War forced millions of Syrians from their homes. It also forced them to rethink the meaning of home itself.
In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions.
The Home I Worked to Mak ... 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
Dec 2024
Wendy Pearlman, "The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora" (Liveright, 2024)
War forced millions of Syrians from their homes. It also forced them to rethink the meaning of home itself.
In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, ... Show More
1h 4m
Jun 2025
How life is changing in Syria
For well over a decade, civil war blighted the lives of Syrians, as rebel forces battled against former President Bashar al-Assad and his brutal regime. More than 600,000 people were killed and 12 million others were forced from their homes during this time. In December last year ... Show More
23m 6s
Jul 2025
Anahid Matossian, "Syrian-Armenian Women Migrants in Armenia: Gender, Identity and Painful Belonging" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
After the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian War, a number Syrian-Armenians who had lived in the territory for generations, fled to the Republic of Armenia. This book traces the experiences of Syrian-Armenian women as they navigated their changing and gendered identities from their adop ... Show More
1h 11m
Dec 2024
Will Syrians return home?
Syrian refugees are celebrating the end of the Assad regime. But for Omar Alshogre and millions like him, going back to Syria is a complicated decision.
This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristi ... Show More
27m 26s
Dec 2024
The final hours of the Assad regime
President Bashar al-Assad has fled Syria, ending 50 years of authoritarian rule by his family. Over the weekend, rebels who had already taken Aleppo and Hama began to close in on the city of Homs and set their eyes on the capital Damascus.As it became clear that Assad had fled, t ... Show More
28m 18s