Feb 21
Mai Serhan, "I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) is a young woman’s search for connection with her estranged father, her family’s past, and the Palestinian homeland she can never visit Mai Serhan lives in Cairo and has never been ... Show More
32m 13s
Feb 20
Eray Çayli, "Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan" (U Texas Press, 2025)
Extractivism—exploiting the earth for resources—has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world where ecological and humanitarian sensibilities are unprecedentedly widespread? Eray Çaylı argues it does so by mobilizing these se ... Show More
1h 3m
Feb 19
David Frankfurter ed., "Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic" (Brill, 2019)
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. T ... Show More
39m 44s
Aug 2023
Anthony Bigio on Gad Franco, Sephardi Turkish patriot in times of turmoil
<p>Anthony Gad Bigio on “A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic” (Hamilton Books). The book describes the turbulent and difficult life of Gad Franco, a prominent journalist, social activist and lawyer in the late Ottom ... Show More
37m 7s
Jun 2021
Christine Philliou on reimagining Turkish history and the roots of political dissent
Christine Philliou, associate professor of history at UC Berkeley, on “Turkey: A Past Against History” (University of California Press). The book examines the life of the writer Refik Halid Karay (1888-1965), interrogating the shifting meaning of political dissent from Ottoman to ... Show More
42m 15s
Feb 2021
Turkey: Adnan Menderes, populism, and history
Turkey and 50s Prime Minister Menderes, Erdogan today, and how history is used for political power. Matthew Sweet is joined by Jeremy Seal, Ece Temelkuran, Michael Talbot & Nilay Ozlu.Before his execution in 1961, the Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes saw Turkey admitted to N ... Show More
45m 4s
Feb 2024
Bedross Der Matossian, "The Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian Party: Politics, Ideology and Transnational History" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Bedross Der Matossian's The Armenian Social Democrat Hnchakian Party: Politics, Ideology and Transnational History (Bloomsbury, 2023), based on new research, sheds light on the history of the Social Democrat Hnchakian Party, a major Armenian revolutionary party that operated in t ... Show More
1 h
Sep 2023
Spyros Sofos on Turkey’s many nationalisms
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Spyros Sofos on “Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism” (Edinburgh University Press). The book delves into the ambiguities behind the term “the people” from the late Ottoman era to today, and how religious, secularist, left ... Show More
26m 28s
In A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (Hamilton Books, 2023), Anthony Gad Bigio explores the life of Gad Franco (1881–1954), a prominent Sephardi journalist, then a lawyer and a jurist, who worked relentlessly for the Jewish community’s belonging to the national Turkish polity, and for the con ... Show More
<p>This is a conversation with <a href="https://twitter.com/SophiaArmen" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Sophia Armen</a>, an Armenian-American writer, scholar and organizer, about the legacy of the Armenian Genocide today.</p>
<p>We spoke about race in the Ottoman Empi ... Show More