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
Nov 22
Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025)
Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began ... Show More
1h 4m
Nov 21
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule?
Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterre ... Show More
1h 5m
Nov 14
Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025)
Basit Kareem Iqbal's new book The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham UP, 2025) uses ethnographic scenes from Jordan and Canada to contextualize the role of Muslim charities and community organizations that support displaced refugees from t ... Show More
1h 16m
Aug 2023
Anthony Bigio on Gad Franco, Sephardi Turkish patriot in times of turmoil
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 Ottoman ... Show More
37m 7s
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
Jun 2021
79/ Erasures, Borders and the Afterlife of the Armenian Genocide (with Sophia Armen)
<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
1h 48m
Sep 2023
Spyros Sofos on Turkey’s many nationalisms
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-wing and right-wing projects ... Show More
26m 28s