Podcasts about modern middle eastern studies

Prof. Esther Hertzog gives a talk on the vulnerable situation of motherhood in the Israeli welfare state. This talk will examine the role of state authorities, especially the welfare system and the courts, in undermining disadvantaged women's motherhood. State authorities undermine mothers' custodial rights over their offspring, especially through the discourse on 'child's wellbeing' and 'parental capability', blaming mothers for physically endangering and neglecting their children. It will be argued that while the formal discourse emphasizes the value of biological motherhood, yet in practice underprivileged mothers' custody over their offspring can be easily expropriated. Single parent mothers are a susceptible group from which babies can be taken away to adoption and their children taken to welfare institutions. The research on 'single parent mothers' ignores the phenomenon of expropriating disadvantaged mothers' parenthood by State authorities as well as the coercive means that are employed in the process. This talk will propose a critical analysis of the connection between "children at risk" discourse and disadvantaged women's motherhood.

Professor Joseph Sassoon in conversation with Dr Michael Willis about his recent book, The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty (Allen Lane, Penguin Group, 2022). Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim joins them. Abstract: The influential merchants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the globalization of today. The Sassoons, a Baghdadi-Jewish trading family, built a global trading enterprise by taking advantage of major historical developments during the nineteenth century. Their story is not just one of an Arab Jewish family that settled in India, traded in China, and aspired to be British. It also presents an extraordinary vista into the world in which they lived and prospered economically, politically, and socially. The Global Merchants is not only about their rise, but also about their decline: why it happened, how political and economic changes after the First World War adversely affected them, and finally, how realizing their aspirations to reach the upper echelons of British society led to their disengagement from business and prevented them from adapting to the new economic and political world order. Professor Joseph Sassoon is Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University. He holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony's College, Oxford. In 2013, his book Saddam Hussein's Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the prestigious British-Kuwait Prize for the best book on the Middle East. Professor Sassoon completed his Ph.D at St Antony's College, Oxford. He has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. The Global Merchants is his fifth book. Professor Avi Shlaim is Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College and a former Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2006. His main research interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is author of Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988); The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000, second edition 2014); Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace (2007); and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009). He is co-editor of The Cold War and the Middle East (1997); The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2001, second edition 2007); and The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences (2012). Professor Shlaim is a frequent contributor to the newspapers and commentator on radio and television on Middle Eastern affairs. Dr Michael Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, University of Oxford and King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). He is the author of Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Dr Raphaël Lefèvre in conversation with Dr Neil Ketchley about his recent book, 'Jihad in the City: Militant Islamism and Contentious Politics in Tripoli' (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Militant Islamists are often assumed to be driven by global goals and transnational networks. But this narrative misses a crucial point: from Tawhid during the Lebanese civil war to Tahrir al-Sham in the current Syrian conflict, Islamist armed groups often seek to recruit and mobilize local communities not appealed by their religious ideology - certain tribes, social classes, and neighbourhoods. Why? How do they go about it? And to what extent, then, is all Islamist politics local? Dr Raphaël Lefèvre is a Senior Fellow at the University of Oxford and Research Associate at the University of Aarhus. He investigates Islamist armed groups in the Middle East. His latest book is Jihad in the City: Militant Islamism and Contentious Politics in Tripoli (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He is also the author of Ashes of Hama, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (Oxford University Press, 2013). His PhD thesis which he did at the University of Cambridge was awarded the Bill Gates Sr Prize by the Gates Cambridge Trust and the Syrian Studies Association Prize. Dr Neil Ketchley is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and a Fellow of St Antony's College. He is a political scientist of the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa working at the intersections of political sociology and comparative politics. Neil's book, Egypt in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award. His current research interests include episodes of mass protest in the MENA, the rise of political Islam in interwar Egypt, and the changing profiles of regional political elites. Join us for our MEC live webinars – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events, St Antony's College or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk and follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford Middle East Centre | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

Marilyn Booth speaking on her new book. This book is an intellectual biography of early Arabic feminist Zaynab Fawwaz (c.1850-1914) and a study of her life in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, in the context of Arabophone debates on gender, modernity and the good society, 1890s-1910. Chapters take up her writing and debates in which she participated, concerning social justice, girls' education, marriage, divorce and polygyny, the question of ‘Nature' and Darwinist notions of male/female, and intersections of nationalism, anti-imperialism, and feminism. Fawwaz's two novels and play are analysed in the context of fiction rewriting history, and on theatre as a reformist tool of public education. The book also comprises a study of some important periodical venues for public debate in Egypt in this period, particularly the nationalist press and one early women's journal, and it highlights the writings of lesser-studied journalists and other intellectuals, within the context of the Arab/ic Nahda or intellectual revival. The talk will focus particularly on a central argument: that Fawwaz's feminism, based on an Islamic ethical worldview, was distinct from prevailing ‘modernist' views in posing a non-essentialist, open-ended notion of gender that did not (for instance) highlight maternalist discourses and that rejected fixed notions of sex-gender identity. Fawwaz's background was Shi'i, an element that is quietly present in her work. Biography: Marilyn Booth is Khalid bin Abdallah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, University of Oxford. Her most recent monograph, The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt (2021), is amongst numerous publications on early feminism, translation, and Arabophone women's writing in Egypt and Ottoman Syria. Translator of eighteen works of fiction and memoir from the Arabic, she was co-winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Jokha Alharthi's Celestial Bodies.

Dr Neil Ketchley in conversation with Professor Walter Armbrust about his current research. The post-WWII era saw coups and “revolutions from above” break out across the Middle East and North Africa. How did these events transform colonial-era state elites? We theorize that post-colonial regimes had to choose between purging perceived opponents and delivering key state functions, leading to important variation in individual turnover and survival. To illustrate our argument, we trace the careers of 674 colonial-era ministers and civil servants in Egypt following the 1952 Revolution. Our analysis shows that individuals connected to Egypt's deposed monarch, very senior officials, and those with military backgrounds were more likely to be purged. Experienced officials and those with advanced university degrees were more likely to be retained. Residual workplace effects suggest that the logics of purging threats and retaining experienced officials also operated at the institutional level. The findings point to important instances of elite-level continuity during episodes of radical political change. Dr Neil Ketchley is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and a Fellow of St Antony's College. He is a political scientist of the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa working at the intersections of political sociology and comparative politics. Neil's book, Egypt in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award. His current research interests include episodes of mass protest in the MENA, the rise of political Islam in interwar Egypt, and the changing profiles of regional political elites. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Additional contributor, Mr Gilad Wenig, PhD student, UCLA.

