in Middle Eastern populations to this day.Trade Review"Genetic Crossroads is a shining example of how to write multi-scalar, multi-sited, and multi-lingual histories of science. Few scholars are able to balance the contradictory pulls of the global and the local; Elise Burton shows how they can be effectively braided together without sacrificing critique, complexity, or context."—Projit Bihari Mukharji, University of Pennsylvania"Deeply researched and powerfully written, Genetic Crossroads is one of the most original books I have read in a decade. Burton's unique history of Middle Eastern genetics is a fascinating study of genetic nationalism and the global hierarchies of such scientific inquiry, and a must-read for historians of all fields."—Eve M Troutt Powell, University of Pennsylvania"Drawing on sources in four Middle Eastern languages and from underused Western archives, Elise Burton explains why the Middle East was so pivotal for global genetics. Exemplifying how to integrate area studies and global history, Genetic Crossroads is a true tour de force."—Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva"Genetic Crossroads exposes how technical and scientific projects about human ethnicity underpinned nationalist ideologies across the twentieth century. Burton introduces a novel angle to established debates, showing how scientific researchers nourished racial mythologies, and how those mythologies drove the researchers themselves. She draws disparate literatures into a single intervention, extending isolated national stories through her integrative original research. The book is remarkable for its breadth of coverage in time, space, and language; every reader will find something that engages their area of curiosity or expertise."—Committee for the Nikki Keddie Book Award, sponsored by the Middle East Studies Association"Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity by Elise Burton, is a sweeping history of 'genetic nationalism' in the 20th century covering Iran, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and other Arab countries."—Usman Butt, Middle East Monitor"It is difficult to do justice to this exceptional endeavor. The advantages of the integrative thematic approach adopted by Burton are numerous. Most importantly, it allows the book to be both deeply contextual on some significant levels, and yet driven by a strong argument, by strong structuring hypotheses. Its implied periodization is derived from this combination of context and content. It makes room for sophisticated many-layered comparisons, for complex plot. The book affords both a generalized perspective and delves into great detail on specific issues."—Snait B. Gissis, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences"Genetic Crossroadsis a brilliant book that will surely become a milestone in the study of the global science of human genetics. In putting to use her dual expertise in Middle Eastern studies and the history of science, Burton provides an unprecedented perspective on themes, such as race and ancestry, that are re-dimensioned and relocated in their relevance to others."—Isis: A Journal of the History of Science SocietyTable of ContentsIntroduction: An Uneasy Inheritance 1. Drastic Measurements 2. Truth Serum 3. The Traffic in Blood 4. Sickling Sociologies 5. Genes Against Beans 6. Collection Agents 7. Domesticating Diversity Conclusion: Genomes Without Borders?

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Book SynopsisWithin the broad contours of Islamic traditions, Muslims are enjoined to fast during the month of Ramadan, they are invited to a disciplined practice of prayer, and they are offered the Quran as the divine revelation in the most beautiful verbal form. But what happens if Muslims choose not to fast, or give up prayer, or if the Quran's beauty seems inaccessible? When Muslims do not take up the path of piety, what happens to their relationships with more devout Muslims who are neighbors, friends, and kin? Between Muslims provides an ethnographic account of Iraqi Kurdish Muslims who turn away from devotional piety yet remain intimately engaged with Islamic traditions and with other Muslims. Andrew Bush offers a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, rejecting simple stereotypes about ethnic or sectarian identities. Integrating textual analysis of poetry, sermons, and Islamic history into accounts of everyday life in Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims illuminates the interplay of attraction and aversion to Islam among ordinary Muslims.Trade Review"A finely nuanced study about the impossibility of sequestering what is religious from what is not. In exemplary fashion, Andrew Bush shows us how the categories with which we work—religion, atheism, or secularism—are insufficient to understand the simultaneously sacred and profane world of everyday life."—Faisal Devji, Oxford University"Andrew Bush has written a remarkable book that makes highly original contributions to the anthropology of religion as well as Kurdish studies. There is no other book quite like this. Approaching Kurdish society through its poetics, he has grasped important insights into the ambiguities of everyday ethics underlying the social reality of contemporary Kurdistan."—Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University"Written with a scholar's rigor and a poet's grace, Between Muslims depicts textures of Islamic tradition rarely discussed in the literature. Fiercely independent in its approach to theorizing Muslim life, this deeply-layered monograph is a must-read for scholars in anthropology, religious studies, and beyond."—Noah Salomon, Carleton College"A refreshing departure from the focus on nationalist identity in studies of Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims is a beautifully written and original work on the dynamics of Islamic traditions. Andrew Bush subtly explores how 'fractures of difference' are lived in everyday intimate relationships."—Sara Pursley, New York University"[G]roundbreaking and innovative... Between Muslims holds up as an accessible and eloquent account of social dynamics in contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan."—Edith Szanto, Journal of the American Academy of Religion"A nuanced reflection on how Muslims inhabit lukewarm attitudes toward piety in contexts suffused with piety. [Between Muslims] is also an elegant exploration of Kurdish poetry and the ways it animates contemporary Kurds' self-expression."—Susan MacDougall, Ethnos"Between Muslims is a major contribution to scholarshipon the importance of multiple ways of being Islamic."—Jeremy F. Walton, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association"This beautifully written book explores a number of contradictions among those who have 'turned away from piety' and yet do not renounce Islam, but seek to know the 'beloved' in Iraqi Kurdistan. Through an insightful analysis of mystical poetry, Bush additionally demonstrates how the pious and those who have turned away from piety negotiate desire, understand apostasy, and relate to each other across different ranges of piety through patience and acts of 'holding back.'"—The Association of Middle East Anthropology Book Award Committee"The unique positionality of his subjects allows Bush to offer a valuable modus vivendi to the great 'text vs. lived experience' debate in the academy: his approach necessarily requires an engagement with text, but not as objects which naturally unfold according to their own purposes (as is often the case in our deliberations about Islam) but rather as objects continuously transformed in the process of being made meaningful to an individual's experience of the world, which itself cannot be extricated from its relationship with others. This refreshinglyunmodern emphasis on relationality (instead of isolated self-determining subjects) permeates the entirety of his study, focused as it is on the life-worlds that emergebetweenMuslims."—Rushain Abbasi, MarginaliaTable of ContentsIntroduction: Fieldwork in Kurdistan: Islamic Traditions, Ordinary Relationships, and a Paradox 1. Quran and Zoroaster: Attraction and Authority in Muslim Ethics 2. Christians, Kafirs, and Nationalists in Kurdish Poetry 3. Mystical Desire, Ordinary Desire: Love, Friendship, and Kinship 4. Separating Faith and Kufir in an Islamic Society 5. Pleasure Beyond Piety: Religious Difference in Domestic Space Epilogue: "Dear Reader!"

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Book SynopsisIn 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs came from all over the world to join those already on the ground to fight in the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab Liberation Army. With this book, the young men and women who made up these armies come to life through their letters home, writing about everything from daily life to nationalism, colonialism, race, and the character of their enemies. Shay Hazkani offers a new history of the 1948 War through these letters, focusing on the people caught up in the conflict and its transnational reverberations. Dear Palestine also examines how the architects of the conflict worked to influence and indoctrinate key ideologies in these ordinary soldiers, by examining battle orders, pamphlets, army magazines, and radio broadcasts. Through two narratives—the official and unofficial, the propaganda and the personal letters—Dear Palestine reveals the fissures between sanctioned nationalism and individual identity. This book reminds us that everyday people's fear, bravery, arrogance, cruelty, lies, and exaggerations are as important in history as the preoccupations of the elites.Trade Review"Shay Hazkani opens an entirely new vista on the Nakba. With methodological bravery and archival rigor, he carefully unfolds the stories and words of everyday soldiers and civilians, to reveal the divisions and fractures, the uncomfortable truths, and the surreal alliances that began to consolidate the 'Arab' and the 'Jew' as mutually exclusive categories."—Sherene Seikaly, University of California, Santa Barbara"Reading a rich collection of letters, this seminal work examines ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. Shay Hazkani's microhistories explore how war dehumanizes some people and humanizes others; how individuals succumb to, but also resist, propaganda efforts; and how perpetrators and victims interpret, and mediate to others, the traumatic and violent events they lived through."—Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"Shay Hazkani makes a brilliant contribution to the literature on the 1948 Palestine War, documenting the views of the Arab and Jewish soldiers who fought in the war through letters seized by the Israeli censors. Impeccably balanced and engagingly written, Dear Palestine is a remarkable book that deserves the very widest readership."—Eugene Rogan, University of Oxford"Hazkani's book does not completely overturn our view of the past, but it does add nuance, proving that it was possible, even in the early years of the state, for Israelis to view their Arab and Palestinian neighbors less hatefully than the Israeli leadership at the time had wanted. This enmity and nationalism were produced with much effort, as a result of systematic indoctrination. And if such animus was not always present in the past, it may not have to remain a part of our future."—Tom Pessah, +972 Magazine"Dear Palestine is not just another book about the 1948 war. Even though it continues the growing tendency of historians to shift the gaze toward microhistory, it does more than that. It takes us on a fascinating journey to the space between efforts of official indoctrination and the unpredictable ways in which they are processed."—Tamir Sorek, Critical Inquiry"Hazkani's claims for a new narrative do not rely on reconstructions of individual experiences deviating from the binary logic of nationalist sentiments alone. By juxtaposing the opposing narratives side by side, he argues for a more comprehensive assessment of how Zionist identity was constituted and challenged."—Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud, The Tel Aviv Review of Books"Hazkani has followed an intuitive but all too infrequently traveled path in attempting a shared history of Jews and Arabs in Palestine in 1948. He attempts a fusion of historical horizons by joining a careful analysis of wartime propaganda by both sides with the honest accounts of soldiers on the ground. This interplay of top-down and bottom-up sources yields striking dissonance, which a skilled historian such as Hazkani uses to great advantage."—David N. Myers, Los Angeles Review of Books"Dear Palestine marks a paradigm shift in the study of the relations between Jews and Arabs... It is a story that quietly defies monolithic and binary perceptions passed down by nationalist histories. In their stead, Hazkani offers a relational account that listens to a more nuanced human network which steers this commendable and unpretentiously radical book."—the Korenblat Book Award selection committee"I strongly recommend Shay Hazkani's book. It is masterfully written and tells stories not told before, highlighting that while war is all-too-often portrayed in a way in which the warring parties come across as monolithic entities united in a common struggle, the truth is that societies undergoing conflict are just as complex and composed of individuals as societies in peace time."—Jørgen Jensehaugen, Journal of Military History"Dear Palestine is entirely generative and contributes greatly to non-mythologized, rigorous, and empirical scholarship on Palestine in 1948. At the center of this work is not so much an empirical recitation of what happened and when—this is largely known—but rather a historicization of the sociopolitical process of meaning making... It tells the story of how imperialism, colonialism, and the struggle over nationalism foreclosed the futures of certain groups of people, those who faced exile, dispossession, and marginalization. Most of all, it reminds us that the possibility of liberation for Jews and Palestinians is constitutively intertwined."—Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Journal of Palestine Studies"This book is a groundbreaking contribution to Palestine–Israel studies for several reasons; above all, it is the first comprehensive social history of the 1948 war. Hazkani's analysis of recruits' letters highlights their candid observations, opinions, and feelings about the tumultuous war, filling a significant gap in scholarship."—Elizabeth Brownson, Journal of History"Shay Hazkani's Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War is an important contribution to the rich historical literature on the 1948 War, combining the use of new archival sources with a fresh observation on events in Palestine during the year of Israel's establishment and the Nakba."—Adel Manna', International Journal of Middle East Studies"Shay Hazkani's Dear Palestine is an innovative, compellingly written, and deeply researched contribution to the history of the 1948 Palestine war, the establishment of Israel, and the effacement of Palestine.... Scholars and researchers should pay attention to the book not only for what it reveals about Palestine and the emergence of Israel but also for what we learn from it about the politics of Arab states at a critical period in the process of decolonization."—Weldon C. Matthews, American Historical Review"Dear Palestine is the product of painstaking and innovative detective work. Hazkani makes excellent use of ALA soldiers' writings and IDF censors' reports squirreled away in the IDF archive. The book is engagingly written. ... [Dear Palestine] deserves praise for its originality, comparative scope, and significance. It is essential reading for any student of the 1948 War and the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."—Derek Penslar, Journal of Israeli History"Many books have been written about the war, but few have examined the process by which regular people were convinced to fight or the interplay between official ideology and the perspectives of soldiers on the ground.... Dear Palestine will be useful to anyone interested in the interplay of war and identity formation."—Robert DiPrizio, H-War

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Book SynopsisIn the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots studies this phenomenon from the vantage point of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Here, cameras have proliferated as political tools in the hands of a broad range of actors and institutions, including Palestinian activists, Israeli soldiers, Jewish settlers, and human rights workers. All trained their lens on Israeli state violence, propelled by a shared dream: that advances in digital photography—closer, sharper, faster—would advance their respective political agendas. Most would be let down. Drawing on ethnographic work, Rebecca L. Stein chronicles Palestinian video-activists seeking justice, Israeli soldiers laboring to perfect the military's image, and Zionist conspiracy theorists accusing Palestinians of "playing dead." Writing against techno-optimism, Stein investigates what camera dreams and disillusionment across these political divides reveal about the Israeli and Palestinian colonial present, and the shifting terms of power and struggle in the smartphone age.Trade Review"Screen Shots teaches as it describes, instructs as it unsettles what we know about the expanse and limits of digital photography in the civilian landscapes of perpetual war, of photographic encounters with Israel state violence in the occupied Palestinian territories over the last two decades. Avoiding a predictable rehearsal of digital photography as a versatile and effective weapon of war, Screen Shots strikes precisely and pointedly elsewhere: at the political nerve of visualized failures, at the unnerving state of faulty images and unsteady cameras not properly loaded, apertures not set for the scale of violence confronted, witnessing that misses its mark. Screen Shots makes evident what aperture settings can't tell: how the images captured at once buttress and undermine claims of brutalizing settlers, humanitarian NGOs, and Palestinian activists—depending on what sits resolutely askew or adjacent to the photographer's lens. In this war of images, none of those tasked with recording can wholly control how violence will be applauded or vilified, how perpetrators will be cast, and how those images and their self-proclaimed heroes will be politically framed. In the end, Rebecca L. Stein's lucid account both acknowledges and defies the grotesque features of this infamously ugly military occupation."—Ann Stoler, The New School for Social Research, author of Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times"In Palestine perhaps more than anywhere else, political struggle has hinged in recent years on video technology's promise of a perfect witnessing: the fantasy that oppression can be recorded with such absolute transparency that it will compel viewers to act. Writing with great clarity and unflinching rigor, Rebecca L. Stein focuses on the inevitable failures of this dream and the emergence of the visual as yet another painfully contested battlefield. Screen Shots is an elegant, sobering work, and should be required reading for anyone interested in cutting through the colonialist myths that obscure the brutal realities of the occupation—and that still set the terms of its media representation."—Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine"Since its invention, photography has changed the way people see, and represent, themselves and others. Digital photography in the early 21st century has had an even more profound impact not only on how a conflict, like the one in Palestine, is seen and presented, but also on the political discourse and its visual articulation by the participants themselves. Rebecca L. Stein's Screen Shots is the first book to examine how digital photography impacted everyday practice under military occupation. It constitutes a very important addition to the fields of Palestine, postcolonial, and visual studies. The book functions both as a chronicle of photographed social life, as well as the political function of the photography. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Palestine."—Issam Nassar, Illinois State University, author of Photographing Jerusalem"Videos of human rights violations are a new form of testimony that require deep attentiveness to the multiple ways that politics are inscribed in images. In Screen Shots, Rebecca L. Stein's literary sensitivity to technology, media, and law inhabits the multi-dimensional space opened up by these images."—Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Forensic Architecture"Stein argues that the expected promise of photographic and film images failed to fullydeliver convincing evidence to a global public in spite of the growth of technology and its sophistication in the contemporary social media age. This book is approachable and interesting, replete with case studies and stories from the past two decades. Recommended."—P. Rowe, CHOICE"In Screen Shots, Stein cogently depicts the realities of 'the Israeli and Palestinian colonial present in the digital age', expressing an interest in what such a study could offer as a methodological and incisive gateway toward 'other political futures'... [T]he book gives critical foresight into the shifting media ecologies of the occupation and describes in attentive detail the Israeli military, Israeli NGOs, and the Israeli public's investment in digital medias, documentary forms, and depictions and denials of state violence against Palestinian bodies, lands, and infrastructures."—Sherena Razek, Journal of Palestine Studies"Screen Shots has no doubt earned its place in the scholarly cannon on digital media, photography and camera dreams in Israel and Palestine and beyond. The strength of the book is located in its use of the analytic of failure: what can repeatedly dashed hopes of cameras teach us about the colonial present in Israel and Palestine? One can only hope, as Stein gestures toward in her coda, that camera failures will begin undoing the power of the Israeli settler-colonial regime."—Liat Berdugo, Israel Studies Review"Screen Shots enters a literature that at its core examines new media and photographic or journalistic realism in Palestine and Israel. As evidenced by the book's dense footnotes, Stein's range is (as usual) remarkable: she is equally well-versed in theories of photography and technological change as in the study and history of Palestine and Israel. Here she provides an excellent framework for examining a range of questions, from the current technologies of military surveillance to digital witnessing to the fantasies associated with digital media. We are fortunate to have this seminal work as a guide as we try to make other political futures become visible."—Alejandro I. Paz, International Journal of Middle East StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: State Violence and the Dream of the Perfect Camera 1. Sniper Portraiture: Personal Technologies in Military Theaters 2. Cameras Under Curfew: Occupied Media Infrastructures 3. Settler Scripts: Conspiracy Cameras and Fake News 4. The Eyes of Human Rights: Curating Military Occupation 5. The Military's Lament: Combat Cameras and State Fantasies Coda: Broken Bones, Broken Dreams: The Politics of Failure

