Podcasts about world literature sites

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history. Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumière Brothers films persist as living archives. The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world—both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumière films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema—and the world—can be. Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media. Michael Allan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, 2016, winner, MLA First Book Prize) and serves as editor of the journal Comparative Literature. 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

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history. Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumière Brothers films persist as living archives. The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world—both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumière films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema—and the world—can be. Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media. Michael Allan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, 2016, winner, MLA First Book Prize) and serves as editor of the journal Comparative Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history. Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumière Brothers films persist as living archives. The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world—both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumière films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema—and the world—can be. Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media. Michael Allan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, 2016, winner, MLA First Book Prize) and serves as editor of the journal Comparative Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history. Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumière Brothers films persist as living archives. The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world—both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumière films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema—and the world—can be. Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media. Michael Allan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, 2016, winner, MLA First Book Prize) and serves as editor of the journal Comparative Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across North Africa and the Middle East. The book shows how the sites in these early films are not simply backdrops, but integral to film form and its global history. Connecting a series of filmic principles (framing, tracking shots, close-ups) to the sites where they are made visible (a rooftop in Algiers, a train station and the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem), Allan unsettles a familiar narrative of imperial vision. In the interplay of local history and global media, he highlights tensions between ethnography, observation, and visual capture, revealing how the Lumière Brothers films persist as living archives. The book evokes a formative moment when cinema stood before the world—both as a technological marvel and as a medium that shaped how space and time were perceived. Tracing a journey from Algeria to Egypt and Palestine, and moving across media from lithography to photography and panoramas, Allan shows how in the hands of later filmmakers, such as Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and the Syrian collective Abounaddara, the Lumière films continue to enrich and inform visions of what cinema—and the world—can be. Cinema before the World offers a critical historical intervention in the global story of the cinematograph and a visionary method for film scholarship grounded in transnational analysis across languages, regions, and media. Michael Allan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton, 2016, winner, MLA First Book Prize) and serves as editor of the journal Comparative Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of inquiry and demonstrates how literary traditions changed the act of reading: his examples include the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur’an. He thus demonstrates that literary reading (to be distinguished from how reading was conceptualized in Egypt before the colonial period) requires different ethical capacities and sensibilities and how they were gradually institutionalized by different genres of texts. NA 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

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of inquiry and demonstrates how literary traditions changed the act of reading: his examples include the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur’an. He thus demonstrates that literary reading (to be distinguished from how reading was conceptualized in Egypt before the colonial period) requires different ethical capacities and sensibilities and how they were gradually institutionalized by different genres of texts. NA 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

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of inquiry and demonstrates how literary traditions changed the act of reading: his examples include the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur’an. He thus demonstrates that literary reading (to be distinguished from how reading was conceptualized in Egypt before the colonial period) requires different ethical capacities and sensibilities and how they were gradually institutionalized by different genres of texts. NA 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

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of inquiry and demonstrates how literary traditions changed the act of reading: his examples include the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur’an. He thus demonstrates that literary reading (to be distinguished from how reading was conceptualized in Egypt before the colonial period) requires different ethical capacities and sensibilities and how they were gradually institutionalized by different genres of texts. NA 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

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of inquiry and demonstrates how literary traditions changed the act of reading: his examples include the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur’an. He thus demonstrates that literary reading (to be distinguished from how reading was conceptualized in Egypt before the colonial period) requires different ethical capacities and sensibilities and how they were gradually institutionalized by different genres of texts. NA 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

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of inquiry and demonstrates how literary traditions changed the act of reading: his examples include the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur’an. He thus demonstrates that literary reading (to be distinguished from how reading was conceptualized in Egypt before the colonial period) requires different ethical capacities and sensibilities and how they were gradually institutionalized by different genres of texts. NA 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

Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perceptions of world literature: he argues that the disciplinary framework of world literature levels the differences between different types of literature. He uses colonial Egypt as a geographic focus of...