Join us as we listen to Dr Usaama al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) in conversation about his new book, 'Islam and the Arab Revolutions, the Ulama between Democracy and Autocracy'. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College) is chairing the webinar. The live webinar took place on 21st January 2022 as part of the Middle East Centre webinar series. The book is available for purchase in the UK from Hurst Publishers, quote the discount code ISLAMARAB35 at check-out for 35% discount; and to purchase outside the UK, from Oxford University Press, quote ADISTA5 for your discount. This video is also available with accessibility features as a podcast at http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre The Arab revolutions of 2011 were a transformative moment in the modern history of the Middle East, as people rose up against long-standing autocrats throughout the region to call for ‘bread, freedom and dignity'. With the passage of time, results have been decidedly mixed, with abortive success stories like Tunisia contrasting with the emergence of even more repressive dictatorships in places like Egypt, with the backing of several Gulf states. Focusing primarily on Egypt, this book considers a relatively understudied dimension of these revolutions: the role of prominent religious scholars. While pro-revolutionary ulama have justified activism against authoritarian regimes, counter-revolutionary scholars have provided religious backing for repression, and in some cases the mass murder of unarmed protestors. Usaama al-Azami traces the public engagements and religious pronouncements of several prominent ulama in the region, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ali Gomaa and Abdallah bin Bayyah, to explore their role in either championing the Arab revolutions or supporting their repression. He concludes that while a minority of noted scholars have enthusiastically endorsed the counter-revolutions, their approach is attributable less to premodern theology and more to their distinctly modern commitment to the authoritarian state. Biographies Dr Usaama al-Azami read his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, and his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Alongside his university career, he also pursued Islamic studies in seminarial settings in which he has also subsequently taught. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region. He is also an enthusiastic teacher who is very eager to support the formation of research scholars, and always welcomes students with such aspirations to get in touch with him. Usaama al-Azami is primarily interested in the interaction between Islam and modernity with a special interest in modern developments in Islamic political philosophy. His first book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions looks at the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. His PhD, which is a separate project which he hopes to develop into a monograph in the near future, is entitled "Modern Islamic Political Thought: Islamism in the Arab World from the Late Twentieth to the Early Twenty-first Centuries". In it, he explores how Arab ulama of a mainstream "Islamist" orientation have engaged Western political concepts such as democracy, secularism and the nation-state, selectively adapting and assimilating aspects of these ideas into their understanding of Islam. His broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam down to the present. Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, University of Oxford and King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). He is the author of Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015). Join us for the live webinar next time – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) (https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre/events) or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford Middle East Centre | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 3rd December 2021 for the Middle East Centre Like many parts of the world, the environment in the Middle East is in crisis. Climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable material extraction will have the same detrimental consequences for life as elsewhere on the planet. In recent years, however, the state of the environment in the Middle East has been framed in a sensationalistic manner; with little evidence, it is blamed for conflict and migration and is predicted to lead to societal collapse. Using a lens of political ecology, this talk will illustrate how these assumptions are problematic; they are rooted in a Western perception of the environment in the Middle East that is determined by cultural and political imaginaries. Political ecology also tells us that the current policies enacted by regional states to address sustainability will probably fail, on the basis that they are technopolitical. But it also tells us that there is a potential for an alternative that offers a more optimistic future, albeit one that requires radical change and a departure from the current system. Christian Henderson is assistant professor at Leiden Institute for Area Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. His research focusses on the agrarian political economy and the political ecology of the Middle East and North Africa. His work has previously been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Environment and Planning A, Review of African Political Economy and the Journal of Arabian Studies.

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Thursday 25th November 2021 for the Middle East centre. Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi (Associate Professor of Middle East history at California State University San Marcos and Visiting Professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain) and Kate Clark (Co-Director and Senior Analyst, Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org ) present ‘Afghanistan and the Middle East'. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs this webinar. Ibrahim Al-Marashi - Contesting the "Graveyard of Empires" Trope: Situating Afghanistan within Middle East History". First, this talk will examine the relevance of history, particularly Middle Eastern history for understanding the current crisis in Afghanistan, from antiquity to the Soviet invasion of the nation. This talk will examine the relevance of history, particularly Middle Eastern history for understanding the current crisis in Afghanistan. The fall of Kabul has been compared to the 1975 fall of Saigon or the British and Soviet defeats, hence the epitaph of the "Graveyard of Empires." While historical context is crucial, the aforementioned historical tropes are misleading, denying agency to Afghanistan as a nation and people Kate Clark - Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg: How overnight Afghanistan became a rentier state with no rent. The capture of the Afghan state by the Taliban was an economic calamity. The foreign assistance which had made up 43 per cent of GDP was cut. UN and US sanctions applied to the Taliban as an armed group suddenly applied to the whole country. Afghanistan's foreign reserves and World Bank funds were frozen and the banking sector was paralysed. The repercussions are already catastrophic: only one in 20 households now have enough to eat. With such shaky economic foundations, will the Taliban's new Islamic Emirate prove any more sustainable than the old post-2001 Islamic Republic? Biographies: Kate Clark has worked for AAN, a policy research NGO based in Kabul, since 2010. Her research and publications have focussed on the conflict, including militia formation and investigations into breaches of the Laws of War, detentions and the use of torture. She has written extensively on Afghanistan's political economy, as well as its wildlife and the environment. Kate experienced both of the most recent falls of Kabul, in 2021, and in 2001, when she was the BBC correspondent (1999-2002). During the last years of the first Taleban emirate, she was the only western journalist based in Afghanistan. Kate has also worked at the BBC Arabic Service, on Radio 4 news and current affairs programmes, and has made radio and television documentaries about Afghanistan, including on the insurgency, weapons smuggling, corruption, the opium economy and war crimes. Kate has an MA in Middle Eastern Politics from Exeter University in Britain and has also lived, studied and worked in the Middle East. Ibrahim Al-Marashi obtained his doctorate in Modern History at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, completing a thesis on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. His research focuses on 20th century Iraqi history. He is co-author of Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), and The Modern History of Iraq, with Phebe Marr (Routledge 2017), and A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018). If you would like to join the live audience during this term's webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 12th November 2021 for the MEC. Dr Mattin Biglari (SOAS, University of London) presents “Air Pollution, Toxicity, and Environmental Politics in the History of Iranian Oil Nationalisation”. Dr Stephanie Cronin (Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) chairs this webinar. As we witness the increasingly visible effects of the global climate emergency, it is paramount that the study of the environment is better integrated into the social sciences and humanities. This is especially so in the case of Iran, where the recent drying up of rivers in the province of Khuzestan has caused water scarcity for the local population and led to subsequent political mobilisation. Yet it is also vital to consider less spectacular forms of environmental degradation that equally afflict the country today, particularly air pollution, which presents one of the world's greatest health challenges and each year contributes to over 8 million deaths globally. This talk will turn attention to the toxicity of air pollution to illuminate its relationship to embodied subjectivity, (in)visibility, temporality and infrastructure, especially with reference to the politics of Iran's oil nationalisation in 1951. By focusing on subaltern experiences in the oil refinery town of Abadan, it will offer an alternative account to challenge dominant nationalist narratives of this important episode in the country's history. In doing so, it connects the modern history of Iran to a burgeoning body of work in the environmental and energy humanities that highlights the relationship between global pollution and imperialism in the Middle East and wider Global South. Dr Mattin Biglari is a Research Associate and Teaching Fellow at SOAS. His research focuses on the intersection of energy, environment, infrastructure and labour, especially in the history of Iran and the Middle East. His doctoral thesis, which was awarded the 2021 BRISMES Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize for best PhD dissertation, examines the technopolitics of Iranian oil nationalisation, especially focusing on expertise, labour and anti-colonialism in Abadan. His monograph based on this thesis entitled Refining Knowledge: Labour, Politics and Oil Nationalisation in Iran, 1933-51 will be published with Edinburgh University Press in 2023. Mattin has also published about banditry in Iran during the early twentieth century, examining its relationship to the country's constitutional revolution and integration into the capitalist world economy. He has also written an article in Diplomatic History about how perceptions of Shi'a Islam shaped U.S. foreign policy during the 1978-79 Iranian revolution. Mattin completed his PhD in History at SOAS in 2020. Previously he attained an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS and a BA in History at the University of Cambridge. Stephanie Cronin is Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Research Fellow, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is the author of Armies and State-building in the Modern Middle East: Politics, Nationalism and Military Reform (I. B. Tauris, 2014); Shahs, Soldiers and Subalterns in Iran: Opposition, Protest and Revolt, 1921-1941 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921-1941 (Routledge, 2006); and The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926 (I. B. Tauris, 1997). She is the editor of Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2007); Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left (Routledge, 2004); and The Making of Modern Iran; State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921-1941 (Routledge, 2003).