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Book SynopsisThe US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings of 2010–11 left indelible imprints on the Middle East. Yet, these events have not reshaped the region as pundits once predicted. With this volume, top experts on the region offer wide-ranging considerations of the characteristics, continuities, and discontinuities of the contemporary Middle East, addressing topics from international politics to political Islam, hip hop to human security. This book engages six themes to understand the contemporary Middle East—the spread of sectarianism, abandonment of principles of state sovereignty, the lack of a regional hegemonic power, increased Saudi-Iranian competition, decreased regional attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and fallout from the Arab uprisings—as well as offers individual country studies. With analysis from historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, and up-to-date discussions of the Syrian Civil War, impacts of the Trump presidency, and the 2020 uprisings in Lebanon, Algeria, and Sudan, this book will be an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand the current state of the region.Trade Review"The essays in The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval, edited by distinguished historian James Gelvin, are an indispensable guide to making sense of the Middle East's current disorder and future direction. A must-read for academics, policy makers, and informed general audiences."—Frederic Wehrey, Senior Fellow, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"A first-rate collection of analyses from leading scholars across a range of disciplines, The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Middle East has and has not changed since the uprisings of 2011."—Jillian Schwedler, Hunter College, CUNY"In the past two decades, the Middle East has faced an external invasion, civil wars and populist uprisings. Thus, it is fitting that a collection of Middle East scholars have come together to assess the future of this turbulent region."—Ray Takeyh, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy"The Contemporary Middle East is a much-needed interdisciplinary study about the state of the Middle East in the early decades of the twenty-first century."—Arab Studies QuarterlyTable of Contents1. Is There a New Middle East? What Has Changed, and What Hasn't? —Joel Beinin 2. What Future for the Private Sector in the New Middle East? —Ishac Diwan 3. Education and Human Security: Centering the Politics of Human Dignity —Laurie A. Brand 4. Myths of Middle-Class Political Behavior in the Islamic Republic —Kevan Harris 5. Poets of the Revolutions: Authoritarians, Uprisings, and Rappers in North Africa, 1990s–Present —Aomar Boum 6. Islamism at a Crossroads? The Diffusion of Political Islam in the Arab World —Peter Mandaville 7. Islamists before and after 2011: Assuming, Overlooking, or Overthrowing the Administrative State? —Nathan J. Brown 8. Homeland (Dis-)Engagement Processes among the New Syrian Diaspora —Lindsay A. Gifford 9. Saudi Arabia: How Much Change? —F. Gregory Gause III 10. Erdoğan, Turkish Foreign Policy, and the Middle East —Henri J. Barkey 11. The Syrian Civil War and the New Middle East —James L. Gelvin 12. State Building, Sectarianization, and Neo-Patrimonialism in Iraq —Harith Hasan 13. The Post-Uprising Transformation of International Relations in the Middle East and North Africa —Fred H. Lawson 14. Proxy War and the New Structure of Middle East Regional Politics —Marc Lynch 16. Afterword: The Fourth Dream —Moncef Marzouki

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Book SynopsisTaha Hussein (1889–1973) is one of Egypt's most iconic figures. A graduate of al-Azhar, Egypt's oldest university, a civil servant and public intellectual, and ultimately Egyptian Minister of Public Instruction, Hussein was central to key social and political developments in Egypt during the parliamentary period between 1922 and 1952. Influential in the introduction of a new secular university and a burgeoning press in Egypt—and prominent in public debates over nationalism and the roles of religion, women, and education in making a modern independent nation—Hussein remains a subject of continued admiration and controversy to this day. The Last Nahdawi offers the first biography of Hussein in which his intellectual outlook and public career are taken equally seriously. Examining Hussein's actions against the backdrop of his complex relationship with the Egyptian state, the religious establishment, and the French government, Hussam R. Ahmed reveals modern Egypt's cultural influence in the Arab and Islamic world within the various structural changes and political processes of the parliamentary period. Ahmed offers both a history of modern state formation, revealing how the Egyptian state came to hold such a strong grip over culture and education—and a compelling examination of the life of the country's most renowned intellectual.Trade Review"The Last Nahdawi is a breakthrough biography of one of the most important figures of modern Arab thought. Hussam R. Ahmed brings to light much new material about Taha Hussein's illustrious career and impressive oeuvre in a masterful, original, and important critical assessment of this towering intellectual."—Khaled Fahmy, University of Cambridge"In The Last Nahdawi Hussam R. Ahmed provides a lucid, insightful, and nuanced reassessment of Taha Hussein's key role in twentieth-century Egypt's cultural and political life. Anyone interested in modern Egypt will find this book of value."—Zachary Lockman, New York University"As we wonder about the role of the humanities today, The Last Nahdawi suggests that some solutions to our present predicament might be located in interwar and postcolonial Egypt. This brilliant work not only richly contextualizes a mesmerizing public intellectual, but pays homage to his humanity and his democratic vision of education and language."—Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"The institutional approach adopted by Ahmed in The Last Nahdawi... adds much-needed nuance to Hussein's public positions by revealing the bureaucratic constraints and opportunities within which he operated. The book not only reveals the hidden side of Hussein's otherwise well-documented story but also elucidates the birth of Egypt's key cultural institutions from the interwar period, which has merited little attention by researchers. It is against this backdrop that Ahmed's book will hopefully spark new conversations in the field of Arab intellectual history on the ways in which cultural bureaucracies participate in thought production."—Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė, International Journal of Middle East Studies

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Book SynopsisThe Maghrebi Quarter of Jerusalem long sat in the shadow of the Western Wall, the last vestige of the Second Temple. Three days after the June '67 War, Israeli forces razed the Quarter, its narrow alleys widened and homes removed, to create the Western Wall Plaza. With this book, Vincent Lemire offers the first history of the Maghrebi Quarter—spanning 800 years from its founding by Saladin in 1187 to house North African Muslim pilgrims through to its destruction. To bring this vanished district back to life, Lemire gathers its now-scattered documentation in the archives of Muslim pious foundations in Jerusalem and the Red Cross in Geneva, in Ottoman archives in Istanbul and Israeli state archives. He engages testimonies of former residents and looks to recent archaeological digs that have resurfaced household objects buried during the destruction. Today, the Western Wall Plaza extends over the former Maghrebi Quarter. It is one of the most identifiable places in the world—yet one of the most occluded in history. In the Shadow of the Wall offers a new point of entry to understand this consequential place.Trade Review"From the stones of the Western Wall Plaza, Vincent Lemire re-establishes the long-forgotten Maghrebi Quarter of the Old City to its rightful place in history. A fascinating and timely narrative."—Roberto Mazza, author of Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British"Engaging, sensitive and beautifully written, In the Shadow of the Wall brings to life a silenced and forgotten history, shedding light on the connection between historical knowledge and acknowledgment. Vincent Lemire shows us that the history of the Maghrebi Quarter is not only local, but global."—Abigail Jacobson, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule"In the Shadow of the Wall is a superb work of history that brings back to life the ancient Maghrebi Quarter. Vincent Lemire illuminates the history, the people, the buildings, the mosques, and the shrines of a storied Jerusalem neighborhood."—Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017"[Lemire] provides a painstakingly recorded economic history of the quarter, including extensive renovation and restoration projects in the early 19th century and geopolitical events during the interwar period that gradually fractured the financial, institutional and political bases of the once lucrative waqf."—Maryvelma Smith O'Neill, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

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Book SynopsisIn 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs came from all over the world to join those already on the ground to fight in the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab Liberation Army. With this book, the young men and women who made up these armies come to life through their letters home, writing about everything from daily life to nationalism, colonialism, race, and the character of their enemies. Shay Hazkani offers a new history of the 1948 War through these letters, focusing on the people caught up in the conflict and its transnational reverberations. Dear Palestine also examines how the architects of the conflict worked to influence and indoctrinate key ideologies in these ordinary soldiers, by examining battle orders, pamphlets, army magazines, and radio broadcasts. Through two narratives—the official and unofficial, the propaganda and the personal letters—Dear Palestine reveals the fissures between sanctioned nationalism and individual identity. This book reminds us that everyday people's fear, bravery, arrogance, cruelty, lies, and exaggerations are as important in history as the preoccupations of the elites.Trade Review"Shay Hazkani opens an entirely new vista on the Nakba. With methodological bravery and archival rigor, he carefully unfolds the stories and words of everyday soldiers and civilians, to reveal the divisions and fractures, the uncomfortable truths, and the surreal alliances that began to consolidate the 'Arab' and the 'Jew' as mutually exclusive categories."—Sherene Seikaly, University of California, Santa Barbara"Reading a rich collection of letters, this seminal work examines ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. Shay Hazkani's microhistories explore how war dehumanizes some people and humanizes others; how individuals succumb to, but also resist, propaganda efforts; and how perpetrators and victims interpret, and mediate to others, the traumatic and violent events they lived through."—Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"Shay Hazkani makes a brilliant contribution to the literature on the 1948 Palestine War, documenting the views of the Arab and Jewish soldiers who fought in the war through letters seized by the Israeli censors. Impeccably balanced and engagingly written, Dear Palestine is a remarkable book that deserves the very widest readership."—Eugene Rogan, University of Oxford"Hazkani's book does not completely overturn our view of the past, but it does add nuance, proving that it was possible, even in the early years of the state, for Israelis to view their Arab and Palestinian neighbors less hatefully than the Israeli leadership at the time had wanted. This enmity and nationalism were produced with much effort, as a result of systematic indoctrination. And if such animus was not always present in the past, it may not have to remain a part of our future."—Tom Pessah, +972 Magazine"Dear Palestine is not just another book about the 1948 war. Even though it continues the growing tendency of historians to shift the gaze toward microhistory, it does more than that. It takes us on a fascinating journey to the space between efforts of official indoctrination and the unpredictable ways in which they are processed."—Tamir Sorek, Critical Inquiry"Hazkani's claims for a new narrative do not rely on reconstructions of individual experiences deviating from the binary logic of nationalist sentiments alone. By juxtaposing the opposing narratives side by side, he argues for a more comprehensive assessment of how Zionist identity was constituted and challenged."—Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud, The Tel Aviv Review of Books"Hazkani has followed an intuitive but all too infrequently traveled path in attempting a shared history of Jews and Arabs in Palestine in 1948. He attempts a fusion of historical horizons by joining a careful analysis of wartime propaganda by both sides with the honest accounts of soldiers on the ground. This interplay of top-down and bottom-up sources yields striking dissonance, which a skilled historian such as Hazkani uses to great advantage."—David N. Myers, Los Angeles Review of Books"Dear Palestine marks a paradigm shift in the study of the relations between Jews and Arabs... It is a story that quietly defies monolithic and binary perceptions passed down by nationalist histories. In their stead, Hazkani offers a relational account that listens to a more nuanced human network which steers this commendable and unpretentiously radical book."—the Korenblat Book Award selection committee"I strongly recommend Shay Hazkani's book. It is masterfully written and tells stories not told before, highlighting that while war is all-too-often portrayed in a way in which the warring parties come across as monolithic entities united in a common struggle, the truth is that societies undergoing conflict are just as complex and composed of individuals as societies in peace time."—Jørgen Jensehaugen, Journal of Military History"Dear Palestine is entirely generative and contributes greatly to non-mythologized, rigorous, and empirical scholarship on Palestine in 1948. At the center of this work is not so much an empirical recitation of what happened and when—this is largely known—but rather a historicization of the sociopolitical process of meaning making... It tells the story of how imperialism, colonialism, and the struggle over nationalism foreclosed the futures of certain groups of people, those who faced exile, dispossession, and marginalization. Most of all, it reminds us that the possibility of liberation for Jews and Palestinians is constitutively intertwined."—Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Journal of Palestine Studies"This book is a groundbreaking contribution to Palestine–Israel studies for several reasons; above all, it is the first comprehensive social history of the 1948 war. Hazkani's analysis of recruits' letters highlights their candid observations, opinions, and feelings about the tumultuous war, filling a significant gap in scholarship."—Elizabeth Brownson, Journal of History"Shay Hazkani's Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War is an important contribution to the rich historical literature on the 1948 War, combining the use of new archival sources with a fresh observation on events in Palestine during the year of Israel's establishment and the Nakba."—Adel Manna', International Journal of Middle East Studies"Shay Hazkani's Dear Palestine is an innovative, compellingly written, and deeply researched contribution to the history of the 1948 Palestine war, the establishment of Israel, and the effacement of Palestine.... Scholars and researchers should pay attention to the book not only for what it reveals about Palestine and the emergence of Israel but also for what we learn from it about the politics of Arab states at a critical period in the process of decolonization."—Weldon C. Matthews, American Historical Review"Dear Palestine is the product of painstaking and innovative detective work. Hazkani makes excellent use of ALA soldiers' writings and IDF censors' reports squirreled away in the IDF archive. The book is engagingly written. ... [Dear Palestine] deserves praise for its originality, comparative scope, and significance. It is essential reading for any student of the 1948 War and the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."—Derek Penslar, Journal of Israeli History"Many books have been written about the war, but few have examined the process by which regular people were convinced to fight or the interplay between official ideology and the perspectives of soldiers on the ground.... Dear Palestine will be useful to anyone interested in the interplay of war and identity formation."—Robert DiPrizio, H-War

