Sep 15
Tom Hulme, "Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Professor Tom Hulme's second book reconstructs the erotic and romantic lives of queer men in Belfast across roughly seventy years, from the recriminalisation of sex between men in the 1880s to the emergence of a mainstream public debate about homosexuality in the 1950s. It follow ... Show More
48m 1s
Sep 12
John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)
In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. ... Show More
1h 7m
Mar 2024
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study appro ... Show More
46m 15s
Jun 2021
Alice Elliot, "The Outside: Migration As Life in Morocco" (Indiana UP, 2021)
The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco (Indiana UP, 2021) traces how migration has come to occupy a striking place in the lives of many Moroccans. A full 10 percent of the population now lives outside the country, affecting individual and collective life in countless unanticip ... Show More
56m 23s
Oct 2024
Emrah Yildiz, "Zainab's Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders" (U California Press, 2024)
Emrah Yildiz's new book Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders (University of California Press, 2024) is a masterful ethnographic study that maps the religious, political, and economic traffics from Tehran to just outside Damascus to the shrine of Sayy ... Show More
1h 8m
Oct 2024
Emrah Yildiz, "Zainab's Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders" (U California Press, 2024)
Emrah Yildiz's new book Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders (University of California Press, 2024) is a masterful ethnographic study that maps the religious, political, and economic traffics from Tehran to just outside Damascus to the shrine of Sayy ... Show More
1h 7m
Oct 2019
Ussama Makdisi, "Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World" (U California Press, 2019)
Building on nearly two decades of scholarship about sectarianism and communal relations in the Modern Middle East, Ussama Makdisi’s latest book, Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World(University of California Press, 2019) dispels the myth ... Show More
51m 56s
Apr 2021
Lisa Björkman, "Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories" (Association for Asian Studies, 2020)
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in the Indian city of Mumbai, Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories (Association for Asian Studies, 2020) is an unconventional little book – experimental in form – about how we come to know the worlds a ... Show More
53m 4s
Apr 2022
FWD: “Inventing Home: The Making of Lebanon and the Lebanese Diaspora” by Akram F. Khater
In this afikra FWD, Gustavo Racy forwards a book on the Lebanese diaspora by Akram F. Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920. Inventing Home delves into the stories of these travels, shedding much-needed light on the impact of emigr ... Show More
13m 40s
Nov 2022
Reflections on Living Abroad
What do we gain—and leave behind—when we move abroad? Lale chats with Lebanese poet Zeina Hashem Beck, whose third poetry collection, 'O,' was released this summer, about moving away from her beloved Beirut and hopping between countries until arriving in her current home of Calif ... Show More
32m 2s
May 2024
Martin Dusinberre, "Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
In Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories (Cambridge UP, 2023), Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the outside world in the late-nineteenth centu ... Show More
1h 2m
Bridging the gap between migration studies and the anthropological tradition, Ghassan Hage illustrates that transnationality and its attendant cultural consequences are not necessarily at odds with classic theory.
In The Diasporic Condition, Ghassan Hage engages with the diasporic Lebanese community as a shared lifeworld, defining a common cultural milieu th ... Show More