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 19th November 2021 for the MEC. Dr Michael Mason, Director of the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science presents “Failing Flows: The Politics of Water Management in Southern Iraq”. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs this webinar. In July 2018 massive protests erupted in Basra city as residents demanded improvements in public services. Failings in water management were at the heart of local grievances: an outbreak of water-related illnesses was triggered by the increased use of polluted water from the Shatt al-Arab, Basra's principal source of water. However, the deterioration of public water infrastructure has its roots in decades of armed conflict and international sanctions. Tap water has been undrinkable since the 1990s, forcing most households to rely on private water vendors. Water infrastructure upgrading was a priority for state-rebuilding after 2003 but receded under the sectarian civil war. Governmental and donor plans for mega-infrastructure water projects have stalled in the face of political stasis and systemic corruption. Compact water treatment units are the dominant purification technology, supplying 83% of treatment capacity across Basra governorate and 92% in Basra city. The effectiveness of this water treatment technology is reduced by irregular supplies of freshwater from the Bada'a Canal - flows negatively impacted by upstream dam construction, climatic variability and illegal water tapping. There is a pressing need to diversify water sources for Basra and improve the efficiencies of treatment technologies and distribution networks. The LSE report that Dr Michael Mason refers to in his presentation is available from the LSE website: Failing_Flows_003_.pdf (lse.ac.uk) Artworked credit: Azhar Al-Rubaie, 2021 Dr Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre and Associate Professor in Environmental Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. His research addresses both global environmental politics and environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East. He has a particular interest in environmental issues within conflict-affected areas and occupied territories, including Iraq, northern Cyprus, and the occupied Golan Heights. Alongside articles in a wide range of journals and chapter contributions, he is the author or editor of five books, of which the most recent is the forthcoming co-edited volume, The Untold Story of the Golan Heights (2022). Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, University of Oxford and King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). He is the author of Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015). If you would like to join the live audience during this term's webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC.

On 25 July 2021 Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the government and suspended parliament, subsequently employing the army and security forces around government buildings to thwart any opposition to his power grab. How did Tunisia – long hailed as a democratic model in the region – reach such a stage? Who is President Saied and what does he plan on doing? What are his sources of power and support, both within Tunisia and internationally? And does his power grab mean the end of Tunisian democracy? This panel will tackle these questions and more. Youssef Cherif runs the Columbia Global Centers | Tunis, the North and West African research centre of Columbia University. He is a Tunis-based political analyst, member of Carnegie's Civic Activism Network, and a regular contributor to number of think-tanks (Carnegie, ISPI, IAI, IEMed, etc.). He consulted previously for IWPR, IACE, the United Nations, The Carter Center, and the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies (ITES). He comments on North African affairs for several media outlets, including Al Jazeera, BBC, DW, France 24, among others. He holds a Chevening Master of Arts in International Relations from the Dept. of War Studies of King's College London, and a Fulbright Master of Arts in Classical Studies from Columbia University. Youssef is the editor of the book The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2021. Dr Anne Wolf is a Fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford, where she teaches Authoritarian Politics. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford (St Antony's College) and an MPhil in Politics and International Relations from the University of Cambridge (Clare College), where she was previously the Margaret Smith Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations (Girton College). Her 2017 book Political Islam in Tunisia: The History of Ennahda, published by Oxford University Press, won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. Her second book, Ben Ali's Tunisia: Power and Contention in an Authoritarian Regime is forthcoming with OUP. Wolf has published numerous journal articles on Authoritarian Politics in the Arab world. She is an Associate Editor at the Journal of North African Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at the Project of Middle East Democracy.