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Book SynopsisThe US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings of 2010–11 left indelible imprints on the Middle East. Yet, these events have not reshaped the region as pundits once predicted. With this volume, top experts on the region offer wide-ranging considerations of the characteristics, continuities, and discontinuities of the contemporary Middle East, addressing topics from international politics to political Islam, hip hop to human security. This book engages six themes to understand the contemporary Middle East—the spread of sectarianism, abandonment of principles of state sovereignty, the lack of a regional hegemonic power, increased Saudi-Iranian competition, decreased regional attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and fallout from the Arab uprisings—as well as offers individual country studies. With analysis from historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, and up-to-date discussions of the Syrian Civil War, impacts of the Trump presidency, and the 2020 uprisings in Lebanon, Algeria, and Sudan, this book will be an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand the current state of the region.Trade Review"The essays in The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval, edited by distinguished historian James Gelvin, are an indispensable guide to making sense of the Middle East's current disorder and future direction. A must-read for academics, policy makers, and informed general audiences."—Frederic Wehrey, Senior Fellow, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"A first-rate collection of analyses from leading scholars across a range of disciplines, The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Middle East has and has not changed since the uprisings of 2011."—Jillian Schwedler, Hunter College, CUNY"In the past two decades, the Middle East has faced an external invasion, civil wars and populist uprisings. Thus, it is fitting that a collection of Middle East scholars have come together to assess the future of this turbulent region."—Ray Takeyh, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy"The Contemporary Middle East is a much-needed interdisciplinary study about the state of the Middle East in the early decades of the twenty-first century."—Arab Studies QuarterlyTable of Contents1. Is There a New Middle East? What Has Changed, and What Hasn't? —Joel Beinin 2. What Future for the Private Sector in the New Middle East? —Ishac Diwan 3. Education and Human Security: Centering the Politics of Human Dignity —Laurie A. Brand 4. Myths of Middle-Class Political Behavior in the Islamic Republic —Kevan Harris 5. Poets of the Revolutions: Authoritarians, Uprisings, and Rappers in North Africa, 1990s–Present —Aomar Boum 6. Islamism at a Crossroads? The Diffusion of Political Islam in the Arab World —Peter Mandaville 7. Islamists before and after 2011: Assuming, Overlooking, or Overthrowing the Administrative State? —Nathan J. Brown 8. Homeland (Dis-)Engagement Processes among the New Syrian Diaspora —Lindsay A. Gifford 9. Saudi Arabia: How Much Change? —F. Gregory Gause III 10. Erdoğan, Turkish Foreign Policy, and the Middle East —Henri J. Barkey 11. The Syrian Civil War and the New Middle East —James L. Gelvin 12. State Building, Sectarianization, and Neo-Patrimonialism in Iraq —Harith Hasan 13. The Post-Uprising Transformation of International Relations in the Middle East and North Africa —Fred H. Lawson 14. Proxy War and the New Structure of Middle East Regional Politics —Marc Lynch 16. Afterword: The Fourth Dream —Moncef Marzouki

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Book SynopsisA new history of Middle East oil and the deep roots of American violence in Iraq. Iraq has been the site of some of the United States' longest and most sustained military campaigns since the Vietnam War. Yet the origins of US involvement in the country remain deeply obscured—cloaked behind platitudes about advancing democracy or vague notions of American national interests. With this book, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt exposes the origins and deep history of US intervention in Iraq. The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy weaves together histories of Arab nationalists, US diplomats, and Western oil execs to tell the parallel stories of the Iraq Petroleum Company and the resilience of Iraqi society. Drawing on new evidence—the private records of the IPC, interviews with key figures in Arab oil politics, and recently declassified US government documents—Wolfe-Hunnicutt covers the arc of the twentieth century, from the pre-WWI origins of the IPC consortium and decline of British Empire, to the beginnings of covert US action in the region, and ultimately the nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry and perils of postcolonial politics. American policy makers of the Cold War era inherited the imperial anxieties of their British forebears and inflated concerns about access to and potential scarcity of oil, giving rise to a "paranoid style" in US foreign policy. Wolfe-Hunnicutt deconstructs these policy practices to reveal how they fueled decades of American interventions in the region and shines a light on those places that America's covert empire builders might prefer we not look.Trade Review"In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq on the basis of lies. Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt's The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy is a gripping backstory that reveals the historical truths of U.S.-Iraqi relations. American cold warriors inherited Britain's imperial role but failed to stop Iraqis from pursuing natural resource sovereignty."—Nathan J. Citino, Rice University, author of Envisioning the Arab Future"Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt's riveting account of US policy in 1960s Iraq, the rise of Saddam Hussein, and the end of the West's oil monopoly reads like a John Le Carré novel with footnotes, where the moral compromises and paranoia of the Cold War drive the action."—Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft"Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt illuminates the stories of visionary, radical Iraqi politicians who sought control over their country's oil and tested the limits of American power. The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy provokes readers to rethink what they think they know about Iraq's encounters with US imperialism."—Arbella Bet-Shlimon, University of Washington, author of City of Black Gold"Wolfe-Hunnicutt has crafted an engaging account that makes a substantive contribution to the evolving history of the global oil order. It stands as an impressive work on U.S.-Iraqi relations, a factor in international relations that is crucial to the broader history of the twentieth century and the evolution of American empire. And it provides a provocative thesis, suggesting a Cold War landscape in which paranoia drove policy, added to the upheavals that influenced the postwar petroleum order, and set the stage for the oil revolution of the 1970s and the transformation of the global political economy."—Gregory Brew, Passport"Producing a book that successfully knits three disparate strands of a story together is no mean feat. Yet that is exactly what Wolfe-Hunnicutt has done. This is a book well worth the time invested in reading it. It definitely deserves a very wide readership."—Mary Ann Heiss, Passport"Wolfe-Hunnicutt has written an important study that contributes greatly to our understanding of U.S.-Iraqi relations in a transitional era and illuminates the dynamics of natural resource nationalism and the consolidation of transnational oil elites in the post-imperial and Cold War years. It will certainly be on my graduate students' reading lists!"—W. Taylor Fain, Passport"Wolfe-Hunnicutt has produced an ambitious, wide-ranging, nuanced, yet hard-hitting critique of the U.S. approach to Arab and Iraqi nationalism; of the international oil industry; and of the authoritarian tendencies within Iraqi politics that, alas, surged to the fore during this three-cornered diplomatic encounter."—Salim Yaqub, Passport"The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy is an important work within the growing body of scholarship that provides equal attention to both sides of the relationship between the Arab world and the United States. The book will be required reading for those who seek to understand the history of Iraqi-US relations, as well as be of interest more broadly to those studying the political economy of oil, US empire, and decolonization."—David Wight, H-Diplo"Drawing information from primary sources including the IPC archives, US State Department records, and recollections of the Iraqi government officials central to the politics of the era, Wolfe-Hunnicutt weaves an engaging narrative as convincing as it is well researched."—Philippe Atallah, H-War"In this crisply written, nuanced, and unusual book, historian Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt reframes relations between the United States and Iraq primarily from 1960 to 1980 and offers a multifaceted account by combining histories that typically are not brought into conversation with each other... Indeed, the biggest contribution of this book is that it does not offer up a classic either/or story, i.e., either a US foreign policy narrative or an Iraqi political or cultural history, but rather deftly merges together various threads that often are treated as disparate. This is what makes this book novel and exciting."—Magnús T. Bernhardsson, The Middle East JournalTable of Contents1. The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Monarchy 2. The Free Officers' Revolution 3. The Emergence of OPEC 4. The Overthrow of Qasim 5. The Rise and Fall of the Ba'th 6. The Emergence of the Iraq National Oil Company 7. The Arab-Israeli June War 8. The Return of the Ba'th 9. The Nationalization of the IPC

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Book SynopsisIn the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots studies this phenomenon from the vantage point of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Here, cameras have proliferated as political tools in the hands of a broad range of actors and institutions, including Palestinian activists, Israeli soldiers, Jewish settlers, and human rights workers. All trained their lens on Israeli state violence, propelled by a shared dream: that advances in digital photography—closer, sharper, faster—would advance their respective political agendas. Most would be let down. Drawing on ethnographic work, Rebecca L. Stein chronicles Palestinian video-activists seeking justice, Israeli soldiers laboring to perfect the military's image, and Zionist conspiracy theorists accusing Palestinians of "playing dead." Writing against techno-optimism, Stein investigates what camera dreams and disillusionment across these political divides reveal about the Israeli and Palestinian colonial present, and the shifting terms of power and struggle in the smartphone age.Trade Review"Screen Shots teaches as it describes, instructs as it unsettles what we know about the expanse and limits of digital photography in the civilian landscapes of perpetual war, of photographic encounters with Israel state violence in the occupied Palestinian territories over the last two decades. Avoiding a predictable rehearsal of digital photography as a versatile and effective weapon of war, Screen Shots strikes precisely and pointedly elsewhere: at the political nerve of visualized failures, at the unnerving state of faulty images and unsteady cameras not properly loaded, apertures not set for the scale of violence confronted, witnessing that misses its mark. Screen Shots makes evident what aperture settings can't tell: how the images captured at once buttress and undermine claims of brutalizing settlers, humanitarian NGOs, and Palestinian activists—depending on what sits resolutely askew or adjacent to the photographer's lens. In this war of images, none of those tasked with recording can wholly control how violence will be applauded or vilified, how perpetrators will be cast, and how those images and their self-proclaimed heroes will be politically framed. In the end, Rebecca L. Stein's lucid account both acknowledges and defies the grotesque features of this infamously ugly military occupation."—Ann Stoler, The New School for Social Research, author of Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times"In Palestine perhaps more than anywhere else, political struggle has hinged in recent years on video technology's promise of a perfect witnessing: the fantasy that oppression can be recorded with such absolute transparency that it will compel viewers to act. Writing with great clarity and unflinching rigor, Rebecca L. Stein focuses on the inevitable failures of this dream and the emergence of the visual as yet another painfully contested battlefield. Screen Shots is an elegant, sobering work, and should be required reading for anyone interested in cutting through the colonialist myths that obscure the brutal realities of the occupation—and that still set the terms of its media representation."—Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine"Since its invention, photography has changed the way people see, and represent, themselves and others. Digital photography in the early 21st century has had an even more profound impact not only on how a conflict, like the one in Palestine, is seen and presented, but also on the political discourse and its visual articulation by the participants themselves. Rebecca L. Stein's Screen Shots is the first book to examine how digital photography impacted everyday practice under military occupation. It constitutes a very important addition to the fields of Palestine, postcolonial, and visual studies. The book functions both as a chronicle of photographed social life, as well as the political function of the photography. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Palestine."—Issam Nassar, Illinois State University, author of Photographing Jerusalem"Videos of human rights violations are a new form of testimony that require deep attentiveness to the multiple ways that politics are inscribed in images. In Screen Shots, Rebecca L. Stein's literary sensitivity to technology, media, and law inhabits the multi-dimensional space opened up by these images."—Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Forensic Architecture"Stein argues that the expected promise of photographic and film images failed to fullydeliver convincing evidence to a global public in spite of the growth of technology and its sophistication in the contemporary social media age. This book is approachable and interesting, replete with case studies and stories from the past two decades. Recommended."—P. Rowe, CHOICE"In Screen Shots, Stein cogently depicts the realities of 'the Israeli and Palestinian colonial present in the digital age', expressing an interest in what such a study could offer as a methodological and incisive gateway toward 'other political futures'... [T]he book gives critical foresight into the shifting media ecologies of the occupation and describes in attentive detail the Israeli military, Israeli NGOs, and the Israeli public's investment in digital medias, documentary forms, and depictions and denials of state violence against Palestinian bodies, lands, and infrastructures."—Sherena Razek, Journal of Palestine Studies"Screen Shots has no doubt earned its place in the scholarly cannon on digital media, photography and camera dreams in Israel and Palestine and beyond. The strength of the book is located in its use of the analytic of failure: what can repeatedly dashed hopes of cameras teach us about the colonial present in Israel and Palestine? One can only hope, as Stein gestures toward in her coda, that camera failures will begin undoing the power of the Israeli settler-colonial regime."—Liat Berdugo, Israel Studies Review"Screen Shots enters a literature that at its core examines new media and photographic or journalistic realism in Palestine and Israel. As evidenced by the book's dense footnotes, Stein's range is (as usual) remarkable: she is equally well-versed in theories of photography and technological change as in the study and history of Palestine and Israel. Here she provides an excellent framework for examining a range of questions, from the current technologies of military surveillance to digital witnessing to the fantasies associated with digital media. We are fortunate to have this seminal work as a guide as we try to make other political futures become visible."—Alejandro I. Paz, International Journal of Middle East StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: State Violence and the Dream of the Perfect Camera 1. Sniper Portraiture: Personal Technologies in Military Theaters 2. Cameras Under Curfew: Occupied Media Infrastructures 3. Settler Scripts: Conspiracy Cameras and Fake News 4. The Eyes of Human Rights: Curating Military Occupation 5. The Military's Lament: Combat Cameras and State Fantasies Coda: Broken Bones, Broken Dreams: The Politics of Failure

