New Books in Middle Eastern Studies

Beth Derderian, Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East Studies and Anthropology at Brandeis, studies museums, art, and heritage in the Middle East. She discusses the Louvre Abu Dhabi as a case of museum franchising and market power. Short scenes and ethnography reveal shifting notions of good art, institutional growth in the UAE, and how capital reshapes representation and erases difference.

Michael Allan, Associate Professor at the University of Oregon and author of Cinema Before the World, traces the Lumière cinematograph’s travels across North Africa and the Middle East. He links film techniques to specific sites like Algiers rooftops and the Jaffa Gate. Short stories of early screenings, archival sleuthing, and how these early films echo in later regional cinema are explored through close, transnational readings.

Stanley Reed, a veteran London-based journalist who has covered energy and the Middle East for decades, offers sharp perspective on the continuing Age of Oil. He discusses why oil and gas still dominate global demand. Conversations cover Gulf supply and disruptions, pipelines versus shipping, new exploration in Namibia and Venezuela, and how geopolitics shapes energy markets.

James McDougall, Oxford historian of modern North Africa and the Middle East, discusses his sweeping narrative Worlds of Islam. He traces Islam’s spread from seventh-century Arabia to Asia and Europe. He explains choices about periodization, biographies, and synthesizing local studies. He reflects on research challenges, digital archives, notable figures, and scholarship’s role against Islamophobia.

What did slavery actually look like in the everyday lives of Jews in the medieval Middle East? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Craig Perry to discuss his groundbreaking book Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History (Princeton UP, 2026). Drawing on the extraordinary archive of the Cairo Geniza, Perry reconstructs a hidden world of enslaved people, merchants, and households in medieval Egypt. These fragments—letters, contracts, and legal questions preserved for centuries in a synagogue—reveal how slavery shaped Jewish and Islamic society at the crossroads of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. From global slave trading networks that stretched from Europe and Africa to India, to the intimate spaces of kitchens and courtyards, Perry uncovers how enslaved people lived, labored, resisted, and sometimes entered Jewish communities after gaining their freedom. The story even reframes familiar rituals: medieval Jewish children could look around the Passover table and see slavery embodied in the people serving the meal. Together, Perry and Katz explore how this overlooked history forces us to rethink medieval Jewish life, the social realities behind religious texts, and the complex entanglements of Jews with the broader Arab-Islamic world. About the Guest Craig Perry is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University. A specialist in the social and economic history of the medieval Middle East, his research focuses on slavery, law, and everyday life in Jewish and Islamic societies. He also is the editor of The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500 – AD 1420. About the Host Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud, including Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Through his writing, teaching, and podcast conversations with scholars and public thinkers, Katz brings cutting-edge scholarship into dialogue with contemporary Jewish life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

The emancipatory potential and limits of land justice, when land is at once home, property, territory, and homeland. Peasant farming was once an integral part of Palestine's agrarian fabric. But after military occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israeli land confiscations and economic policies pushed rural cultivators into wage labor. In recent decades, Palestinian land titling and private developers have driven the slow transformation of agricultural land into real estate. In Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine (Stanford UP, 2026) Paul Kohlbry argues that we should see these changes as part of a larger process of agrarian annihilation, one in which state violence and market coercion together devastate the social, ecological, and economic relationships that make agrarian livelihoods possible. Kohlbry tells the story of those who, refusing annihilation, struggle both for the return of land, and for their return to it. Through long-term engagements in the central highlands of the West Bank, Kohlbry shows how peasant practices and ethics matter for those fighting to rebuild collective attachments to rural places, and the surprising ways that property ownership has become a means of both land dispossession and defense. Going beyond accounts that treat the peasant as a tragic figure or a heroic national symbol, Kohlbry foregrounds the complexity of agrarian life to reveal the relationships between agrarian regeneration and political liberation—ultimately connecting Palestine within a global struggle for land justice. Paul Kohlbry is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Jeffrey W. Knopf, a Middlebury Institute professor and co-author, discusses U.S. coercive strategies toward Syria over chemical weapons. He recounts the 2012 red line, the 2013 sarin crisis, and the Russia-mediated disarmament. He assesses why deterrence often failed, how assurances and survival motives shaped outcomes, and critiques simplistic "resolve plus bombs" approaches.

Vali Nasr, Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Iran analyst born in Tehran, discusses Iran’s surprising wartime resilience and thorough advance planning. He explains Iran’s strategy of extending the battlefield and targeting U.S. assets. He explores regime cohesion, the Revolutionary Guard’s role, complex ethnic identities, and regional consequences of a potential collapse.

Mai Serhan, a Palestinian writer based in Cairo with an MSt in creative writing from Oxford, discusses diaspora and fractured family ties. She reads fragmented scenes spanning Cairo, China and beyond. Conversation covers imagining an inaccessible homeland, blending poetry and prose, writing about an estranged father, and the challenges of publishing and public reaction.

Eray Çaylı, scholar and author of Earthmoving, draws on fieldwork and artist collaborations in Northern Kurdistan. He explores how extractivism, war, and visuality intertwine. Short scenes include hafriyat trucks, collaborative art spaces like Loading, and visual strategies that challenge displacement and colonial logics.