Oil price volatility and accelerated energy transitions away from hydrocarbons to meet climate change mitigation measures have presented existential threats to the economies of hydrocarbon-dependent welfare states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). These state rely on oil and gas not only in their exports to fund welfare distributive measures, but also domestically for highly-subsidized energy and water consumption. In response, each GCC state announced economic development plans presented as avant-garde “Visions”—one tailored to each of the six GCC states— reflecting a future target of transformation away from oil and gas through energy and economic diversification and reform. In a fundamental policy shift, GCC states implemented energy subsidy reform following the 2014 oil price declines, with varying degrees of success. In another fundamental policy shift in October 2020, in preparation for COP26 in Glasgow, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060. Beyond the economic pressures, GCC states also face environmental challenges owing to their highly subsidized energy and water consumption and emissions in an already-constrained environment owing to climate change. This talk summarizes the state of the environment in the Gulf states and examines the role of the environment in the economic and energy diversification plans of their Visions. It argues that the environment has had a limited role in the Visions, despite the state of the environment in the region, offering a striking difference with other regions. The talk concludes with implications on the region's long-term sustainability and success of proposed reforms. MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 5th November 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Manal Shehabi (Academic Visitor, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford; and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies) presents “Environment Discounted: Energy and Economic Diversification Plans in the Gulf”. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs this webinar, and Dr Michael Willis is the Q&A Moderator. The combination of oil price volatility and the accelerated energy transitions away from hydrocarbons to meet climate change mitigation measures have presented existential threats to the economies of hydrocarbon-dependent welfare states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). These state rely on oil and gas not only in their exports to fund welfare distributive measures, but also domestically for highly-subsidized energy and water consumption. In response, each GCC state announced economic development plans presented as avant-garde “Visions”—one tailored to each of the six GCC states— reflecting a future target of transformation away from oil and gas through energy and economic diversification and reform. In a fundamental policy shift, GCC states implemented energy subsidy reform following the 2014 oil price declines, with varying degrees of success. In another fundamental policy shift in October 2020, in preparation for COP26 in Glasgow, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060. Beyond the economic pressures, GCC states also face environmental challenges owing to their highly subsidized energy and water consumption and emissions in an already-constrained environment owing to climate change. This talk summarizes the state of the environment in the Gulf states and examines the role of the environment in the economic and energy diversification plans of their Visions. It argues that the environment has had a limited role in the Visions, despite the state of the environment in the region, offering a striking difference with other regions. The talk concludes with implications on the region's long-term sustainability and success of proposed reforms. Dr Manal Shehabi is an applied economist with expertise in economic, energy, resource sustainability & policy making in resource-dependent economies, focusing on the Middle East and Gulf regions. She publishes in academic journals, books, and policy reports. Using economy-wide modeling and political economy, her research made important contributions to the analysis of economic and energy diversification, economic adjustments, decarbonization and hydrogen, and policy alternatives in Gulf hydrocarbon economies following the energy transition and oil price volatility. Her research also impacted policy making, for example she constructed an economic model for policymaking in Kuwait, led or co-authored various policy reports (such as to the UNFCCC, KISR, the IPCC, and G20's T20 Italy), and conducted capacity building for economic and climate policymakers in Gulf countries and beyond. A polyglot, regularly advises policymakers & firms. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, University of Oxford and King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). He is the author of Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015). If you would like to join the live audience during this term's webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

This is a recording of a live webinar held on 29th October 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Jamie Furniss (Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (Tunis) / Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh) presents: The blue-clad fennec: authoritarian environmentalism in Tunisia, and its afterlives. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs this webinar, including the Q&A session. There is hardly a city in the whole of Tunisia without a faded sign reading “Boulevard de l'environnement” (Shari‘ al-bi'a) on one of its most prominent thoroughfares. If it hasn't fallen over from neglect or been removed—for example by angry protesters or as a sort of nostalgic and kitsch lawn ornament—one may find a statue of desert fox (Fennec) in a blue jumpsuit, minus a few limbs, standing at the end of the avenue. These are the traces of the authoritarian environmentalism of Ben Ali's Tunisia, the forms and afterlives of which this paper seeks to sketch. I begin by arguing that environment emerged as a category of political action in 1990s Tunisia largely as a way of papering over the totalitarian state by appealing to strategic hot-button issues in the eyes of the “West” (like women's rights), as well as an attempt at aesthetic and moral discipline. I then evoke some of the consequences this genealogy has on the ways “environment” is used and understood in Tunisia today. What exactly does “environment” refer to in Tunisia is both a necessary contextual backdrop to this paper and a question that emerges from the political and social history I aim to examine. From some examples such as analysis of the Arabic terms (bi'a vs. muhit), the discourse in public signage pertaining to waste, the creation in 2017 of Tunisia's “environmental police” and participant observation I have conducted on civil society “environmental” projects, I attempt to demonstrate that environment is a concept characterized by visuality and proximity. This makes garbage and in particular its visual accumulation in public space a kind of archetypal “environmental problem”. The rapid political telescoping of waste into issues of corruption (e.g. during the “Italian waste scandal”) as well as the use of cleanup as a political idiom (e.g. during the halit wa‘I movement following Kais Said's election as president) are indices of ongoing political overtones of the issues of waste, cleanliness, and environment more broadly, in contemporary Tunisia. Dr Jamie Furniss is currently a researcher at the Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain in Tunis, on leave from a position as a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford in International Development and has conducted fieldwork in Egypt and Tunisia, primarily on topics pertaining to environment, waste, and urban development. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). If you would like to join the live audience during this term's webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

Dr Hussam Hussein investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan, and the political economy of the water sector. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 22nd October 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Hussam Hussein (Lecturer in International Relations at DPIR, Oxford Martin School Fellow in Water Diplomacy, and Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College) presents the politics of water scarcity in the case of Jordan. Dr Neil Ketchley (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs this webinar and Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College, Oxford) moderates the Q&A. This talk investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan, and the political economy of the water sector. It identifies the actors constructing the discourse and the elements comprising the discourse. The research finds that there is a single dominant discourse of water scarcity, which is composed of two narratives: water insufficiency and water mismanagement. The water insufficiency narrative is constructed to emphasise factors external to the responsibility of the Jordanian government as reasons for water scarcity, like nature, refugees, and neighbouring countries. It is mainly constructed by governmental aligned actors and deployed to open solutions on the supply and conservation sides and ultimately to maintain the status quo of the current water uses. The water mismanagement narrative is constructed to emphasise as reasons for water scarcity factors of mismanagement of water resources and deployed to increase economic efficiency in the water sector, challenging existing uses, allocations, and benefits. Dr Hussam Hussein's research focuses on the role of discourses in shaping water policies in the Middle East, on transboundary water governance, and on issues related to the political economy of water resources in arid and semi-arid regions. Hussam has also worked on issues of sustainable development and environmental governance for the Italian Embassy in Jordan, the European Parliament, the World Bank and UNICEF. He obtained his PhD from the University of East Anglia with a thesis on hydropolitics and discourses of water scarcity in the case of Jordan. Dr Neil Ketchley is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA). His research focuses on the dynamics of protest and activism in the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa. His most recent book, Egypt in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and Mobilization. Neil's current research interests include episodes of historic mass protest in the MENA, the rise of political Islam in Egypt, and the changing profiles of regional political elites. Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, University of Oxford and King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). He is the author of Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015). If you would like to join the live audience during this term's webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 15th October 2021 for the first episode of the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 15th October 2021 for the first episode of the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Oxford academics Dr Michael Willis, Professor Walter Armbrust, Dr Laurent Mignon and Dr Usaama al-Azami reflect upon how issues of the Environment relate to their own research. Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, University of Oxford and King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). He is the author of Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015). Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Dr Laurent Mignon is Associate Professor of Turkish language and literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony's College and Affiliate Professor at the Luxembourg School of Religion and Society. His research focuses on the minor literatures of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, in particular Jewish literatures, as well as the literary engagement with non-Abrahamic religions during the era straddling the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. In March and April 2019, he was invited as Visiting Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He is an Associate Member of the Centre de Recherche Europes-Eurasie at INALCO, Paris. His newest publications are: Uncoupling Language and Religion: An Exploration into the Margins of Turkish Literature, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021. https://www.academicstudiespress.com/ottomanandturkishstudies/uncoupling-language-and-religion Alberto Ambrosio and Laurent Mignon (ed.), Penser l'islam en Europe: Perspectives du Luxembourg et d'ailleurs, Paris: Hermann, 2021. https://www.editions-hermann.fr/livre/9791037005472 Dr Usaama al-Azami is Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. He read his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Alongside his university career, he also pursued Islamic studies in seminarial settings in which he has also subsequently taught. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region. Usaama al-Azami is primarily interested in the interaction between Islam and modernity with a special interest in modern developments in Islamic political thought. His latest book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions: Ulama Between Democracy and Autocracy (Hurst Publishers, October 2021; Oxford University Press, USA, forthcoming 2022) looks at the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. His broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam down to the present. If you would like to join the live audience during this term's webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC.