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Book SynopsisA multivocal account of why Egypt's defeated revolution remains a watershed in the country's political history. Bread and Freedom offers a new account of Egypt's 2011 revolutionary mobilization, based on a documentary record hidden in plain sight—party manifestos, military communiqués, open letters, constitutional contentions, protest slogans, parliamentary debates, and court decisions. A rich trove of political arguments, the sources reveal a range of actors vying over the fundamental question in politics: who holds ultimate political authority. The revolution's tangled events engaged competing claims to sovereignty made by insurgent forces and entrenched interests alike, a vital contest that was terminated by the 2013 military coup and its aftermath. Now a decade after the 2011 Arab uprisings, Mona El-Ghobashy rethinks how we study revolutions, looking past causes and consequences to train our sights on the collisions of revolutionary politics. She moves beyond the simple judgments that once celebrated Egypt's revolution as an awe-inspiring irruption of people power or now label it a tragic failure. Revisiting the revolutionary interregnum of 2011–2013, Bread and Freedom takes seriously the political conflicts that developed after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, an eventful thirty months when it was impossible to rule Egypt without the Egyptians.Trade Review"Mona El-Ghobashy adds a new perspective to the canonical view of the Arab Spring with the immensely readable and thoughtfully constructed Bread and Freedom. Starting from Charles Tilly's insight that revolutions are more like traffic jams than eclipses of the sun, El-Ghobashy revisits how an Egyptian protest became a revolutionary situation."—Sidney G. Tarrow, Cornell University"If you read only one book on the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring, make it Bread and Freedom. Mona El-Ghobashy leads the reader behind the scenes to the real battles of 2011, for a rewarding read that challenges everything you thought you knew about revolutionary uprisings. A rare treat."—Elizabeth F. Thompson, American University"In this gripping political history, Mona El-Ghobashy overturns conventional dramaturgical narratives of Egypt's 2011 uprising as marked by hopeful beginnings and calamitous endings. Instead, she captures the uncertainty and interstitial quality of Egypt's interregnum as a 'revolutionary situation.' Marked by analytical rigor and immense narrative detail, Bread and Freedom is a must-read for anyone concerned with deeper conceptual questions surrounding the entanglement of revolution and democracy."—Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis"With an unusual command of detail and an uncommon facility with social science theory, El-Ghobashy recounts the years of upheaval in Egypt between the 2011 uprising against President Hosni Mubarak and the 2014 election of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi... As El-Ghobashy elegantly shows, it is small wonder that the politics of those years seemed so confusing and uncertain. They were, for actors and observers alike—and she provides much welcome clarity."—Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs"This is essential reading for specialists of Egyptian politics and theorists of revolution, as well as scholars of authoritarianism, contentious politics, and regime transition... Bread and Freedomwill spur important conversations. And hopefully, with time, it will facilitate the shared understandings that are necessary for Egyptians to build a common future."—Tamir Moustafa, International Journal of Middle East Studies"Bread and Freedomis well-written and thoroughly researched, and it utilizes a wide range of secondary sources. El-Ghobashy revives an old concept but pushes the reader to rethink revolutions by focusing on uncertainty. Her argument that focuses on uncertainty through the concept of a revolutionary situation holds up to the evidence... She thus encourages the reader to understand revolutions and their aftermath not as pre-determined events but as unpredictable competitions among multiple sovereignty claims that strive to end revolutionary situations."—Sarp Kurgan, Middle East Librarians Association"Mona El-Ghobashy's Bread and Freedom is a richly detailed and theoretically deft unsettling of arguments that Egypt's Arab Spring trajectory was linear or preordained. Adopting the concept of a "revolutionary situation," she highlights how circumstance, uncertainty, and reaction interacted to drive forward events on the ground...Bread and Freedom narrates Egypt's "revolutionary situation" as a series of critical junctures, each produced by some prior interaction, and in turn generative of a new one."—Steven Brooke, Perspectives on PoliticsMona el-Ghobashy's Bread and Freedom offers perhaps the single best narrative of Egypt from 2011 to the present which has yet been written. Her finely grained, beautifully crafted storytelling reveals the sheer complexity of the revolutionary period and the multiplicity of actors trying to navigate a profoundly uncertain environment."—Marc Lynch, Project on Middle East Political Science"Bread and Freedom is an exceptional work that offers a clear analysis of the Egyptian revolution of 2011—a notably confusing case. It also presents a novel and refreshing assessment of scholarship on both the Egyptian case specifically, and on revolution in general."—Atef Said, Mobilization: An International QuarterlyThis is an essential work for students of contemporary Egypt and the politics of the Arab world generally and also for those with a comparative focus on revolution, social movements, or democratization. ... [T]his book's rich analysis should induce many scholars to read it from cover to cover and to return to it again and again. Essential."—G. E. Perry, ChoiceTable of ContentsPrologue: We Won't Leave, He Must Go 1. Narratives of Egypt's Revolution 2. Let Them Say What They Want, and We'll Do What We Want 3. Fear Us, O Government 4. Let's Write Our Constitution 5. Down, Down with the General Guide's Rule 6. State Prestige Conclusion: Bread and Freedom

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Book SynopsisMuhtars, the lowest level elected political position in Turkey, hold an ambiguously defined place within the administrative hierarchy. They are public officials, but local citizens do not always associate them with the central government. Street-Level Governing is the first book to investigate how muhtars carry out their role—not only what they are supposed to do, but how they actually operate—to provide an ethnographic study of the state as viewed from its margins. It starts from the premise that the seeming "margin" of state administration is not peripheral at all, but instructive as to how it functions. As Elise Massicard shows, muhtars exist at the intersection of everyday life and the exercise of power. Their position offers a personalized point of contact between citizens and state institutions, enabling close oversight of the citizenry, yet simultaneously projecting the sense of an accessible state to individuals. Challenging common theories of the state, Massicard outlines how the position of the muhtar throws into question an assumed dichotomy between domination and social resistance, and suggests that considerations of circumvention and accommodation are normal attributes of state-society functioning.Trade Review"Street-Level Governing is a brilliant and engaging study that overturns dyed-in-the-wool ideas about the nature of the state and modernity. With a sophisticated command of the literature leavened by on-the-ground observation, Elise Massicard makes an excellent contribution to a new global scholarship of informality in politics and politics as performance."—Jenny White, Stockholm University, author of Turkish Kaleidoscope"Street-Level Governing is one of the most interesting and original recent books I have read on contemporary Turkey. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and deep knowledge of Turkish politics and society, Elise Massicard gives us a vivid and up-close account of the muhtarlık in the context of state-society relations in Turkey."—Reşat Kasaba, University of Washington, author of A Moveable Empire"Street-Level Governing is a commendable study that approaches contemporary Turkey from an original angle with both rigour and scholarship. It certainly deserves to be read and discussed."—Marc Juyient, Manara Magazine"Massicard's outstanding book on the neglected urban agency of muhtarlık crucially challenges major ideas on urban politics, stands as a methodological resource, and contributes to the literature on urban studies by speaking to scholars' broader interest in how local actors and their interrelations with complex urban outcomes have been reproduced."—Gülşah Aykaç, Urban Studies"Street-Level Governing, as implied by the title, rejects traditional notions about the Turkish state and its bureaucracy to build on Migdal's state-in-society framework and the rich ethnographic scholarship on Turkey it has recently engendered. However, whereas this new body of work focuses on the marginalized, studying the ever-present muhtar helps Massicard reveal how even mundane interactions shape the contours of the state."—Devrim Yavuz, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association"Moving beyond the clientelism-versus-governance divide and engaging critically with fields of the political sociology and the anthropology of state, Massicard's excellent book on the dynamics of urban politics in Turkey examines state-society interaction in everyday life and successfully demonstrates how they mutually transform, constitute, and produce each other on the ground."—Osman Savaşkan, Political Science QuarterlyTable of Contents1. An Incompletely Formed Institution 2. How the Muhtarlık Fuels the Production of Notables 3. The Muhtars' Changing Role 4. The Residents' Champion 5. Ambivalent Interface with the Official Order 6. Enacting Context-Dependent Roles 7. Working within and Modulating Institutional Constraints 8. The Muhtarlıks' Waning Autonomy Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe Oldest Guard tells the story of Zionist settler memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) established in late nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine. Though they grew into the backbone of lucrative citrus and wine industries of mandate Palestine and Israel, absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, and became known as the "first wave" (First Aliyah) of Zionist settlement, these communities have been regarded—and disregarded—in the history of Zionism as sites of conservatism, lack of ideology, and resistance to Labor Zionist politics. Treating the "First Aliyah" as a symbol created and deployed only in retrospect, Liora R. Halperin offers a richly textured portrait of commemorative practices between the 1920s and the 1960s. Drawing connections to memory practices in other settler societies, The Oldest Guard demonstrates how private agriculturalists and their advocates in the Zionist center and on the right celebrated and forged the "First Aliyah" past, revealing the centrality of settlement to Zionist collective memory and the politics of Zionist settler "firstness."Trade Review"In this extremely important work on Israeli national memory and periodization, Liora Halperin offers new ways to think about early Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine. Halperin's insightful reading of the first Aliyah colonies unpacks the complex relationship between Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Palestinians in the modern state of Israel: a state whose perceptions of its past were, and are, in a constant state of flux." —Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"The Oldest Guard casts new light on not only Israeli history but also key issues in the history of nationalism and colonialism, such as tensions between local and statist identifications, concepts of 'firstness' in national narratives, and settler-colonial memory." —Derek Penslar, Harvard University"Halperin's book is a unique history of Zionist memory in that it does not limit its approach to actors from particular Zionist movements or institutions. The book while nominally focused on the 'First Aliyah' generation is about much more: Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Palestinian agriculturalists, Holocaust survivor and Mizrahi immigrants to the State of Israel after its establishment, and even the history of continued settlement up until today. The book will serve as a fantastic resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies."—Ryan Zohar, Association of Jewish Libraries News and Reviews"Through descriptions of Purim parades, local museums, and the life of Avraham Shapira, an iconic figure in the First Aliya, Halperin does a brilliant job keeping the reader connected throughout... [The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Path] provides a nuanced image of how perceptions of historical figures shift and transform over time as new generations gain power in shaping the narrative."—Louis A. Fishman, Israel Studies Review"It is this public image [of 'the First Aliya']—and its contradictions—which is the subject of Liora Halperin's excellent book, on the Zionist settler memory culture."—Yair Wallach, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish HistoryTable of Contents0. Introduction: Mother of the Colonies 1. Private Farmers and the Origins of "First Aliyah" Claims-Making 2. Arab Labor and the Rhetoric of Hierarchical Coexistence in Mandate Palestine 3. The Old Guard on Display 4. The Colony and the Village: Constructions of Coexistence after the Nakba 5. Jewish Immigrants and the Politics of Settler "First Ones," 1948–1967 Conclusion: Thinking about the First Aliyah after 1967

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Book SynopsisEach year, billions of dollars are spent on global humanitarian health initiatives. These efforts are intended to care for suffering bodies, especially those of distressed children living in poverty. But as global medical aid can often overlook the local economic and political systems that cause bodily suffering, it can also unintentionally prolong the very conditions that hurt children and undermine local aid givers. Investigating medical humanitarian encounters in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care illustrates how child aid recipients and local aid experts grapple with global aid's shortcomings and its paradoxical outcomes. Rania Kassab Sweis examines how some of the world's largest aid organizations care for vulnerable children in Egypt, focusing on medical efforts with street children and out-of-school village girls. Her in-depth ethnographic study reveals how global medical aid fails to "save" these children according to its stated aims, and often maintains—or produces new—social disparities in children's lives. Foregrounding vulnerable children's responses to medical aid, Sweis moves past the unquestioned benevolence of global health to demonstrate how children must manage their own bodies and lives in the absence of adult care. With this book, she challenges readers to engage with the question of what medical caregivers and donors alike gain from such global humanitarian transactions.Trade Review"Medical humanitarianism has become the most prominent form of global health intervention. Based on the ethnographic study of several projects conducted with vulnerable children in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care uncovers, with tact and discernment, the complex and ambiguous effects of these benevolent actions as experienced by local aid workers as well as young recipients."—Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study and Collège de France"This lucidly written book brings the robust anthropological critiques of global medical humanitarianism to bear on international organizations' attempts to help children in Egypt. Rania Kassab Sweis' clear analysis demonstrates the inherent paradoxes of seeking to save the 'vulnerable,' while leaving unchanged the structural conditions that produce those very vulnerabilities."—Sherine Hamdy, University of California, Irvine"This vivid and groundbreaking ethnography elevates the voices of Egypt's at-risk children, while deftly portraying the struggles of humanitarian actors to deliver aid amidst precarity. Paradoxes of Care is a must-read for those interested in medical humanitarianism, gender activism, and childhood studies in the Middle East and beyond."—Marcia C. Inhorn, Yale University"In [Paradoxes of Care]'s detaied ethnography of three nongovernmental organizations dedicated to providing medical care and health services to Egyptian children... Sweis illuminates both the global humanitarian industry and the lives of children in Egypt."—Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs"[Paradoxes of Care] is a valuable contribution to the field of charity and medical aid and to the cross-cultural study of children. Recommended."—M. L. Russell, CHOICE

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Book SynopsisThe Oldest Guard tells the story of Zionist settler memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) established in late nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine. Though they grew into the backbone of lucrative citrus and wine industries of mandate Palestine and Israel, absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, and became known as the "first wave" (First Aliyah) of Zionist settlement, these communities have been regarded—and disregarded—in the history of Zionism as sites of conservatism, lack of ideology, and resistance to Labor Zionist politics. Treating the "First Aliyah" as a symbol created and deployed only in retrospect, Liora R. Halperin offers a richly textured portrait of commemorative practices between the 1920s and the 1960s. Drawing connections to memory practices in other settler societies, The Oldest Guard demonstrates how private agriculturalists and their advocates in the Zionist center and on the right celebrated and forged the "First Aliyah" past, revealing the centrality of settlement to Zionist collective memory and the politics of Zionist settler "firstness."Trade Review"In this extremely important work on Israeli national memory and periodization, Liora Halperin offers new ways to think about early Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine. Halperin's insightful reading of the first Aliyah colonies unpacks the complex relationship between Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Palestinians in the modern state of Israel: a state whose perceptions of its past were, and are, in a constant state of flux." —Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"The Oldest Guard casts new light on not only Israeli history but also key issues in the history of nationalism and colonialism, such as tensions between local and statist identifications, concepts of 'firstness' in national narratives, and settler-colonial memory." —Derek Penslar, Harvard University"Halperin's book is a unique history of Zionist memory in that it does not limit its approach to actors from particular Zionist movements or institutions. The book while nominally focused on the 'First Aliyah' generation is about much more: Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Palestinian agriculturalists, Holocaust survivor and Mizrahi immigrants to the State of Israel after its establishment, and even the history of continued settlement up until today. The book will serve as a fantastic resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies."—Ryan Zohar, Association of Jewish Libraries News and Reviews"Through descriptions of Purim parades, local museums, and the life of Avraham Shapira, an iconic figure in the First Aliya, Halperin does a brilliant job keeping the reader connected throughout... [The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Path] provides a nuanced image of how perceptions of historical figures shift and transform over time as new generations gain power in shaping the narrative."—Louis A. Fishman, Israel Studies Review"It is this public image [of 'the First Aliya']—and its contradictions—which is the subject of Liora Halperin's excellent book, on the Zionist settler memory culture."—Yair Wallach, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish HistoryTable of Contents0. Introduction: Mother of the Colonies 1. Private Farmers and the Origins of "First Aliyah" Claims-Making 2. Arab Labor and the Rhetoric of Hierarchical Coexistence in Mandate Palestine 3. The Old Guard on Display 4. The Colony and the Village: Constructions of Coexistence after the Nakba 5. Jewish Immigrants and the Politics of Settler "First Ones," 1948–1967 Conclusion: Thinking about the First Aliyah after 1967

