In the 1970s, American curator Donna Stein served as the art advisor to Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, the Shahbanu of Iran. Together, Stein and Pahlavi generated an art market in Iran, as Stein encouraged Pahlavi’s patronage of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Today, the contemporary section of the Iranian National Collection―most of which continues to l ... Show More
May 9
Zeina Al-Azmeh, "Syrian Intellectuals in Exile: The Dilemmas of Revolution and the Cost of Leaving" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Zeina Al-Azmeh’s Syrian Intellectuals in Exile: The Dilemmas of Revolution and the Cost of Leaving (Cambridge UP, 2026) captures a group of intellectuals forced to leave Syria, primarily after the events of 2011. Having wound up in either Paris or Berlin these intellectuals are f ... Show More
1h 2m
May 9
Robin Andersen, "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza" (OR Books, 2026)
Robin Andersen's latest book, The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza (OR Books, 2026), is a forensic and unflinching examination of how establishment media abandoned journalistic integrity to manufacture consent for the genocide in Gaza, creating an ... Show More
1 h
May 7
Edith Szanto, "Twelver Shi'i Self-flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Edith Szanto’s Twelver Shi'i Self-Flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab (Edinburgh UP, 2025) is a striking and deeply immersive ethnographic study that takes the reader into the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab in Syria. This town was a vibrant center of ... Show More
5m 45s
Jun 2023
KIRSTEN SCHEID | Fantasmic Objects | Conversations
<p>In this episode of the afikra podcast, Professor Kirsten Scheid invites us into the world of Modern Art in Lebanon, and Lebanon through the lens of Modern Art. </p><p>We explore what art meant in the 1920s, before the establishment of the Lebanese state, how national imaginari ... Show More
1 h
Feb 2022
Peggy Wang, "The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking to Peggy Wang about her new book, The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art (Minnesota University Press, 2021). In the book, Wang asks readers to reconsider the term “global” and “world” in relation to the (often simplistically ... Show More
1h 8m
Aug 2022
Selene Wendt, "Beyond the Door of No Return: Confronting Hidden Colonial Histories Through Contemporary Art" (Skira, 2021)
In Beyond the Door of No Return: Confronting Hidden Colonial Histories through Contemporary Art (Skira, 2021), art historian and curator Selene Wendt presents lesser-known tales of anticolonial defiance in artworks and marginal histories worldwide. The artists featured in this bo ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2022
GANZEER | Graphic Novels, making art during Arab Spring and more | Conversations
<p>Ganzeer talked about his work as a muralist and street artist and how the Egyptian Revolution was a turning point in his career.</p><p>Described as a “chameleon” by Carlo McCormick in the <i>New York Times</i>, Ganzeer operates seamlessly between art, design, and storytelling, ... Show More
58m 56s
Nov 2019
Noelle Giuffrida, "Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America" (U California Press, 2018)
Noelle Giuffrida’s book, Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America (University of California Press, 2018), tells the history of collecting and exhibiting Chinese art through the story of renowned curator and museum director Sherman ... Show More
1h 21m
Nov 2023
Elif Shafak on storytelling in art (+Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi, and more!)
I am so excited to say that my guest on the great women artists podcast is one of the most pioneering – and my favourite – writers alive today, Elif Shafak! In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling, the importance of writing women's lives into history and fighting ... Show More
44m 30s