Join us for Booktalk Episode 9, Professor Deborah Starr (Cornell University) in conversation about her new book, Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema, published by California Press. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs the discussion. Extract from publisher's website: In this book, Deborah Starr recuperates the work of Togo Mizrahi, a pioneer of Egyptian cinema. Mizrahi, an Egyptian Jew with Italian nationality, established himself as a prolific director of popular comedies and musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. As a studio owner and producer, Mizrahi promoted the idea that developing a local cinema industry was a project of national importance. Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema integrates film analysis with film history to tease out the cultural and political implications of Mizrahi's work. His movies, Starr argues, subvert dominant notions of race, gender, and nationality through their playful—and queer—use of masquerade and mistaken identity. Taken together, Mizrahi's films offer a hopeful vision of a pluralist Egypt. By re-evaluating Mizrahi's contributions to Egyptian culture, Starr challenges readers to reconsider the debates over who is Egyptian and what constitutes national cinema. Deborah Starr is a professor of Near Eastern Studies and director of the Jewish Studies Program at Cornell University. She writes and teaches about issues of identity and inter-communal exchange in Middle Eastern literature and film, with a focus on the Jews of Egypt. She is the author of Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture, and Empire (Routledge 2009), and co-editor with Sasson Somekh of Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff. Her new book Togo Mizrahi and The Making of Egyptian Cinema (University of California Press, 2020) recuperates the work of a Jewish a pioneer of Egyptian cinema. Starr has also published articles in a variety of journals on cosmopolitanism and levantinism in modern Arabic and Hebrew literature and Egyptian cinema Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Join us for our MEC live webinars – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events, St Antony's College or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk and follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC Speakers: Professor Deborah Starr (Cornell University) Chair: Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, Oxford)

Join us for Booktalk Episode 8, Dr Carl Rommel (University of Helsinki) in conversation about his new book Egypt's Football Revolution: Emotion, Masculinity, and Uneasy Politics, published by University of Texas Press in July 2021. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs the discussion. The book is available for purchase for customers in Europe and the Middle East from https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781477323175/egypts-football-revolution/, quote CSFS2021 at check-out for 30% discount; and for customers in the US, https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/rommel-egypts-football-revolution, quote UTROMEGY at check-out for 20% discount. This video is also available with accessibility features as a podcast at http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre-booktalk Extract from publisher's website: Both a symbol of the Mubarak government's power and a component in its construction of national identity, football served as fertile ground for Egyptians to confront the regime's overthrow during the 2011 revolution. With the help of the state, appreciation for football in Egypt peaked in the late 2000s. Yet after Mubarak fell, fans questioned their previous support, calling for a reformed football for a new, post revolutionary nation. In Egypt's Football Revolution, Carl Rommel examines the politics of football as a space for ordinary Egyptians and state forces to negotiate a masculine Egyptian chauvinism. Basing his discussion on several years of fieldwork with fans, players, journalists, and coaches, he investigates the increasing attention paid to football during the Mubarak era; its demise with the 2011 uprisings and 2012 Port Said massacre, which left seventy-two fans dead; and its recent rehabilitation. Cairo's highly organized and dedicated Ultras fans became a key revolutionary force through their anti regime activism, challenging earlier styles of fandom and making visible entrenched ties between sport and politics. As the appeal of football burst, alternative conceptions of masculinity, emotion, and politics came to the fore to demand or prevent revolution and reform. Dr Carl Rommel is a social anthropologist, who earned his PhD from SOAS, University of London (2015). His doctoral research explored the emotional politics of Egyptian football before and after the January 2011 Revolution. Currently, Dr Rommel is a postdoctoral research affiliate in the ERC-funded Crosslocations project at the University of Helsinki. He also teaches anthropology at Stockholm University. His ongoing field research in Cairo interrogates intersections between precarity, masculinity, temporality and urban space in, around and through a variety of large and small ‘projects' (mashari‘). Dr Rommel's research has been published in Critical African Studies, Middle East – Topics & Arguments, and Men and Masculinities. Other key article publications by Carl Rommel are: - Rommel, Carl (2018) “Men in time: On masculine productivity, corruption and youth football in the aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution” Men and Masculinities, 21(3), 341-362, DOI: 10.1177/1097184X17748173. - Rommel, Carl (2016) “Troublesome Thugs or Respectable Rebels: Class, martyrdom and Cairo's revolutionary Ultras” Middle East – Topics & Arguments, 6, 33-42, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17192/meta.2016.6.3788. - Rommel, Carl (2014) “A Veritable Game of the Nation: On the changing status of football within the Egyptian national formation in the wake of the 2009 World Cup qualifiers against Algeria” Critical African Studies, 6(2-3), 157-175, DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2014.936079. - Rommel, Carl (2011) “Playing with difference: Football as a performative space for division among Suryoye migrants in Sweden” Soccer & Society, 12(6), 850-864, DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2011.609684. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Join us for our MEC live webinars – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford Middle East Centre | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