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Book SynopsisWith its title borrowed from Machiavelli, The Persian Prince goes far beyond Machiavelli's wildest imagination as to how to rule the world. Hamid Dabashi articulates a bold new idea of the Persian Prince—a metaphor of political authority, a figurative ideal deeply rooted in the collective memories of multiple nations, and a literary construct that connected Muslim empires across time and space and continues to inform political debate today. Drawing on works from Classical Antiquity and the vast Persianate worlds from India to the Mediterranean, as well as the Hebrew Bible and European medieval mirrors for princes, Dabashi engages a diverse body of political thought to reveal the construction of the Persian Prince as a potent archetype. He traces this archetype through its varied historic gestations and finds it resurfacing in postcolonial political thought as a rebel, a prophet, a poet, and a nomad. Bringing poetics and politics together, Dabashi shows how this archetypal figure has long defined political authority throughout the wider Iranian and Islamic worlds. With meticulous attention to literary and poetic texts, moral and philosophical treatises, allegorical and anecdotal stories, sacred and secular evidence, visual and performing arts, histories of global empires and colonial conquests, this sweeping work offers a deeply learned, richly erudite, and transformative piece of critical thinking. As Dabashi shows, the Persian Prince remains the stuff of current debate across the Muslim and Persianate worlds, in contestations over the public domain and the collective will to power, and above all in the prospects of democratic institutions. Trade Review"Hamid Dabashi's book takes the reader on a journey across time and place. 'More a persona than a person,' the Persian Prince reunites in one archetype such different images as the rebellious poet, the just monarch, and the charismatic prophet. Both a historical investigation and a philosophical-political proposal, the book will reward readers with many unusual intellectual encounters."—Giovanni Giorgini, University of Bologna and Columbia University"Disarmingly accessible, laden with millennia of Persian cultural riches, The Persian Prince deftly and decisively shifts the axis of history and of the conception of subjectivity itself. Colonizers and ayatollahs are mere blips in the long temporality of the Persian Prince, a figure of transformation that ultimately resides in the collective heart of rebellion."—Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, author of Enfoldment and Infinity"In this gorgeously written tour de force, Hamid Dabashi spins the contrapuntal narrative of an archaic Iranian archetype as it weaves its way through political-poetical history. Building on his impressive body of work, The Persian Prince is a unique and formidable text that encapsulates the brilliance, vivacity, and political ferocity of Dabashi's mind."—Jeanne Morefield, University of Oxford, author of Unsettling the World"Hamid Dabashi's illuminating study, while both provincializing and enriching the classic frameworks of Machiavelli and Gramsci, provides a provocative and compelling archetype for understanding political power and organization."—Michael Hardt, Duke University, author of The Subversive Seventies"Rejecting an ideologically and politically manufactured binary between 'Islam and the West' and arguing for an 'irretrievably pluralistic' view of cultures and history, Dabashi illuminates the model of the Persian Prince as the archetype of 'a human being best fitted to face and embrace the world.' He eschews an overemphasis on 'political ideals' over 'literary aspects' in defining the nature of sovereignty and relations between rulers and the ruled, and he advocates a rediscovery of democratic institutions in the Muslim and Persianate worlds, and far beyond. Recommended."—B. Tavakolian, CHOICETable of ContentsPrelude: Who Is the Persian Prince—What Is the Persian Prince? Chapter One: The Idea and the Dominion of the Persian Prince Chapter Two: The Persian Prince Comes of Age Chapter Three: On the Histories, Geographies, and Iconographies of Muslim Empires Chapter Four: The Persian Literary Provenance of Muslim Empires Five: In the Light and Shadows of the Persian Prince Six: The Resurrection of the Persian Prince Under Colonial Duress Seven: Colonial Modernity and the Metamorphosis of the Persian Prince Eight: The Nomadic Fate of the Persian Prince Conclusion: The Sublimation of an Imperial Archetype

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Book SynopsisTens of thousands of Palestinians migrated to the Americas in the final decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth. By 1936, an estimated 40,000 Palestinians lived outside geographic Palestine. Transnational Palestine is the first book to explore the history of Palestinian immigration to Latin America, the struggles Palestinian migrants faced to secure Palestinian citizenship in the interwar period, and the ways in which these challenges contributed to the formation of a Palestinian diaspora and to the emergence of Palestinian national consciousness. Nadim Bawalsa considers the migrants' strategies for economic success in the diaspora, for preserving their heritage, and for resisting British mandate legislation, including citizenship rejections meted out to thousands of Palestinian migrants. They did this in newspapers, social and cultural clubs and associations, political organizations and committees, and in hundreds of petitions and pleas delivered to local and international governing bodies demanding justice for Palestinian migrants barred from Palestinian citizenship. As this book shows, Palestinian political consciousness developed as a thoroughly transnational process in the first half of the twentieth century—and the first articulation of a Palestinian right of return emerged well before 1948.Trade Review"A significant contribution to the history of Palestinian transnational activism. Anchoring his story in the lives of Palestinians in Latin America, Nadim Bawalsa amplifies the diasporic dimension of the 'right of return.' A must read for scholar-activists of the modern Middle East, inter-war politics, and national liberation struggles."—Sarah M.A. Gualtieri, author of Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California"Transnational Palestine is an extensive and original investigation into the lives of early Palestinian migrants in Latin America. Nadim Bawalsa has an uncanny ability to evoke from submerged archival sources and diaspora presses the adventures and tribulations of those pioneering travelers."—Salim Tamari, author of The Great War and the Remaking of Palestine"Bawalsa succeeds in widening the reader's temporal and geographical horizons when thinking about the right of return, and in doing so, he helps us to better understand the Palestinians history of dispossession."—Marc Martorell Junyent, Mondoweiss"Transnational Palestine tells of the painful struggle of loyal sons and daughters of Palestine against Britain's theft of their national identity, decades before 1948, the first group of marooned, stateless, Palestinian exiles. It's a story of British perfidy and Palestinian persistence, which Bawalsa says no previous book has told. Moreover, he shows how the dogged and sophisticated resistance campaign of these Palestinians contributed to their nation's political organization and identity formation during the British Mandate period."—Steve France, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs"Nadim Bawalsa's Transnational Palestine is a significant contribution to the history of Mandate Palestine, and illuminates the role of British citizenship laws in the dispossession of Palestinians. By exposing the ways Palestinians living abroad (referred to as the mahjar) were denied citizenship by the British Empire during their mandate over Palestine, Bawalsa effectively reframes the fight for right of return of Palestinians both historically and geographically, and reveals its emergence as a response to British imperial governance Transnational Palestine underscores citizenship as a tool in settler colonial projects where relationship to land does not guarantee rights within it or to it."—Randa Tawil, International Journal of Middle East Studies"Through a treasure trove of documents, including applications, appeals, protests and personal correspondence, Bawalsa reveals the relentless struggle of overseas Palestinians, who were torn between their new-found prosperity and peace in the Americas, and their roots in a homeland on the cusp of slipping away."—Omar Ahmed, Middle East Monitor

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Book SynopsisThe Discovery of Iran examines the history of Iranian nationalism afresh through the life and work of Taghi Arani, the founder of Iran's first Marxist journal, Donya. In his quest to imagine a future for Iran open to the scientific riches of the modern world and the historical diversity of its own people, Arani combined Marxist materialism and a cosmopolitan ethics of progress. He sought to reconcile Iran to its post-Islamic past, rejected by Persian purists and romanticized by their traditionalist counterparts, while orienting its present toward the modern West in all its complex and conflicting facets. As Ali Mirsepassi shows, Arani's cosmopolitanism complicates the conventional wisdom that racial exclusivism was an insoluble feature of twentieth-century Iranian nationalism. In cultural spaces like Donya, Arani and his contemporaries engaged vibrant debates about national identity, history, and Iran's place in the modern world. In exploring Arani's short but remarkable life and writings, Ali Mirsepassi challenges the image of Interwar Iran as dominated by the Pahlavi state to uncover fertile intellectual spaces in which civic nationalism flourished.Trade Review"Ali Mirsepassi has produced a powerful and engaging intellectual biography which weaves Taghi Arani's life into the broader tapestry of modern Iranian nationalism and modernism. The Discovery of Iran is a major contribution to scholarly understanding of early Pahlavi Iran and shines a bright light on the ongoing relevance of its political and ideological controversies to more recent Iranian history."—Stephanie Cronin, Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Research Fellow, University of Oxford"With The Discovery of Iran, Ali Mirsepassi has succinctly analyzed Taghi Arani's innovative ideas. Although influenced by the Western Marxism of the 1930s, Arani is as relevant to the Iran of today as he was to his own time—maybe even more so."—Ervand Abrahamian, Professor Emeritus, City University of New YorkTable of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Iranian Nationalism, Past and Present chapter abstractThe introduction sets the stage for the subsequent reinterpretation of Iranian nationalism by revisiting the motivations for Reza Shah's 1935 decision to change the name of what was then Persia to Iran. It questions the historiographical tendency to view the name change and broader nationalist attitudes of the interwar era as having been motivated by an Aryanizing impulse imported from Germany. It is in this vein that the introduction situates the intellectual impact of Taghi Arani, a radical cosmopolitan thinker of Iran in the twentieth century. 1Transnational Cosmopolitanism: Arani's Life and Times chapter abstractThis chapter offers readers an overview of Arani's life and times. It weaves together his experiences living in foreign-occupied Tabriz, his coming of political age in Berlin, and his return to Tehran to contextualize the development of his increasingly cosmopolitan vision for Iran. It surveys Arani's intellectual and political activities in 1920s Berlin, and his work as editor of Donya magazine in 1930s Tehran. 2Among the Nationalists in Berlin, 1922–29 chapter abstractThis chapter examines the interwar history of Iran, focusing on the Pahlavi state's assumption of power and Iran's occupation by British, Russian, and Ottoman forces during World War I. It assesses how Iranians in 1920s Berlin responded to these events, and examines their political activities and written output. It argues that an overtly racialist strand of Iranian nationalism, which sought to situate Iran in the arena of Aryan nations contra its Arab and Turkish neighbors, developed a response to pan-Turkism and Ottoman nationalism, which was encapsulated in Roshani Beik's arguments for the "Turkishness" of Iranian Azerbaijan. 3Arani's Early Writings: A Racialized National Narrative chapter abstractThis chapter discusses Arani's early years in Berlin with an eye toward individuals and institutions formative to his political outlook, chief among them Hossein Kazemzadeh and the German orientalist Friedrich Rosen. It offers a close analysis of Arani's early writings on the social function of the Persian language and its potential role in unifying the modern Iranian nation. 4For a Radical Cosmopolitan Iran chapter abstractThis chapter discusses Arani's publication of Donya magazine and the political tenets central to its editorial outlook. It does so by analyzing Arani's statements on Donya's mission and his editorials on its initial reception in Iran. These self-reflective statements offer insight into how Arani conceptualized the political function of Iranian intellectuals in terms of their potential for introducing the idiom of revolutionary change into public consciousness. 5The Persian Language, Past and Present chapter abstractOne of the most noteworthy pieces of Arani's writings is his essay "Changing the Persian Language." In it, Arani articulates his vision of a cosmopolitan Iran by juxtaposing his vision of of the nation rooted in its material or historical reality against those Iranian nationalists who sought to alienate Iran from their own cultural heritage by purging the Persian language of Arabic words. This chapter argues that Arani's call to adapt Persian to modern scientific realities by accepting the use of foreign technical terms already in currency evinced his pragmatic and antichauvinist sense of nationalism. 6'Erfan, Reason, and the Nation chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on Arani's major critique of the antimodernism he saw as inherent to the contemporary resurgence of 'erfan or mysticism. Arani published a three-part series of articles that advocated a materialist reading of mysticism's popularity in Iran and abroad. His critique of the contemporary French philosopher Henri Bergson, whom he regarded as representing the latest strain of that antirational thinking, is central to the chapter. Conclusion: An Unfinished Iranian Enlightenment chapter abstractThe last section of the book discusses the importance of Arani's thought to Iran today. Arani's radical cosmopolitan vision encouraged a sense of historical appreciation for Iran's pre- and post-Islamic past, while retaining a forward-looking embrace of the modern moment.

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Book SynopsisA biography of the "Cinderella" of Egyptian cinema—the veneration and rumors that surrounded an unparalleled career, and the gendered questions that unsettled Egyptian society. Layla Murad (1918-1995) was once the highest-paid star in Egypt, and her movies were among the top-grossing in the box office. She starred in 28 films, nearly all now classics in Arab musical cinema. In 1955 she was forced to stop acting—and struggled for decades for a comeback. Today, even decades after her death, public interest in her life continues, and new generations of Egyptians still love her work. Unknown Past recounts Murad's extraordinary life—and the rapid political and sociocultural changes she witnessed. Hanan Hammad writes a story centered on Layla Murad's persona and legacy, and broadly framed around a gendered history of twentieth-century Egypt. Murad was a Jew who converted to Islam in the shadow of the first Arab-Israeli war. Her career blossomed under the Egyptian monarchy and later gave a singing voice to the Free Officers and the 1952 Revolution. The definitive end of her cinematic career came under Nasser on the eve of the 1956 Suez War. Egyptians have long told their national story through interpretations of Murad's life, intertwining the individual and Egyptian state and society to better understand Egyptian identity. As Unknown Past recounts, there's no life better than Murad's to reflect the tumultuous changes experienced over the dramatic decades of the mid-twentieth century.Trade Review"A fascinating and fun read, Unknown Past carefully documents Layla's story, fills voids, and makes important interventions into debates on her life and legacy. Just as Layla's life was bigger than the screen, this book goes beyond the history of cinema to illuminate questions about religion, society, gender, and politics."—Beth Baron, The Graduate Center and City College, City University of New York, author of The Orphan Scandal"Bringing together biography and history, Unknown Past examines transformations in midcentury Egypt through the life of the hugely popular Layla Murad. Unraveling rumors and debunking myths, Hanan Hammad draws attention to the social pressures Murad faced as a working woman, as a Jew, as a wife, and as a mother."—Deborah Starr, Cornell University, author of Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema"Unknown Past is meticulously researched and vividly written. Hanan Hammad unpacks, in a careful, clear-headed, and brave manner, all the myths surrounding Egypt's beloved star Layla Murad, from her career's entanglement in the Arab-Israel conflict to her premature retirement. An essential read."—Ted Swedenburg, University of Arkansas, editor of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture"Unknown Past: Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt is a descriptively compelling and detailed account of the life and work of a culturally, artistically, and politically influential Egyptian woman through modern Egypt's complicated and perilous times. A consummate work of impeccable scholarship, no Egyptian Cinema or 20th Century Egyptian Biography collection would be complete or comprehensive without the inclusion of a copy of Unknown Past." -Julie Summers, Reviewer's Bookwatch"This is the kind of book any aspiring scholar should want to write at least once during their career: Hammad both lucidly engages relevant academic literature and tells a fascinating story for nonspecialist readers new to one of the dizzying number of disciplines into which she intervenes."—Abe Silberstein, Cineaste"[Unknown Past is] a story not only about religion and ethnicity in the Arab world, but also one about how being female can amplify the effects of being a minority in a society that is not as 'modern' as it prides itself on being."—Lauren Hakimi, The Forward"This engaging text sheds new light on old questions and provides greater depth to this Golden Age star.... Ultimately, readers see Murad as a complex, multidimensional individual—acelebrity, wife, lover, mother, and businesswoman. Recommended."—M. L. Russell, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: Why Layla Murad? 1. The Schoolgirl: Making Layla Murad 2. The Country Girl: Branding Layla Murad 3. Adam and Eve: Interfaith Family, Fame, and Gossip 4. The Blow of Fate: The Politics of Boycotting Israel 5. The Unknown Lover: Layla Murad and the Free Officer 6. The Starling of the Valley: Remembering Layla Murad Conclusion: Can an Egyptian Be a Single Mother and a Jew?

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Book SynopsisMedia of the Masses investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes became a ubiquitous presence in Egyptian homes and stores. Audiocassette technology gave an opening to ordinary individuals, from singers to smugglers, to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households. Drawing on a wide array of audio, visual, and textual sources that exist outside the Egyptian National Archives, Andrew Simon provides a new entry point into understanding everyday life and culture. Cassettes and cassette players, he demonstrates, did not simply join other twentieth century mass media, like records and radio; they were the media of the masses. Comprised of little more than magnetic reels in plastic cases, cassettes empowered cultural consumers to become cultural producers long before the advent of the Internet. Positioned at the productive crossroads of social history, cultural anthropology, and media and sound studies, Media of the Masses ultimately shows how the most ordinary things may yield the most surprising insights.Trade Review"Andrew Simon's masterful history of the cassette crystallizes the crucial importance of technology. Media of the Masses is methodologically innovative, working through materials that were part of everyday life, but rarely present in archives. Important for historians of modern Egypt, and a stellar contribution to the history of new media."—Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford"When much thinking about media focuses on technologies of the future, Andrew Simon's Media of the Masses is a refreshing look at the near past, when palm-sized cartridges decentralized communication decades before satellites or the internet entered our daily lives. An important contribution to Arab media studies and the history of technology."—Marwan Kraidy, Northwestern University in Qatar"Media of the Masses provides a new lens through which we can understand the history of Egyptian media—the once-ubiquitous technology of cassette tapes. Andrew Simon's 'mixtape' approach offers insightful analysis and paints a rich picture useful for scholars and students alike."—Laura Bier, Georgia Institute of Technology"Andrew Simon's new book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt... looks at the cassette tape as a mode of understanding Egypt's history during [the] 1970s and 1980s. Moving from homes to shops, and from singers to listeners, the book demonstrates how the cassette, an artifact that became immensely popular in the Middle East in these years, undid state power and the division between public and private."—Orit Bashkin, Issues in Middle East Studies"In this social history of music and technology, Simon demonstrates how audiocassettes allowed ordinary Egyptians to challenge the power of state-controlled media. It is the story of how a common piece of technology can have an extraordinary impact on culture, politics, and the lives of the people who use it."—Christina Dolan, Vermont Standard"Andrew Simon approaches the world of Egyptian cassettes primarily as a social historian in this ingenious and enlightening book, one that is, moreover, an enormous pleasure to read....Whether listening, looking, reading, recalling encounters with his Egyptian interlocutors, or describing his walks around downtown Cairo, his prose buzzes with life and with sounds—as appropriate a tribute to its object as one could possibly wish."—Martin Stokes, Journal of World Popular Music"This is an extraordinarily rich and exciting read."—Avery Weinman, New Books Network"In Media of the Masses, Andrew Simon tells a compelling story of how audiocassettes transformed Egypt in the 1970s and '80s. By allowing a greater number of people not just to access audio content but also to produce and distribute it, cassettes were at the center of a new popular consumer culture. Simon tells this story through vivid vignettes that shine a light into the role of technology in everyday life."—Arthur Asseraf, Technology and Culture"Media of the Masses fills the gaps of historiographical elisions past."—Mariam Elnozahy, The Markaz Review"Simon's book offers a closer people's perspective of Egyptian culture and memory through cassette technology."—Ramona Wadi,The New Arab"The book's framework gives prominence not only to media technologies but also, crucially, to artists and their music. In so doing, it sheds new light on Egypt's sociopolitical, cultural, and economic developments from the 1970s through the 1990s and beyond."—Olga Verlato,Borderlines"This book will captivate anyone interested in the history of technology, mass media, or popular culture."—Lee Vinsel, Peoples & Things"[Simon] shows how the humble cassette turned into a lightning rod in a country undergoing major changes."—Peter Holslin,Passion of the Weiss"By examining the history of the cassette tape and cassette players in Egypt, Media of the Masses considers much larger historical developments, including political change, labor migration, the refashioning of Egyptian homes, crime, and censorship.... Recommended."—M. L. Russell, CHOICE"By the end of Media of the Masses, Andrew Simon has deftly pivoted from the importance of audio to the vitality of all the mundane but essential objects in our environment—the things that are always thereso much so that we don't often see or hear them anymore."—Marc Masters, Los Angeles Review of Books

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Book SynopsisMore than one million Indians travel annually to work in oil projects in the Gulf, one of the few international destinations where men without formal education can find lucrative employment. Between Dreams and Ghosts follows their migration, taking readers to sites in India, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, from villages to oilfields and back again. Engaging all parties involved—the migrants themselves, the recruiting agencies that place them, the government bureaucrats that regulate their emigration, and the corporations that hire them—Andrea Wright examines labor migration as a social process as it reshapes global capitalism. With this book, Wright demonstrates how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colonial capitalism. As workers navigate bureaucratic hurdles to migration and working conditions in the Gulf, they in turn influence and inform state policies and corporate practices. Placing migrants at the center of global capital rather than its periphery, Wright shows how migrants are not passive bodies at the mercy of abstract forces—and reveals through their experiences a new understanding of contemporary resource extraction, governance, and global labor.Trade Review"Drawing upon extraordinarily rich fieldwork and a deep knowledge of the region, Andrea Wright brilliantly weaves the transnational connections between India and the Gulf. Between Dreams and Ghosts is a landmark contribution that pushes our understanding of oil, labor, and migrant lives in new and unexpected directions." —Adam Hanieh, author of Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East"Andrea Wright's elegantly crafted ethnography of the lived experiences of Indian migrants to the Gulf oil industry is a telling narrative of the poetics and politics of labor migration. Rich with multiple perspectives and based on extensive fieldwork, Between Dreams and Ghosts stands out as a sensitive and stunning account." —Anand Yang, author of Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia"Andrea Wright's compelling work shows that the oil and money on which so many studies focus is inextricably entangled with the bodies and aspirations of labor migrants. Between Dreams and Ghosts takes readers deep into the transnational swirl of moving people and objects that link the Gulf to India." —Douglas Rogers, author of The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism"Wright presents a fascinating, creatively researched study of Indian migrant workers in the oil industry of the Gulf states... Getting access to the exploiters as well as those exploited—and their ghost stories—is a tribute to the author's daring strategies of research. ... Highly recommended."—C. M. Henry, CHOICE"Even in a book that is in many ways fuelled by oil, the perspective of Wright's story is a very fresh take on the life-worlds that exist inside this massive industry. InBetween Dreams and Ghosts, we get to think about the materiality of the oil industry, and how the materiality itself takes on a transnational and even metaphysical life. The substantive contribution ofBeyond Ghosts and Dreamsto the study of migration in the Gulf is powerfully supported by the ways in which Wright 'passes the mic' and allows migrants to speak throughout, even allowing them to make their mark on the text. One gets the sense that Wright has been exceptionally faithful to her interlocutors and tells a story that would be recognisable to them."—Lindsey Stephenson, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies"In dealing with migrants' lives and the biopolitics of the Indian state at a granular level, Between Dreams and Ghosts does an excellent job at uncovering the agency embedded in labor migration networks, often concealed by a mounting neoliberal corporate logic that naturalizes both labor inequalities and state intervention."—Nelida Fuccaro, Mashriq & Mahjar"Between Dreams and Ghosts is an essential text for both undergraduate and graduate students of South Asian studies, Gulf and Middle East Studies, political economy, labor, and migration; it also provides an important intervention for a range of non- academic audiences, including policy makers, journalists, labor organizers, and human rights groups."—Neha Vora, Political and Legal Anthropology ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Beyond Surplus and Scarcity Part I: Of Mangoes and Men One: Protecting Vulnerable Citizens Two: Cultivating Entrepreneurs Three: Building Influential Networks Part II: Connective Substances Four: Making Kin with Gold Five: The Rig and the Temple Part III: The Weight of Tradition Six: Blowing Sand Seven: The Demon of Unsafe Acts Conclusion: Enduring Debts

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Book SynopsisAlternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the pressures of the art market and the state's regulatory regimes. Since the 1980s, political, economic, and intellectual forces have driven Iran's creative class toward increasingly original forms of artmaking not meant for official venues. Instead, these art forms appear in private homes with "trusted" audiences, derelict buildings, leftover urban zones, and remote natural sites. While many of these venues operate independently, others are fully sanctioned by the state. Drawing on interviews with over a hundred artists, gallerists, theater experts, musicians, and designers, Pamela Karimi throws into sharp relief the extraordinary art and performance activities that have received little attention outside Iran. Attending to nonconforming curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitly subversive performances, Karimi discloses the push-and-pull between the art community and the authorities, and discusses myriad instances of tentative coalition as opposed to outright partnership or uncompromising resistance. Illustrated with more than 120 full-color images, this book provides entry into unique artistic experiences without catering to voyeuristic curiosity around Iran's often-perceived "underground" culture.Trade Review"When politics becomes soul-craft, as it has in Islamic Iran over the last four decades, every aspect of life, each form of aesthetics, and every discursive practice becomes a potential locus of resistance, even rebellion. Alternative Iran is an informed and illuminating kaleidoscope of this dynamic culture pulsating beneath the dour Procrustean proclivities of the regime."—Abbas Milani, Stanford University"Only Pamela Karimi could have written this book, a sophisticated scholar able to stay both outside and inside Iran and the Western-dominated art world. She offers a richly illustrated book that archives temporary artworks in private homes, deserted basements, construction-sites, excessive landscapes, unimagined urban spaces, and reveals them as practices of hope for a more democratic Iran, a cosmopolitan art market, and a peaceful world."—Esra Akcan, Cornell University"Pamela Karimi's timely and important book highlights the charged agencies of contemporary Iranian artists in shaping their realities. Alternative Iran offers unexpected, impactful, and sophisticated insights into the contemporary art scene in Iran that necessarily subvert the dominant narrative imposed by and from both inside officials and outside hegemonic perceptions."—Nada Shabout, University of North Texas"Pamela Karimi brings together different spheres of artistic endeavor to show that, censorship and official puritanism notwithstanding, Iranian artists continue to be creative and find ways to express this creativity. Alternative Iran affords us a fascinating analysis of the continuing cultural effervescence observable in Iranian society."—Houchang Chehabi, University of St. Andrews"One can always read artistic production against the background of a particular place, time, or culture. But rarely do those elements take on such an important role as they do in this analysis of alternative art in contemporary Iran. Space, venue (sometimes literally hidden underground), and context all figure crucially in the analysis of recent forms of artistic expression that evade, co-opt, or obliquely challenge both the structure of state censorship and the Iranian regime. Karimi treats a broad range of artistic expression in supporting her contention that religious, cultural, and political constraints help shape the uniqueness of contemporary Iranian art.... Highly recommended."—J. L. Miller, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: The Different Senses of the Alternative 1. Invisibility: Art in Concealed and Loosely Covert Spaces 2. Escapism: Critical Engagements with Remote Natural Sites 3. Ephemerality: Temporal Interjections in the City 4. Improvisation: Artful Curation and Spatial Reconfiguration in and out of Conventional Sites Epilogue: Alternative Iran: Allures and Aversions

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Book SynopsisMore than one million Indians travel annually to work in oil projects in the Gulf, one of the few international destinations where men without formal education can find lucrative employment. Between Dreams and Ghosts follows their migration, taking readers to sites in India, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, from villages to oilfields and back again. Engaging all parties involved—the migrants themselves, the recruiting agencies that place them, the government bureaucrats that regulate their emigration, and the corporations that hire them—Andrea Wright examines labor migration as a social process as it reshapes global capitalism. With this book, Wright demonstrates how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colonial capitalism. As workers navigate bureaucratic hurdles to migration and working conditions in the Gulf, they in turn influence and inform state policies and corporate practices. Placing migrants at the center of global capital rather than its periphery, Wright shows how migrants are not passive bodies at the mercy of abstract forces—and reveals through their experiences a new understanding of contemporary resource extraction, governance, and global labor.Trade Review"Drawing upon extraordinarily rich fieldwork and a deep knowledge of the region, Andrea Wright brilliantly weaves the transnational connections between India and the Gulf. Between Dreams and Ghosts is a landmark contribution that pushes our understanding of oil, labor, and migrant lives in new and unexpected directions." —Adam Hanieh, author of Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East"Andrea Wright's elegantly crafted ethnography of the lived experiences of Indian migrants to the Gulf oil industry is a telling narrative of the poetics and politics of labor migration. Rich with multiple perspectives and based on extensive fieldwork, Between Dreams and Ghosts stands out as a sensitive and stunning account." —Anand Yang, author of Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia"Andrea Wright's compelling work shows that the oil and money on which so many studies focus is inextricably entangled with the bodies and aspirations of labor migrants. Between Dreams and Ghosts takes readers deep into the transnational swirl of moving people and objects that link the Gulf to India." —Douglas Rogers, author of The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism"Wright presents a fascinating, creatively researched study of Indian migrant workers in the oil industry of the Gulf states... Getting access to the exploiters as well as those exploited—and their ghost stories—is a tribute to the author's daring strategies of research. ... Highly recommended."—C. M. Henry, CHOICE"Even in a book that is in many ways fuelled by oil, the perspective of Wright's story is a very fresh take on the life-worlds that exist inside this massive industry. InBetween Dreams and Ghosts, we get to think about the materiality of the oil industry, and how the materiality itself takes on a transnational and even metaphysical life. The substantive contribution ofBeyond Ghosts and Dreamsto the study of migration in the Gulf is powerfully supported by the ways in which Wright 'passes the mic' and allows migrants to speak throughout, even allowing them to make their mark on the text. One gets the sense that Wright has been exceptionally faithful to her interlocutors and tells a story that would be recognisable to them."—Lindsey Stephenson, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies"In dealing with migrants' lives and the biopolitics of the Indian state at a granular level, Between Dreams and Ghosts does an excellent job at uncovering the agency embedded in labor migration networks, often concealed by a mounting neoliberal corporate logic that naturalizes both labor inequalities and state intervention."—Nelida Fuccaro, Mashriq & Mahjar"Between Dreams and Ghosts is an essential text for both undergraduate and graduate students of South Asian studies, Gulf and Middle East Studies, political economy, labor, and migration; it also provides an important intervention for a range of non- academic audiences, including policy makers, journalists, labor organizers, and human rights groups."—Neha Vora, Political and Legal Anthropology ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: Beyond Surplus and Scarcity Part I: Of Mangoes and Men One: Protecting Vulnerable Citizens Two: Cultivating Entrepreneurs Three: Building Influential Networks Part II: Connective Substances Four: Making Kin with Gold Five: The Rig and the Temple Part III: The Weight of Tradition Six: Blowing Sand Seven: The Demon of Unsafe Acts Conclusion: Enduring Debts

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Book SynopsisA powerful examination of soulful journeys made to recover memory and recuperate stolen pasts in the face of unspeakable histories. Survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 took refuge across the globe. Traumatized by unspeakable brutalities, the idea of returning to their homeland was unthinkable. But decades later, some children and grandchildren felt compelled to travel back, having heard stories of family wholeness in beloved homes and of cherished ancestral towns and villages once in Ottoman Armenia, today in the Republic of Turkey. Hoping to satisfy spiritual yearnings, this new generation called themselves pilgrims—and their journeys, pilgrimages. Carel Bertram joined scores of these pilgrims on over a dozen pilgrimages, and amassed accounts from hundreds more who made these journeys. In telling their stories, A House in the Homeland documents how pilgrims encountered the ancestral house, village, or town as both real and metaphorical centerpieces of family history. Bertram recounts the moving, restorative connections pilgrims made, and illuminates how the ancestral house, as a spiritual place, offers an opening to a wellspring of humanity in sites that might otherwise be defined solely by tragic loss. As an exploration of the powerful links between memory and place, house and homeland, rupture and continuity, these Armenian stories reflect the resilience of diaspora in the face of the savage reaches of trauma, separation, and exile in ways that each of us, whatever our history, can recognize.Trade Review"Original and engrossing, A House in the Homeland relates individual experiences that resonate with universal themes of family, trauma, and home. Carel Bertram's gifts of empathy and storytelling make for a book that is at once heartbreaking and inspiring. Essential for anyone interested in place, memory, and mass violence."—Heghnar Watenpaugh, author of The Missing Pages"Carel Bertram's engrossing and well-researched story of Armenian pilgrimages is of universal importance, resonating with all of us searching for our own personal history and our place within it. This book is not just important to Armenians, but valuable to anyone interested in understanding where their family comes from."—Esther Safran Foer, author of I Want You to Know We're Still Here"Deeply knowledgeable about memory, trauma, pilgrimage, and the sacred, Carel Bertram offers both scholarly expertise and an eloquent, moving narrative. A House in the Homeland illuminates the mutually transformative links between the lost pre-Genocide homes and current homelands of Armenian pilgrims. A truly wonderful book."—Khachig Tölölyan, founding editor of Diaspora"A House in the Homeland speaks to a pressing concern for many Armenians: How to sustain memory of an event that is difficult to trace on its landscape, and which is officially denied by its perpetrator. Bertram has shown that the gap between historical fact and material evidence can be spanned by memorialization and pilgrimage, by witness and dialogue, and for her interlocutors, by keeping their ancestors alive through their family memory-stories."—Aram G. Sarkisian, Material Religion"A House in the Homeland is a remarkable book that offers a unique insight into the thoughts, feelings and deeds of the Armenian genocide survivors and their descendants – the people who have lived their lives in the shade of tragic events that more than a century ago changed the course of Armenian history. Bertram tells a passionate story that engages a reader emotionally as well as intellectually. Skillfully written, her work is highly informative but, at the same time, leaves a reader wanting more – more precious stories of human courage, perseverance, search for meaning and the power of memory."—Konrad Siekierski, Memory Studies"This moving ethnographic study documents Armenian Americans' pilgrimages to eastern Turkey to visit the sites where their ancestors experienced the traumas of the 1915 genocide by Turkish authorities and the related attempts to erase Armenian identity from Turkish society....Including histories, songs, poetry, literature, and personal memories—many originally in Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish—this enthralling book shares these travelers' stories as they explore their 'Armenian-ness'.... Highly recommended."—V. Clement, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: Where Memory Takes Place 1. The Family Mansion 2. An Erased Village and an Inhabited House 3. The House and Its Sacred Geography 4. Music as Sacred Memory and the Intrusion of the Profane 5. The House-Place and Memory-Stories 6. The Emergence of Rituals 7. Relics: Engaging the Spirits 8. Communion: A Unification of Souls 9. Sacred and Profane: A Poetic Encounter 10. Votives: For Reaching Home 11. Votives: For the Restoration of Something Lost 12. Ex-Votos: Gratitude 13. Shrines: Making Visible the Invisible 14. Blessings: At My Father's House 15. Homeland Music Performs the Village 16. Village Music Performs the Homeland 17. The Bus: Traveling Through a Trauma-scape 18. The Bus: Traveling as Wholeness 19. What Remains: "The Last Armenian" 20. What Remains: Armenians "Everywhere" 21. What Remains: A Homeland of Mirrors Conclusion: Conclusion: Ethnography as Methodology; Poetry as an Analytical Framework

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Book SynopsisThe true story of a vigilante group of Holocaust survivors who conspired to kill six million Germans Nakam (Hebrew for "vengeance") tells the story of "the Avengers" (Nokmim), a group of young Holocaust survivors led by poet and resistance fighter Abba Kovner, who undertook a mission of revenge against Germany following the crimes of the Holocaust. Motivated by both the atrocities they had endured and the realization that murderous antisemitic attacks on survivors continued long after the Nazi surrender, these fifty young men and women sought retaliation at a level commensurate with the devastation caused by the Holocaust, making clear to the world that Jewish blood would no longer be shed with impunity. Had they been successful, they would have poisoned city water supplies and loaves of bread distributed to German POWs, with the aim of killing six million Germans. Kovner and his followers went to great lengths to carry out their plans, going so far as to obtain the schematics for Nuremberg's municipal water system, secure large quantities of poison, infiltrate a POW camp and the bakery that supplied it, and distribute poisoned bread to prisoners—but their plots were ultimately stymied. Most of the members of Nakam eventually returned to Israel, where for decades many of them refused to speak publicly about their roles in the group. While the Avengers' story began to come to light in the 1980s, details of the relations between the group and Zionist leadership and the motivations of its members have remained unknown. Drawing on rich archival sources and in-depth interviews with the Avengers in their later years, historian Dina Porat examines the formation of the group and the clash between the formative humanistic values held by its members and their unrealized plans for violent retribution. Trade Review"Completely engrossing, Nakam reads like the best detective novel, while also being a first-class work of historical research."—Saul Friedländer, author of Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945"A thoughtful and meticulously researched study of the postwar Jewish plan to murder six million Germans in retaliation for the Holocaust, a topic that had been written out of history for too long because of its moral ambiguity and political sensitivity. A must-read for anyone interested in post-traumatic recovery of victims after genocide.—Laura Jockusch, author of Collect and Record!: Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe"This elegantly written book gives pause to ponder how great and awful can be the consequences when the law fails to protect those most in need of protection.—David Engel, author of The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Sholem Schwarzbard 1926-1927"Written by one of Israel's most eminent historians, this fascinating book demonstrates the impossibility of just retribution for genocide, and the vast gap between the integrity of the Avengers and the horrific nature of their goal. Nakam is a deeply-researched, empathetic, and compelling account of the men and women who vowed to avenge the murderers of their families and communities."—Omer Bartov, author of Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past"In the wake of the Holocaust, the overwhelming priority of Jewish activists in Europe and the Palestine Mandate was the rescue and emigration of survivors and the founding of a Jewish state. Nakam tells the story of the most notable exception to these efforts: the close-knit group of former resistance fighters who resolved on killing six million Germans in a stunning act of vengeance. A deeply-researched, insightful, but also empathetic study."—Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland"This meticulous and empathetic study gives an overlooked chapter of Jewish history its due."—Publishers Weekly"[Nakam is] part riveting tale, part scholarly disquisition. Porat thoroughly and sensitively interrogates their motivations, their tactics and strategies, and the ramifications of their highly controversial actions, which never fully materialized. Carefully incorporating dozens of interviews with the now-nonagenarian remnants of the group, Porat, a renowned Holocaust scholar and onetime chief historian of Israel's Holocaust museum, adroitly surveys the origins and ultimate futility of the innate human instinct for revenge."—Michael M. Rosen, Washington Examiner"[Porat's] writing is scholarly yet accessible, tender yet bold. It draws on hitherto unstudied archival sources and in-depth interviews with the surviving avengers themselves....Nakamdelivers new insights about war, trauma, healing, and the ethics of revenge."—Linda F. Burhardt, Jewish Book Council"The book sets out to solve several historical mysteries. With the drive to avenge, the means to avenge, the targets identified, and the tools to do so: 'Why didn't they manage to take vengeance? Who betrayed them and why?' And how was it possible that this seemingly warm, humane, ethical group of individuals was equipped to carry out such a barbaric plan? This is where Porat's expertise regarding the Yishuv and its relationship to the Holocaust helps to inform the power dynamics at play after the war."—Avinoam Patt, Yad Vashem"[The Nokmim] were a secretive group, survivors of the Holocaust, who refused to divulge any hard facts about their activities. Dina Porat, a professor of modern Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, has researched their story in meticulous (and, it should be said, reverential) detail."—Colin Shindler, History Today

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Book SynopsisA National Endowment for Democracy Notable Book of 2022 Protest has been a key method of political claim-making in Jordan from the late Ottoman period to the present day. More than moments of rupture within normal-time politics, protests have been central to challenging state power, as well as reproducing it—and the spatial dynamics of protests play a central role in the construction of both state and society. With this book, Jillian Schwedler considers how space and geography influence protests and repression, and, in challenging conventional narratives of Hashemite state-making, offers the first in-depth study of rebellion in Jordan. Based on twenty-five years of field research, Protesting Jordan examines protests as they are situated in the built environment, bringing together considerations of networks, spatial imaginaries, space and place-making, and political geographies at local, national, regional, and global scales. Schwedler considers the impact of time and temporality in the lifecycles of individual movements. Through a mixed interpretive methodology, this book illuminates the geographies of power and dissent and the spatial practices of protest and repression, highlighting the political stakes of competing narratives about Jordan's past, present, and future.Trade Review"Protesting Jordan offers readers of Arab politics and contentious politics alike a narrative of how protest shapes how states reproduce their power and, in turn, reshape protest. Jillian Schwedler blends a deep immersion in the Middle East with a firm grasp of contentious politics theory in this thought-provoking book."—Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University"Superbly researched, Protesting Jordan provides a fascinating and groundbreaking alternative history of Jordan. Jillian Schwedler skillfully unpacks and challenges traditional accounts of state-making in Jordan as a top-down process. An essential read for those seeking to better understand Jordan's history and how protests maintain state power."—Janine Clark, University of Toronto"Schwedler has crafted an extraordinarily rich portrait of the creation of Jordan and the fortunes of the Hashemite monarchy through the lens of those who contested its policies, its institutions, and sometimes even its very existence. In doing so, she demonstrates that protest has been a routine part of politics in Jordan since before the modern state was established."—Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs"It's not just the best book I've read about Jordan... but also one of the very best political science books I've read this year... Protesting Jordan should be a must read for scholars of the Middle East and of comparative politics more broadly, as well as for analysts, journalists and policymakers trying to understand the country's politics."—Marc Lynch, Abu Aardvark"[Protesting Jordan] gives a detailed and rich account of Jordan's social and political history, showing how repertoires of protest and repression created, transformed, and continue to afect state and society in Jordan. But the book is also written in a way that makes it essential reading for any scholar interested in protests, repression, and state development – not just in Jordan, but indeed anywhere else."—Curtis R. Ryan, APSA MENA Newsletter"Protesting Jordan is an important contribution to the study of protest. It is a cry and demand not only for scholars to carry on the critical work of studying popular struggle to illuminate its social significance but to forge novel approaches to understand the state, its political economy and urban form."—Deen Sharp, APSA MENA Newsletter"Schwedler's work pushes us to think about the effects of social movements above and beyond narrow conceptions of success or failure; the book traces and convincingly demonstrates the myriad ways that regimes learn from protest activity and deploy repressive state power through the construction (or lack thereof) of cities and communities."—Summer Forester, APSA MENA Newsletter"Protesting Jordan is a wonderful read and an ambitious model for writing contentious politics into political history. ... Schwedler is one of our field's great ethnographic writers, and her keen eye for meaningful details and almost-imperceptible shifts in power relations rendered this routine set of protests into powerful grounds for theorizing about the everyday work of contention."—Chantal Berman, APSA MENA Newsletter"Schwedler's approach is consciously interpretive and inductive....[A]nyone interested in interested in the relationship between popular opposition and state formation in Jordan will find a wealth of new empirical material and fresh analysis here."—Laurie A. Brand, Middle East Journal"Schwedler's scholarship shows how and why in-depth local knowledges are important: certainly to better understand local contexts, but also in order to reflect on 'generalist' scholarship and 'broader' theoretical debates."—Andrea Teti, Mediterranean Politics"Throughout the work, Schwedler challenges readers to rethink the politics of modern protests by interrogating their meaning under Jordan's authoritarian power structure. Protests are not static attacks on normality; they are frequent and normal expressions of commonplace struggles. They enable Jordanians to assert claims and challenge their regime's rules, but they also elicit autocratic responses. Protests represent frontiers where state power is exerted and negotiated and where the state itself becomes seen."—Sean L. Yom, Middle East Research and Information ProjectTable of Contents1. The Shifting Political Stakes of Protest 2. Transforming Transjordan 3. Becoming Amman: From Periphery to Center 4. Jordanization, the Neoliberal State, and the Retreat and Return of Protest 5. An Ethnography of Place and the Politics of Routine Protests 6. Jordan in the Time of the Arab Uprisings 7. The Techniques and Evolving Spatial Dynamics of Protest and Repression 8. Protest and Order in Militarized Spaces 9. Protesting Global Aspirations

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking and profoundly moving exploration of the Armenian genocide, told through the traces left in the memories and on the bodies of its women survivors. Foremost among the images of the Armenian Genocide is the specter of tattooed Islamized Armenian women. Blue tribal tattoos that covered face and body signified assimilation into Muslim Bedouin and Kurdish households. Among Armenians, the tattooed survivor was seen as a living ethnomartyr or, alternatively, a national stain, and the bodies of women and children figured centrally within the Armenian communal memory and humanitarian imaginary. In Remnants, these tattooed and scar-bearing bodies reveal a larger history, as the lived trauma of genocide is understood through bodies, skin, and—in what remains of those lives a century afterward—bones. With this book, Elyse Semerdjian offers a feminist reading of the Armenian Genocide. She explores how the Ottoman Armenian communal body was dis-membered, disfigured, and later re-membered by the survivor community. Gathering individual memories and archival fragments, she writes a deeply personal history, and issues a call to break open the archival record in order to embrace affect and memory. Traces of women and children rescued during and after the war are reconstructed to center the quietest voices in the historical record. This daring work embraces physical and archival remnants, the imprinted negatives of once living bodies, as a space of radical possibility within Armenian prosthetic memory and a necessary way to recognize the absence that remains.Trade Review"Remnants is a rich cultural history of the Armenian Genocide and a powerful investigation of patriarchal assault on the female body. An original work with broad meaning for all histories of mass violence and genocide, and their traumatic aftermaths."—Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate"Elyse Semerdjian has authored a brilliant book. Remnants is at once powerful, moving, engaging, and convincing. Its turn to bodies and voices, remnants and fragments—away from the traditional archive—restores the stories of those most silenced and forgotten, and shows how gender is pivotal to genocidal thinking. A real tour de force."—Beth Baron, author of The Orphan Scandal"Remnants is the book we've all been waiting for—breathtaking plot, methodological novelty without any accompanying conceit, theoretically and factually grounded. Elyse Semerdjian's work will prove regenerative in the best possible way."—Lerna Ekmekcioglu, author of Recovering Armenia"A very ethical book, demonstrating to all of us how one can recover a violent past with professionalism and grace instead of rhetoric and partisanship. Remnants recovers and gives agency to women who were silenced in history."—Fatma Muge Gocek author of Denial of ViolenceTable of Contents1. Zabel's Pen: Gender, Body Snatching, and the Armenian Genocide 2. Weaponizing Shame: Dis-memberment of the Armenian Collective Body 3. Rescuing "Kittens" in the Desert: The Armenian Humanitarian Relief Effort 4. Recovering Survivors in Aleppo, Replanting Bodies in Syria's Armenian Colonies 5. "Changelings" and "Halflings": Finding the Armenian Buried inside the Islamized Child 6. Aurora's Body, Humanitarianism, and the Pornography of Suffering 7. What Lies beneath Grandma's Tattoos? Traumatic Memories of Inked Skin 8. Wounded Whiteness: Branded Captives from the Old West to the Ottoman East 9. Removing the "Brand of Shame," Rehabilitating Armenian Skin 10. Counternarratives of Tribal Tattoos and Survivor Agency 11. If These Bones Could Speak: Early Armenian Pilgrimages to Dayr al-Zur 12. Feeling Their Way through the Desert: Affective Itineraries of "Non-Sites of Memory" 13. Bone Memory: Community, Ritual, and Memory Work in the Syrian Desert

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Book SynopsisThe November 1970 coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power fundamentally transformed cultural production in Syria. A comprehensive intellectual, ideological, and political project—a Ba'thist cultural revolution—sought to align artistic endeavors with the ideological interests of the regime. The ensuing agonistic struggle pitted official aesthetics of power against alternative modes of creative expression that could evade or ignore the effects of the state. With this book, Max Weiss offers the first cultural and intellectual history of Ba'thist Syria, from the coming to power of Hafiz al-Asad, through the transitional period under Bashar al-Asad, and continuing up through the Syria War. Revolutions Aesthetic reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life. Engaging rich original sources—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—Weiss highlights themes crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the course of the past fifty years.Trade Review"Innovative, meticulous, and brilliantly written, Revolutions Aesthetic will serve as the standard bearer for studies on the modern cultural history of the Arab world and the broader Middle East. Max Weiss's work has profound implications for understanding the relationship of cultural producers and the state within postcolonial revolutionary systems around the world."—Kamran Rastegar, Tufts University"Revolutions Aesthetic intervenes in a rich conversation about 20th- and early 21st-century cultural production in Syria's evolving dictatorship. Max Weiss's attention to gender dynamics and competing artistic visions, as well as his admirably lucid prose, make this book a valuable contribution to understanding the relationship between politics and aesthetics."—Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago"Max Weiss dives into the history of the revolution's aesthetic, which, like a safe for the imagination, senses, and freedom of Syrians, the dictator has failed to melt into his full metal statue. Revolutions Aesthetic enters the Syrian cinematic shot to observe and understand how it works."—Ossama Mohammed, director of Stars in Broad Daylight and Sacrifices"For readers who are interested in the intersection between culture and politics in the context of Syria and the Middle East, this book is a must-read."—Shaoqun Lian, China International Strategy Review

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Book SynopsisThe Unsettled Plain studies agrarian life in the Ottoman Empire to understand the making of the modern world. Over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the environmental transformation of the Ottoman countryside became intertwined with migration and displacement. Muslim refugees, mountain nomads, families deported in the Armenian Genocide, and seasonal workers from all over the empire endured hardship, exile, and dispossession. Their settlement and survival defined new societies forged in the provincial spaces of the late Ottoman frontier. Through these movements, Chris Gratien reconstructs the remaking of Çukurova, a region at the historical juncture of Anatolia and Syria, and illuminates radical changes brought by the modern state, capitalism, war, and technology. Drawing on both Ottoman Turkish and Armenian sources, Gratien brings rural populations into the momentous events of the period: Ottoman reform, Mediterranean capitalism, the First World War, and Turkish nation-building. Through the ecological perspectives of everyday people in Çukurova, he charts how familiar facets of quotidian life, like malaria, cotton cultivation, labor, and leisure, attained modern manifestations. As the history of this pivotal region hidden on the geopolitical map reveals, the remarkable ecological transformation of late Ottoman society configured the trajectory of the contemporary societies of the Middle East.Trade Review"The Unsettled Plain is environmental history at its finest: not just a history of rivers, mountains, and soils or climates and diseases, but all of those and something more. Chris Gratien tells the story of an empire, meticulously researched, exceptionally insightful—all grounded in the lives and lands of Çukurova."—Sam White, author of The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire"The Unsettled Plain is a pathbreaking book that takes Ottoman studies to a new level. Chris Gratien's vivid account of how the Çukurova region was settled tackles big questions about the state, capitalism, and environmental factors, without ever losing sight of the individuals who bore the brunt of the consequences."—Reşat Kasaba, author of A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees"Chris Gratien charts an important new path for critical environmental history with The Unsettled Plain, which reflects scrupulous research in at least eight countries and multiple languages. A must-read for anyone interested in the dizzyingly complex relations between real people and the environment of which they are part."—Diana Davis, author of The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge"[The Unsettled Plain] is a wonderful contribution to our knowledge of Ottoman history. The author gets us thinking about change as experienced by the non-elite population, and allows us to ask to what extent non-urban populations are shaped by change itself, as well as the shapers of change."—Usman Butt, Middle East MonitorHistorians of the Ottoman Empire and environmental historians in general will certainly recognize the importance of The Unsettled Plain. But non-specialists interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of history also stand to benefit from it.... Indeed, Gratien's book is just the latest to demonstrate how sophisticated the field of Middle East environmental history has become."—Isacar A. Bolaños, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"The Unsettled Plain offers a model for writing environmental history, especially for anyone looking to write histories with rural and ordinary people at their center. Gratien brings together an impressively wide range of evidence, including folklore as well as archival sources in multiple languages, to highlight rural people and places, and the relationships between them.... I hope others will follow Gratien's lead in attending carefully to ordinary people in the countryside in writing histories of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East."—Camille Lyans Cole, International Journal of Middle East Studies"This study is a microhistory of modern Turkey focusing on Çukurova (Cilicia), a province in the southwest, and how it was transformed through official policies.... Gratien is an excellent historian who brings enviable biomedical knowledge to this study. Recommended."—A. J. Papalas, CHOICE"By consistently incorporating folk songs, laments, and oral accounts, Gratien not only eloquently displays pastoralists' forms of resistance and resilience against the Ottoman reform movement in Çukurova but also masterfully narrates perceptions and worldviews that have been silenced in the state archive. This use of a wide range of unconventional historical sources makesTheUnsettled Plainan innovative environmental history."—Zozan Pehlivan, H-EnvironmentTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Upland Empire: The Indigenous Ecology of Ottoman Cilicia 2. The Stench of Progress: Ecology and Settlement on the Ottoman Frontier, 1856–78 3. Second Nature in the Second Egypt: Capital, Ecology, and Intercommunality in Late Ottoman Cilicia, 1878–1914 4. Fallowed Years: War, Environment, and the End of Empire, 1914–23 5. A Modern Life of Transhumance: Change and Continuity in the Republic of Turkey, 1923–56

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Book SynopsisArabic Glitch explores an alternative origin story of twenty-first century technological innovation in digital politics—one centered on the Middle East and the 2011 Arab uprisings. Developed from an archive of social media data collected over the decades following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, this book interrogates how the logic of programming technology influences and shapes social movements. Engaging revolutionary politics, Arab media, and digital practice in form, method, and content, Laila Shereen Sakr formulates a media theory that advances the concept of the glitch as a disruptive media affordance. She employs data analytics to analyze tweets, posts, and blogs to describe the political culture of social media, and performs the results under the guise of the Arabic-speaking cyborg VJ Um Amel. Playing with multiple voices that span across the virtual and the real, Sakr argues that there is no longer a divide between the virtual and embodied: both bodies and data are physically, socially, and energetically actual. Are we cyborgs or citizens—or both? This book teaches us how a region under transformation became a vanguard for new thinking about digital systems: the records they keep, the lives they impact, and how to create change from within.Trade Review"Innovative and original, Arabic Glitch interrupts the theoretical silence around Arab technocultures. Channeling the academic, artistic, activist, and technologist, Laila Shereen Sakr embodies the contemporary hybridity of Arab cultural production, inaugurating a rightful place for it in the canon."—Adel Iskandar, Simon Fraser University"Laila Shereen Sakr's breathtaking work will transform how the social sciences and humanities understand cyber-activism, transnational solidarity, and collective power. Arabic Glitch is the book interdisciplinary scholars and activists across the world have been waiting for."—Nadine Naber, University of Illinois at Chicago"Laila Shereen Sakr and her avatar, VJ Um Amel, embrace the glitch—clouds of unknowing, slippery loops, cracks and failures of systems—to better see the materiality of technology, power, and revolution. Aligning theory and practice, installation and performance, Sakr mobilizes media art and digital activist scenes across the Middle East, North Africa, and the internet."—Alexandra Juhasz, Brooklyn College CUNY"Arabic Glitch is an essential addition to the critical discourse on power and surveillance in the age of the internet. Laila Shereen Sakr decodes the specificity of language and cultural identity on digital praxis, boldly articulating how digital data can enable a distinct form of ocular awareness."—Dr. Omar Kholeif, author of Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTsTable of ContentsIntroduction: A Posthuman Techno-Feminist Praxis One: Glitch in the Age of Technoculture Two: Arab Data Bodies Three: Digital Activism Four: Aggregation as Archive Five: Art Practice Conclusion: Fix Your Own Democracy

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Book SynopsisIn April 1909, two waves of massacres shook the province of Adana, located in the southern Anatolia region of modern-day Turkey, killing more than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000 Muslims. The central Ottoman government failed to prosecute the main culprits, a miscarriage of justice that would have repercussions for years to come. Despite the significance of these events and the extent of violence and destruction, the Adana Massacres are often left out of historical narratives. The Horrors of Adana offers one of the first close examinations of these events, analyzing sociopolitical and economic transformations that culminated in a cataclysm of violence. Bedross Der Matossian provides voice and agency to all involved in the massacres—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Drawing on primary sources in a dozen languages, he develops an interdisciplinary approach to understand the rumors and emotions, public spheres and humanitarian interventions that together informed this complex event. Ultimately, through consideration of the Adana Massacres in micro-historical detail, this book offers an important macrocosmic understanding of ethnic violence, illuminating how and why ordinary people can become perpetrators.Trade Review"The Horrors of Adana is a truly groundbreaking and highly nuanced exploration of intercommunal, sectarian, and nationalist violence in the late Ottoman Empire. A must-read for scholars of the modern Middle East."—Ussama Makdisi, Rice University, author of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World"The Horrors of Adana is an outstanding analysis of a massacre never before deeply studied. Bedross Der Matossian offers a thorough inquiry into the perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and social-political context, useful to all those interested in understanding processes of mass violence."—Jacques Semelin, Sciences Po Paris, author of Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide"With The Horrors of Adana, the Adana Massacres get their own story, a story that needs telling. Bedross Der Matossian's deeply researched and engagingly argued book situates Adana in a longer trajectory of 'forgotten' massacres and as part of Ottoman history more broadly."—Michelle Tusan, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, author of The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide: Humanitarianism and Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill"Der Matossian's well-written and meticulously researched book, utilizing rare documentation from fifteen different archives, employing an interdisciplinary perspective and an objective, conversational tone, offers insights into this untold history."—Eleni Sakellis The National Herald"Der Matossian draws on an impressive array of sources in Armenian, Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Ladino, Russian, and both Ottoman and modern Turkish to paint an all-encompassing picture of the events from the perspectives of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders."—Samuel Sweeney, The American Conservative"Der Matossian himself is rather modest about his aims and achievements, but I do not have to be, so here goes: The Horrors of Adana is the first broad, deep, and analytical take on the Adana massacres. The introduction alone is a tour de force... The author's detailed micro level analysis of the actions and reactions of perpetrators, bystander, and victims – who fight back, outnumbered and outgunned – is dispassionate, evenhanded, and yet reads like a thriller."—Matthias Bjørnlund, International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies"By analyzing the structure of violence from various perspectives, Professor Der Matossian was able to bring attention to the spiral of violence that occurred in Adana while explaining the multi-faceted, complex phenomenon of massacre and violence."—Natalie Agazarian, Hye Sharzhoom"The Horrors of Adana is a rich work on an episode which has never before been investigated so closely.... Even for readers new to the region and its history, the nuanced and multi-layered presentation of this complex time period is engaging. It also offers much to think about in echoing other places and our own era."—Nareg Seferian, Armenian Review"Written by the pioneer historian who has worked on one of the most horrendous events that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century, The Horrors of Adana would surely be an insightful and commendable contribution to the vast literature on ethnoreligious conflict, massacres, genocide, and ethnic conflict."—Önder Uçar, New Perspectives on Turkey"This beautifully written, carefully constructed, and convincingly argued book is based on deep reading of archival and published sources and a strong command of the existing, multilingual literature, and it is judicious in its conclusions. Der Matossian not only deploys the best tools of his own historical profession but appreciates the insights, findings, and techniques of qualitative political science and historical sociology. This is a major and original contribution to Armenian historiography, late Ottoman history, and the comparative study of ethnic violence."—Ronald Grigor Suny, American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisPracticing Sectarianism explores the imaginative and contradictory ways that people live sectarianism. The book's essays use the concept as an animating principle within a variety of sites across Lebanon and its diasporas and over a range of historical periods. With contributions from historians and anthropologists, this volume reveals the many ways sectarianism is used to exhibit, imagine, or contest power: What forms of affective pull does it have on people and communities? What epistemological work does it do as a concept? How does it function as a marker of social difference? Examining social interaction, each essay analyzes how people experience sectarianism, sometimes pushing back, sometimes evading it, sometimes deploying it strategically, to a variety of effects and consequences. The collection advances an understanding of sectarianism simultaneously constructed and experienced, a slippery and changeable concept with material effects. And even as the book's focus is Lebanon, its analysis fractures the association of sectarianism with the nation-state and suggests possibilities that can travel to other sites. Practicing Sectarianism, taken as a whole, argues that sectarianism can only be fully understood—and dismantled—if we first take it seriously as a practice.Trade Review"Bringing together a set of brilliant reflections on the landscapes of everyday sectarianism in Lebanon, Practicing Sectarianism will be an invaluable resource for anthropologists, historians, and all those interested in the making and meanings of community in the modern Middle East and beyond. A truly splendid book."—Andrew Arsan, University of Cambridge"This ambitious volume puzzles through the everyday lives of sectarianism to offer exciting, and at times counter-intuitive, findings about this complex discourse of power and identity. Bringing together top anthropologists and historians, Practicing Sectarianism draws on the best of both disciplines to reframe the question of sect and sectarianism in Lebanon and beyond."—Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University"Practicing Sectarianism subtly kills the concept that won't die, situating sectarianism at once in material reality and in dynamic social construction. Provocative, incisive, grounded in lived realities, the book delivers a powerful antidote to those who see Lebanon simplistically through the lens of religion. A necessary read."—Suad Joseph, University of California, Davis"A crucial criticism of the everyday practices and discrepant experiences of sectarianism by a range of brilliant scholars."—Ussama Makdisi, Rice UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Practicing Sectarianism in Lebanon —Lara Deeb, Tsolin Nalbantian, and Nadya Sbaiti 1. No Room for This Story: Education and the Limits of Sectarianism during the Mandate Era —Nadya Sbaiti 2. Negotiating Citizenship: Shi'i Families and the Ja'fari Shari'a Courts —Linda Sayed 3. The Archive Is Burning: Law, Unknowability, and the Curation of History —Maya Mikdashi 4. Donating in the Name of the Nation: Charity, Sectarianism, and the Mahjar —Reem Bailony 5. Along and beyond Sect? Olfactory Aesthetics and Rum Orthodox Identity —Roxana Maria Arãs 6. From Murder in New York to Salvation from Beirut: Armenian Intrasectarianism —Tsolin Nalbantian 7. Inequality and Identity: Social Class, Urban Space, and Sect —Joanne Randa Nucho 8. When Exposure Is Not Enough: Sectarianism as a Response to Mixed Marriage —Lara Deeb

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