Math Renaissance: Growing Math Circles, Changing Classrooms, and Creating Sustainable Math Education (Natural Math, 2018) couples two educational memoirs: Student Rachel Steinig brings her experience from diverse schooling models, surveys of teachers and fellow students, and selections of peer-reviewed scholarship to an examination of math instruction in the United States. Her chapters seek to locate root causes, transcend conventional advice, and inspire readers to imagine radical alternatives. Teacher Rodi Steinig invites readers into the role of leading math circles with detailed play-by-plays from her own experience. These chapters evince the importance (and interplay) in this role of background knowledge, preparation, compassion, and improvisation—and, perhaps most saliently for beginning teachers, of resisting the urge to rescue. Taken together, the book critiques the existing systems that provide children's math education and drills down on an alternative model whose popularity continues to grow. Among my favorite parts of the book were Rodi's self-reflective thought bubbles on her performance facilitating math circles and Rachel's chapter on math instruction from a human rights perspective. The book is intended for teachers and parents of school-age children, though i think middle and high school students and even casual readers would find value in this forthright, thorough, and readable work. It was an absolute delight to discuss the book with both its authors! Rodi Steinig is an educator, author, and teacher trainer who has educated K-12 students in an inquiry-based approach for over twenty years. She received a B.S.in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and her M.S.Ed. from Cabrini University. While Rodi finds joy in almost everything, she finds exceptional joy in pedagogy, communication about mathematics and pedagogy, and mathematics (current favorite math topic: isomorphic problems). Rodi has a great passion for sitting on the floor with a group of students in a collaborative spirit of inquiry. Rachel Steinig (she/her) is an educator, advocate, author, and future human rights lawyer. She recently graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Political Science, a concentration in International Relations, and triple minors in Hispanic Studies, Modern Middle Eastern Studies, and Latin American and Latinx Studies. She is passionate about human rights, education access, making math fun, gender equity, and conflict resolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Math Renaissance: Growing Math Circles, Changing Classrooms, and Creating Sustainable Math Education (Natural Math, 2018) couples two educational memoirs: Student Rachel Steinig brings her experience from diverse schooling models, surveys of teachers and fellow students, and selections of peer-reviewed scholarship to an examination of math instruction in the United States. Her chapters seek to locate root causes, transcend conventional advice, and inspire readers to imagine radical alternatives. Teacher Rodi Steinig invites readers into the role of leading math circles with detailed play-by-plays from her own experience. These chapters evince the importance (and interplay) in this role of background knowledge, preparation, compassion, and improvisation—and, perhaps most saliently for beginning teachers, of resisting the urge to rescue. Taken together, the book critiques the existing systems that provide children's math education and drills down on an alternative model whose popularity continues to grow. Among my favorite parts of the book were Rodi's self-reflective thought bubbles on her performance facilitating math circles and Rachel's chapter on math instruction from a human rights perspective. The book is intended for teachers and parents of school-age children, though i think middle and high school students and even casual readers would find value in this forthright, thorough, and readable work. It was an absolute delight to discuss the book with both its authors! Rodi Steinig is an educator, author, and teacher trainer who has educated K-12 students in an inquiry-based approach for over twenty years. She received a B.S.in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and her M.S.Ed. from Cabrini University. While Rodi finds joy in almost everything, she finds exceptional joy in pedagogy, communication about mathematics and pedagogy, and mathematics (current favorite math topic: isomorphic problems). Rodi has a great passion for sitting on the floor with a group of students in a collaborative spirit of inquiry. Rachel Steinig (she/her) is an educator, advocate, author, and future human rights lawyer. She recently graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Political Science, a concentration in International Relations, and triple minors in Hispanic Studies, Modern Middle Eastern Studies, and Latin American and Latinx Studies. She is passionate about human rights, education access, making math fun, gender equity, and conflict resolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Join us as we listen to Dr Chihab El Khachab (King's College, Cambridge) in conversation about his new book – Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry. Published by American University in Cairo Press. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, Oxford) chairs the discussion. The book is available for purchase from the book distributors of the publisher, email: IPSUK.orders@ingramcontent.com and quote discount code AUCPRESS20 for your 20% discount. Offer available until 31st July 2021. Chihab El Khachab is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. He holds a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford (2017), and was a Junior Research Fellow in Christ Church, Oxford, between 2016 and 2020. His first book, Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology and Mediation Shape the Industry, was published by the American University in Cairo Press in 2021. His broader research interests include Egyptian popular culture, technology, humor, and bureaucracy. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Extract from publisher's website: The enormous influence of the Egyptian film industry on popular culture and collective imagination across the Arab world is widely acknowledged, but little is known about its concrete workings behind the scenes. Making Film in Egypt provides a fascinating glimpse into the lived reality of commercial film production in today's Cairo, with an emphasis on labor hierarchies, production practices, and the recent transition to digital technologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation among production workers, on-set technicians, and artistic crew members, Chihab El Khachab sets out to answer a simple question: how do filmmakers deal with the unpredictable future of their films? The answer unfolds through a journey across the industry's political economy, its labor processes, its technological infrastructure, its logistical and artistic work, and its imagined audiences. The result is a complex and nuanced portrait of the Arab world's largest film industry, rich in ethnographic detail and theoretical innovations in media anthropology, media studies, and Middle East anthropology. Join us for our MEC live webinars – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC

Professor Marie Ladier-Fouladi (CNRS)/ CETOBaC) gives a talk for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Soraya Tremayne (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology). Marie Ladier-Fouladi is a senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)/ CETOBaC (Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques) and professor of Political Sociology and Population Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Marie Ladier-Fouladi earned her Ph.D. in Demography and Social Sciences from the EHESS (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - Paris) in 1999 and entered CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in 2000. In 2012, she earned her full Professorship (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches -HDR) in Demography and Social Sciences. The title of her HDR’s dissertation was: “Understanding the Socio-Political Change Through the Prism of Demography”. In October 2019, she joined the Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBaC). Her research investigates the relationship between demographic changes and socio-political transformations, especially relying on the case of Iran. This approach consists in analyzing demographic phenomena by putting them in relation to their context, in the historical, social, economic, and political perspective. It is from this reflection on the relationship between demography and politics, and the perspectives they open up to understand social behaviors that she has defined her methodological approach. She has conducted several research projects on women and youth as new protagonists of political change in Iran, family and solidarity networks, social policy, immigration policy, political elections and population’s political horizon in Iran. She recently started working on a new research program entitled: From Global to Local: The Disturbing Future of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2010, the Iranian government reversed the neo-Malthusian policy it had introduced in December 1989, and opted for a new population policy that I will define as populationist. It consisted in deploying all possible means to reach a target population of 150 million, within an unspecified timeframe though. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, fully endorsed this policy, and in May 2014, for the sake of speeding up the process, he drew up a strategic program in a 14-article decree, called “Population General Policies”, which sanctioned the state’s new population policy, and instructed the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary powers to implement it. Grounded in the alleged threat of population aging due to birth control and declining fertility, the new population policy aims to accelerate population growth by reversing the downward trend in fertility. There is no doubt that the process of population aging has started in Iran, but not to the extent that this demographic evolution may justify the implementation of incentive, coercive and particularly aggressive measures in order to entice Iranian people into having more children. While, by reappropriating their fertility, Iranian women succeeded in coming out of “the male sphere of domination” and thus reaching dignity and equality, they again find themselves subject to injunctions that violate their reproductive health rights and thereby their human rights. I first shed light on the actual yet concealed objective of the new population policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The examination of coercive as well as incentives measures shall then evidence the detrimental effect of this new policy on Iranian women's rights.

Gillian Mosely (Film Director and Producer) joins Dr Anne Irfan, Professor Eugene Rogan and our Middle East Centre webinar audience to talk about her documentary film, The Tinderbox - Israel and Palestine: time to call time? Dr Anne Irfan (Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford) and Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College, Oxford). Extract from British Council Film website: Knowledge is power, but lack of knowledge keeps power where politicians want it... From BAFTA-award-winning producer Gillian Mosely, in association with multi-award winners, Spring Films (NIGHT WILL FALL, THE ACT OF KILLING), THE TINDERBOX is a controversial, revealing, and timely new feature documentary exploring both sides of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It’s the first time the facts behind the divide have been brought to the screen in a single film, and delves deep into history, as well as hearing from contemporary Israeli and Palestinian voices. Exposing surprising, shocking and uncomfortable truths, not least for its Jewish director and onscreen investigator, this is an important film that will provide valuable context and help people make up their minds – or even change them. http://www.thetinderboxfilm.com A first-time director, Gillian Mosely began producing films in 1997, creating, developing, producing and exec producing a wide range of high end documentaries for Arte, BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, History, ITV, NatGeo, PBS and ZDF among others. In 2017 Gillian produced her first Feature Documentary: Manolo: the Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards (Netflix). TV films include “Ancient Egypt: Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings,” BBC2, and BAFTA, Royal Television Society and AIB award-winning “Mummifying Alan,” Channel 4, Discovery, NGCI. Dr Anne Irfan is Anne Irfan is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre. She holds a Dual Master’s Degree from Columbia University and the LSE and a PhD from the LSE, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on the historical role of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Palestinian refugee camps. She previously taught at the University of Sussex and the LSE, and is an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Anne’s research interests include global refugee history, UNRWA and Palestinian refugees, forced migration in the Middle East, the spatiality of refugee camps, and archival suppression. She is currently Co-Investigator on the British Academy-funded research project Borders, global governance and the refugee, examining the historical origins of the global refugee regime. In recent years, she has spoken at the UK Parliament in Westminster, and the UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva about the functions of the UNRWA regime and the exclusions facing Palestinian refugees from Syria. Anne’s work has been published in Journal of Refugee Studies, Jerusalem Quarterly and Forced Migration Review, as well as media outlets The Washington Post and The Conversation. Her article ‘Is Jerusalem international or Palestinian? Rethinking UNGA Resolution 181’ was named co-winner of the 2017 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Best Essay on Jerusalem. She is currently working on a book about UNRWA’s institutional history. Professor Eugene Rogan is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford and Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College. He is author of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 (Penguin, 2015) which was named The Economist books of the year 2015 and The Sunday Times top ten bestseller; and The Arabs: A History (Penguin, 2009, 3rd edition 2018), which has been translated in 18 languages and was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Atlantic Monthly. His earlier works include Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 1999), for which he received the Albert Hourani Book Award of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the Fuad Köprülü Prize of the Turkish Studies Association; The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2001, second edition 2007, with Avi Shlaim), which has been published in Arabic, French, Turkish and Italian editions; and Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2002).

Alyssa Tracey is the Director of International Trade at Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC). Alyssa’s program provides assistance to Michigan companies interested in exporting, including training, consulting, and financial reimbursement. She has spent her career working in economic development, and holds a BA in International Relations from Michigan State University and an MA in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. Here, Jade and Alyssa talk about many resources available for exporters via the MEDC, and how those programs have changed and expanded to better assist small- and medium-sized companies during the pandemic. As everyone has become more dependent on online sales and communications, assistance for website optimization has greatly increased. Michigan’s International Trade Development Managers can be reached to discuss assistance available for trade shows and trade missions, international market research, local trainings, contacts to international offices, and 75% reimbursement for international marketing expenses by going to https://www.michiganbusiness.org/services/international-trade/ Social media: Twitter: @MEDC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/medc/ Facebok: https://www.facebook.com/MEDC » Visit MBN website: https://www.michiganbusinessnetwork.com/ » Subscribe to MBN’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqNX… » Like MBN: https://www.facebook.com/mibiznetwork » Follow MBN: https://twitter.com/MIBizNetwork/ » MBN Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mibiznetwork/

Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford), author of Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series on 20th November 2020. Chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Anthony's College, Oxford) Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Abstract: When the Covid-19 pandemic began many people thought that a virus-induced apocalypse, while painful, provided a chance to rethink and fix everything from school funding to global warming. Yet as the initial effervescence of our entry into the liminality of lockdown dragged into a dreary limbo, darker possibilities emerged. The rich grew richer; once laughable conspiracy theories became politically weaponized; the environment became less important than economic recovery; and in this country, Covid-induced economic distress has provided perfect cover for getting the hardest of Brexits done. A crisis, real or perceived, produces real change - just not the sort of change progressive activists may have envisioned, as the Egyptian revolutionaries I wrote about in Martyrs and Tricksters discovered to their dismay. Indeed, crisis provides ideal conditions for the flourishing of tricksters in mainstream politics, and many a trickster politician harbours the kernel of an authoritarian. My talk explores links between crisis and authoritarianism in the Middle East, but also more widely, and not only in the context of Covid (though it provides an excellent point of entry to my topic), but also in longer historical and social contexts. There may well be a “dictatorship syndrome,” as Dr al-Aswany’s book suggests, but the institutionalization of dictators and the habituation of populations to their rule is only part of the story. Dictators are often born from crisis as tricksters. Hitler started as a trickster. Donald Trump is perhaps the clearest instantiation of a trickster politician in history. Some crises are unforeseeable - earthquakes, pandemics, revolutions for example. Others are increasingly structured, economically and by communication technologies. We tend not to think of the economy as intrinsically crisis-prone, though perhaps we should, given the dominance of capitalism and its requirement for constant disruptive change and expansion. The crisis potential of media technologies is easier to imagine when we have so close at hand the wreckage of whiplashing from hopeful “Facebook Revolutions” to propagandistic “Fake News” in the space of a decade. In the end the notion of a dictatorship syndrome in the Middle East perhaps distracts us from the much greater danger of an authoritarian virus spreading throughout the world.

Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford), author of Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series on 20th November 2020. Chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Anthony's College, Oxford) Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Abstract: When the Covid-19 pandemic began many people thought that a virus-induced apocalypse, while painful, provided a chance to rethink and fix everything from school funding to global warming. Yet as the initial effervescence of our entry into the liminality of lockdown dragged into a dreary limbo, darker possibilities emerged. The rich grew richer; once laughable conspiracy theories became politically weaponized; the environment became less important than economic recovery; and in this country, Covid-induced economic distress has provided perfect cover for getting the hardest of Brexits done. A crisis, real or perceived, produces real change - just not the sort of change progressive activists may have envisioned, as the Egyptian revolutionaries I wrote about in Martyrs and Tricksters discovered to their dismay. Indeed, crisis provides ideal conditions for the flourishing of tricksters in mainstream politics, and many a trickster politician harbours the kernel of an authoritarian. My talk explores links between crisis and authoritarianism in the Middle East, but also more widely, and not only in the context of Covid (though it provides an excellent point of entry to my topic), but also in longer historical and social contexts. There may well be a “dictatorship syndrome,” as Dr al-Aswany’s book suggests, but the institutionalization of dictators and the habituation of populations to their rule is only part of the story. Dictators are often born from crisis as tricksters. Hitler started as a trickster. Donald Trump is perhaps the clearest instantiation of a trickster politician in history. Some crises are unforeseeable - earthquakes, pandemics, revolutions for example. Others are increasingly structured, economically and by communication technologies. We tend not to think of the economy as intrinsically crisis-prone, though perhaps we should, given the dominance of capitalism and its requirement for constant disruptive change and expansion. The crisis potential of media technologies is easier to imagine when we have so close at hand the wreckage of whiplashing from hopeful “Facebook Revolutions” to propagandistic “Fake News” in the space of a decade. In the end the notion of a dictatorship syndrome in the Middle East perhaps distracts us from the much greater danger of an authoritarian virus spreading throughout the world.

Professor Walter Armbrust (St. Antony's College, Oxford) gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St. Antony's College, Oxford). Dr Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and Associate Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000).

In this episode, we talked to Ceren Lord about her book Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP, in which she questions the view of the grassroots Islamist movements as natural challengers of the authoritarian secular state in a novel way based both on her archival research and the interviews she conducted with state officials, influential religious figures, and the employees of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (diyanet). What was the role of the ulema in the formation of the Turkish Republic? What kinds of alliances did the multiple state institutions form with religious groups and sects? Should we read the AKP regime as a continuity of or a rupture from the state tradition of the Republic? Ceren Lord is currently British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, with Middle East Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), where she was previously a Sasakawa Peace Foundation Postdoctoral Research Officer. She completed her PhD in May 2015 at the London School of Economics, Government Department, focusing on the role of the state and the ulema (Diyanet) in the rise of political Islam in Turkey. She holds a master’s degree from Oxford University (St Antony’s College) in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. Alongside her academic career, Ceren previously worked in finance as an economist focusing on Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She is a regular contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Associate Editor at the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and the lead editor for the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) Contemporary Turkey series published by I.B. Tauris. Her book, ‘Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP,’ was published in October 2018 by Cambridge University Press. https://www.area-studies.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-ceren-lord https://oxford.academia.edu/CerenLord

The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo(Princeton University Press, 2018) redefines our understanding of the peace process and its ultimate failure: forty years after the Camp David Accords, the Palestinian people remain without a state. The book walks us through the Camp David Accords, Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon, and the first Intifada in 1987, drawing in the diplomatic perspectives of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans through a diverse set of sources. Most critically, this includes newly declassified sources from Israeli archives. Anziska's narrative ultimately asserts that Palestinian opportunities for autonomy have only decreased over time, explaining how the peace process stalls even today. In this interview, Seth talks us through the book, the questions that dog Palestinian-Israeli relations today, the realities of archival work, and his non-academic collaborations. Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture, the international history of the modern Middle East, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics Seth is a Visiting Fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project and a 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony's College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. . His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, and the Pavilion of Lebanon in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, September 2018). Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo(Princeton University Press, 2018) redefines our understanding of the peace process and its ultimate failure: forty years after the Camp David Accords, the Palestinian people remain without  a state. The book walks us through the Camp David Accords, Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, and the first Intifada in 1987, drawing in the diplomatic perspectives of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans through a diverse set of sources. Most critically, this includes newly declassified sources from Israeli archives.  Anziska’s narrative ultimately asserts that Palestinian opportunities for autonomy have only decreased over time, explaining how the peace process stalls even today. In this interview, Seth talks us through the book, the questions that dog Palestinian-Israeli relations today, the realities of archival work, and his non-academic collaborations. Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture, the international history of the modern Middle East, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics Seth is a Visiting Fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project and a 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. . His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, and the Pavilion of Lebanon in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, September 2018). Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo(Princeton University Press, 2018) redefines our understanding of the peace process and its ultimate failure: forty years after the Camp David Accords, the Palestinian people remain without  a state. The book walks us through the Camp David Accords, Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, and the first Intifada in 1987, drawing in the diplomatic perspectives of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans through a diverse set of sources. Most critically, this includes newly declassified sources from Israeli archives.  Anziska’s narrative ultimately asserts that Palestinian opportunities for autonomy have only decreased over time, explaining how the peace process stalls even today. In this interview, Seth talks us through the book, the questions that dog Palestinian-Israeli relations today, the realities of archival work, and his non-academic collaborations. Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture, the international history of the modern Middle East, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics Seth is a Visiting Fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project and a 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. . His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, and the Pavilion of Lebanon in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, September 2018). Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo(Princeton University Press, 2018) redefines our understanding of the peace process and its ultimate failure: forty years after the Camp David Accords, the Palestinian people remain without  a state. The book walks us through the Camp David Accords, Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, and the first Intifada in 1987, drawing in the diplomatic perspectives of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans through a diverse set of sources. Most critically, this includes newly declassified sources from Israeli archives.  Anziska’s narrative ultimately asserts that Palestinian opportunities for autonomy have only decreased over time, explaining how the peace process stalls even today. In this interview, Seth talks us through the book, the questions that dog Palestinian-Israeli relations today, the realities of archival work, and his non-academic collaborations. Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture, the international history of the modern Middle East, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics Seth is a Visiting Fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project and a 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. . His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, and the Pavilion of Lebanon in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, September 2018). Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo(Princeton University Press, 2018) redefines our understanding of the peace process and its ultimate failure: forty years after the Camp David Accords, the Palestinian people remain without  a state. The book walks us through the Camp David Accords, Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, and the first Intifada in 1987, drawing in the diplomatic perspectives of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans through a diverse set of sources. Most critically, this includes newly declassified sources from Israeli archives.  Anziska’s narrative ultimately asserts that Palestinian opportunities for autonomy have only decreased over time, explaining how the peace process stalls even today. In this interview, Seth talks us through the book, the questions that dog Palestinian-Israeli relations today, the realities of archival work, and his non-academic collaborations. Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture, the international history of the modern Middle East, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics Seth is a Visiting Fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project and a 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. . His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, and the Pavilion of Lebanon in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, September 2018). Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of Palestinian autonomy has been a key element of Middle Eastern and Arab politics for much of the last century. A new history, by Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo(Princeton University Press, 2018) redefines our understanding of the peace process and its ultimate failure: forty years after the Camp David Accords, the Palestinian people remain without  a state. The book walks us through the Camp David Accords, Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, and the first Intifada in 1987, drawing in the diplomatic perspectives of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Americans through a diverse set of sources. Most critically, this includes newly declassified sources from Israeli archives.  Anziska’s narrative ultimately asserts that Palestinian opportunities for autonomy have only decreased over time, explaining how the peace process stalls even today. In this interview, Seth talks us through the book, the questions that dog Palestinian-Israeli relations today, the realities of archival work, and his non-academic collaborations. Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Palestinian and Israeli society and culture, the international history of the modern Middle East, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics Seth is a Visiting Fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project and a 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. . His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, and the Pavilion of Lebanon in the 2013 Venice Biennale. He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, September 2018). Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices