MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

MIDDLE EAST
  STUDIES

                            2023
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
TABLE OF CONTENTS

    History............................................2-7
    Worlding the Middle East..... 8-9
    Culture and Media.................. 10-11
    Stanford Ottoman
    World Series................................... 11
    Stanford Studies in
    Middle Eastern and
    Islamic Societies
    and Cultures............................ 12-16
    Politics........................................ 16-18
    Religion............................................ 19

    Cover image:
    Unknown photographer, tinted by
    George Kirkpatrick, The Dome of the                       Remnants                                 The Horrors of Adana
    Rock and the Western Temple Wall,
    Jerusalem, between 1898-1946, Courtesy
                                                              Embodied Archives of the                 Revolution and Violence in the
    of the Library of Congress, G. Eric and                   Armenian Genocide                        Early Twentieth Century
    Edith Matson Photograph Collection.
                                                              Elyse Semerdjian                         Bedross Der Matossian
    O RDER ING                                                In Remnants, tattooed and                In April 1909, twin massacres shook
                                                              scar-bearing bodies reveal a larger      the province of Adana, killing more
    Use code S23MES to receive a
                                                              history, as the lived trauma of          than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000
    20% discount on all ISBNs listed in
    this catalog. Visit sup.org to order
                                                              genocide is understood through           Muslims. This book offers one of
    online. Books not yet published                           bodies, skin, and—in what remains        the first close examinations of these
    or temporarily out of stock will                          of those lives a century afterward—      events, analyzing sociopolitical and
    only be charged to your credit                            bones. Semerdjian offers a feminist      economic transformations that culmi-
    card when they are shipped.                               reading of the Armenian Geno-            nated in a cataclysm of violence. Der
                                                              cide. She explores how the Otto-         Matossian provides voice and agency
            @stanfordpress
                                                              man Armenian communal body               to all involved in the massacres—per-
                                                              was dis-membered, disfigured, and        petrators, victims, and bystanders.
            facebook.com/
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                                                              she writes a deeply personal his-        understand the rumors and emotions,
            Blog: stanfordpress.
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                                                              the archival record in order to          interventions that together informed
                                                              embrace affect and memory. Traces        this complex event. Through con-
    EXAMINATION COPY POLICY                                   of women and children rescued            sideration of the Adana Massacres
    Examination copies of select titles                       during and after the war are             in micro-historical detail, this book
    are available on sup.org.                                 reconstructed to center the quietest     offers an important macrocosmic
                                                              voices in the historical record. This    understanding of ethnic violence,
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                                                              daring work embraces physical and        illuminating how and why ordinary
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                                                              archival remnants, the imprinted         people can become perpetrators.
    Review/Desk/Examination Copy.
    You can request either a free                             negatives of once living bodies, as      “A truly groundbreaking and highly
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    to consider for course adoption.                          Armenian prosthetic memory and           sectarian, and nationalist violence in
    A nominal handling fee applies                            a necessary way to recognize the         the late Ottoman Empire.”
    for all physical copy requests.                           absence that remains.                                             —Ussama Makdisi,
                                                                                                                                  Rice University
                                                              424 pages, August 2023
                                                              9781503636125 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale   360 pages, 2022
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2                                                             HISTORY
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Losing Istanbul                            Famine Worlds                              In the Shadow of the Wall
Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and              Life at the Edge of Suffering in           The Life and Death of Jerusalem’s
the End of Empire                          Lebanon’s Great War                        Maghrebi Quarter, 1187–1967
Mostafa Minawi                             Tylor Brand                                Vincent Lemire
This book offers an intimate history       The Great Famine was a catastrophe         This book offers the first history of
of empire, following the rise and fall     for the lands that would become            the Maghrebi Quarter—spanning
of a generation of Arab-Ottoman            Lebanon. The deadly crisis reshaped        800 years from its founding in 1187
imperialists. Minawi shows how             society, killing untold thousands and      through to its destruction in 1967. To
these men and women negotiated             transforming how people lived. Brand       bring this vanished district back to
their loyalties and guarded their          draws on memoirs, diaries, and cor-        life, Lemire gathers its now-scattered
privileges through a microhis-             respondence to explore how people          documentation in the archives of
torical study of the changing social,      negotiated the famine and its traumas.     Muslim pious foundations in Jeru-
political, and cultural currents.          But more than simply a chronicle of        salem and the Red Cross in Geneva,
He narrates lives lived in these           the event, this book offers a profound     in Ottoman archives in Istanbul and
turbulent times, while focusing on         meditation on what it means to live        Israeli state archives. He engages
the complex dynamics of ethnicity          through collective trauma, and how         testimonies of former residents and
and race in an increasingly Turco-         doing so shapes the character of a         looks to recent archaeological digs
centric imperial capital. An alterna-      society. A crisis like the Great Famine    that have resurfaced household
tive history of the last decades of the    not only reshapes the lives and social     objects buried during the destruction.
Ottoman Empire, Losing Istanbul            worlds of those who suffer, it creates a   Today, the Western Wall Plaza extends
frames global pivotal events through       particular rationality that touches the    over the former Maghrebi Quarter. It
the experiences of Arab-Ottoman            most fundamental parts of our being,       is one of the most identifiable places
imperial loyalists who called              down to the ways we interact with          in the world—yet one of the most
Istanbul home.                             each other. We often assume that if we     occluded in history. This book offers a
“A masterful and captivating               were thrust into historic calamity that    new point of entry to understand this
account. Losing Istanbul teaches us        we would continue to behave compas-        consequential place.
how to rescue late Ottoman history         sionately. Famine Worlds questions         “Lemire re-establishes the long-forgotten
from Turkish nationalist narratives        such confidence, providing a lesson        Maghrebi Quarter of the Old City to its
and gain a much richer understanding       that could not be more timely.             rightful place in history. A fascinating
of global intellectual and political                                                  and timely narrative.”
history of the high age of imperialism.”   272 pages, August 2023
                                           9781503636163 Paper $25.00 $20.00 sale                              —Roberto Mazza,
                         —Cemil Aydin,                                                                     University of Limerick
           University of North Carolina
                          at Chapel Hill                                              352 pages, April 2023
                                                                                      9781503634206 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
326 pages, 2022
9781503634046 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale

                                                                                                               HISTORY              3
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Undesirables                               Wartime North Africa                         Diary of a Black
    A Holocaust Journey to                     A Documentary History,                       Jewish Messiah
    North Africa                               1934–1950                                    The Sixteenth-Century Journey of
    Aomar Boum,                                Edited by Aomar Boum and                     David Reubeni through Africa, the
    Illustrated by Nadjib Berber               Sarah Abrevaya Stein                         Middle East, and Europe
    This historical graphic novel              This book offers the first-ever              Alan Verskin
    follows one man’s journey, telling a       collection of primary documents              This book offers the first English
    lesser-known story of the traumas          on North African and Holocaust               translation of Reubeni’s diary, detail-
    wrought by the Holocaust. Hans             history. Translated from French,             ing his travels and personal travails.
    Frank is a Jewish journalist who flees     Arabic, North African Judeo-                 In 1524, Reubeni appeared in Venice,
    Germany. Through connections with          Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, Moroccan            claiming to be the ambassador of
    a transnational network of activists,      Darija, Tamazight (Berber), Italian,         a powerful Jewish kingdom that
    he lands in French Algeria. The            and Yiddish, or transcribed from             looked to deliver Jews to the Holy
    Vichy regime soon designates all           their original English, these sources        Land. He spent a decade shuttling
    foreign Jews as “undesirables,” and        are like the dots of a pointillist           between European rulers seeking
    Hans is detained by Vichy authorities      painting. Taken together, these              support. Reubeni’s grand ambitions
    and interned in camps in the deserts       writings shed light on how war,              were halted when he was turned over
    of Morocco and Algeria. Through            occupation, race laws, internment,           to the Inquisition and, in 1538, likely
    bold storytelling and illustration that    and Vichy French, Italian fascist,           burned at the stake. Written unlike
    convey the tension of the coming           and German Nazi rule were expe-              other literary works of the period,
    war and the grimness of the camps,         rienced day by day across North              Reubeni’s diary reveals the dramatic
    Boum and Berber capture the                Africa. Though some selections               desperation of Renaissance Jewish
    experiences of thousands of refugees       are drawn from published books,              communities and the struggles of the
    in the fictional Hans, and chronicle       including memoirs, diaries, and              diplomat, trickster, and dreamer who
    how the traumas of the Holocaust           collections of poetry, most have             wanted to save them.
    extended far beyond the borders            never been published before, nor             “Verskin has once again proven
    of Europe.                                 previously translated into English.          himself to be a master translator with
    “Connects the histories of Jews            “Essential and groundbreaking. With          this rendering of the Hebrew diary …
    and North Africans, of antisemitism        great care and intelligence, Boum            and no less a master storyteller who
    and racism, of the Holocaust and           and draw an intimate picture of the          vividly recreates the historical setting
    colonialism in innovative and              region. This is a book as beautiful as       of Reubeni’s activity in his detailed
    surprising ways. An eye-opening            the people it portrays.”                     introduction, which is eminently
    book in the literal sense of the word.”                                 —Laila Lalami   scholarly yet fully accessible.”
                          —Michael Brenner,    384 pages, 2022                                                —Norman A. Stillman,
                         American University                                                                 University of Oklahoma
                                               9781503631991 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
    112 pages, January 2023                                                                 212 pages, January 2023
    9781503632912 Paper $20.00 $16.00 sale                                                  9781503634435 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale

4            HISTORY
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Oldest Guard                           A History of False Hope                       The Last Nahdawi
Forging the Zionist Settler Past           Investigative Commissions                     Taha Hussein and Institution
Liora R. Halperin                          in Palestine                                  Building in Egypt
This book tells the story of Zionist       Lori Allen                                    Hussam R. Ahmed
settler memory in and around the           This book offers a provocative                This book is the first biography of
private Jewish agricultural colonies       retelling of Palestinian political his-       Taha Hussein in which his intellectual
established in late nineteenth-            tory through an examination of the            outlook and public career are taken
century Ottoman Palestine. Treating        international commissions that have           equally seriously. Examining Hussein’s
the “First Aliyah” as a symbol             investigated political violence and           actions against the backdrop of his
created and deployed only in               human rights violations. Drawing              complex relationship with the Egyp-
retrospect, Halperin offers a richly       on debates in the press, previously           tian state, the religious establishment,
textured portrait of commemorative         unexamined UN reports, historical             and the French government, Ahmed
practices between the 1920s and            archives, and ethnographic research,          reveals modern Egypt’s cultural
the 1960s. She demonstrates how            Allen explores six key investigative          influence in the Arab and Islamic
private agriculturalists and their         commissions over the last century.            world. The Last Nahdawi offers both
advocates in the Zionist center and        She highlights how Palestinians’              a history of modern state formation,
on the right celebrated and forged         persistent demands for indepen-               revealing how the Egyptian state came
this past as a model of private            dence have been routinely translated          to hold such a strong grip over culture
ownership, political impartiality,         into the numb language of reports             and education—and a compelling
and hierarchical relations with            and resolutions. These commissions,           examination of the life of the country’s
hired rural Palestinian labor. The         Allen argues, operating as technolo-          most renowned intellectual.
Oldest Guard reveals the centrality        gies of liberal global governance,            “The Last Nahdawi is a breakthrough
of settlement to Zionist collective        yield no justice—only the oppressive          biography of one of the most important
memory and the politics and era-           status quo. A History of False Hope           figures of modern Arab thought. A mas-
sures of Zionist settler “firstness.”      issues a biting critique of the capti-        terful, original, and important critical
                                           vating allure and cold impotence of           assessment of this towering intellectual.”
“In this extremely important work,
Halperin’s insightful reading of           international law.                                                    —Khaled Fahmy,
the first Aliyah colonies unpacks                                                                        University of Cambridge
                                           “Allen has produced a fascinating,
the complex relationship between           engaging, and innovative scholarly            312 pages, 2021
Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and                  assessment of how international com-          9781503627956 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
Palestinians in the modern state           missions have failed to deliver politi-
of Israel.”                                cal results to the Palestinian people.”
                         —Orit Bashkin,                                  —Richard Falk
                   University of Chicago
                                           432 pages, 2020
368 pages, 2021
                                           9781503614185 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
9781503628700 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale

                                                                                                                  HISTORY          5
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Persian Prince                          The City as Anthology                       The Discovery of Iran
    The Rise and Resurrection of an             Eroticism and Urbanity in Early             Taghi Arani, a
    Imperial Archetype                          Modern Isfahan                              Radical Cosmopolitan
    Hamid Dabashi                               Kathryn Babayan                             Ali Mirsepassi
    With a title borrowed from                  This book tells a new history of            This book examines the history of
    Machiavelli, Dabashi articulates            Isfahan at the transformative               Iranian nationalism afresh through
    a bold new idea of the Persian              moment it became a cosmopolitan             the life and work of Taghi Arani, the
    Prince—a metaphor of political              center of imperial rule. Babayan            founder of Donya, Iran’s first Marx-
    authority, a figurative ideal deeply        reimagines an archive of antholo-           ist journal. In his quest to imagine
    rooted in the collective memories           gies to recover how residents shaped        a future for Iran, Arani combined
    of multiple nations, and a literary         their communities and crafted their         Marxist materialism and a cosmo-
    construct that connected Muslim             urban, religious, and sexual selves.        politan ethics of progress. He and
    empires across time and space.              Through them, we see the gestures,          his contemporaries engaged vibrant
    Drawing on works from Classical             manners, and sensibilities of a             debates about national identity, his-
    Antiquity and the vast Persianate           shared culture that configured their        tory, and Iran’s place in the modern
    worlds from India to the Mediter-           relations and negotiated the lines          world. As Mirsepassi shows, Arani’s
    ranean, as well as the Hebrew Bible         between friendship and eroticism.           cosmopolitanism complicates the
    and European medieval mirrors               These entangled acts of seeing              conventional wisdom that racial
    for princes, Dabashi reveals the            and reading, desiring and writing           exclusivism was an insoluble feature
    construction of the Persian Prince          converge to fashion the refined             of twentieth-century Iranian na-
    as a potent archetype. He traces            urban self through the sensual and          tionalism. In exploring Arani’s short
    this archetype through its varied           the sexual—and give us a new and            but remarkable life and writings,
    historic gestations and finds it            enticing view of the city of Isfahan.       Mirsepassi challenges the image
    resurfacing in postcolonial political       “The City as Anthology is a                 of Interwar Iran as dominated by
    thought as a rebel, a prophet, a poet,      landmark of early modern history,           the Pahlavi state to uncover fertile
    and a nomad.                                both a generative model for future          intellectual spaces in which civic
    “A unique and formidable text               scholars and among the best portals         nationalism flourished.
    that encapsulates the brilliance,           to understanding Iran for readers
    vivacity, and political ferocity of         at any level.”                              “A powerful and engaging
    Dabashi’s mind.”                                                     —Shahzad Bashir,
                                                                                            intellectual biography which weaves
                                                                         Brown University   Taghi Arani’s life into the broader
                         —Jeanne Morefield,                                                 tapestry of modern Iranian
                         University of Oxford   280 pages, 2021                             nationalism and modernism.”
                                                9781503613386 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale
    328 pages, June 2023                                                                                         —Stephanie Cronin,
    9781503636231 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale                                                                       University of Oxford

                                                                                            232 pages, 2021
                                                                                            9781503629141 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale

6            HISTORY
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Iran in Motion                           The Unsettled Plain                        Bedouin Bureaucrats
Mobility, Space, and the                 An Environmental History of the            Mobility and Property in the
Trans-Iranian Railway                    Late Ottoman Frontier                      Ottoman Empire
Mikiya Koyagi                            Chris Gratien                              Nora Elizabeth Barakat
This book traces the contested           This book studies agrarian life over       This book examines how
imaginations and practices of            the course of the late nineteenth          tent-dwelling, seasonally migrating
mobility from the conception of          and early twentieth centuries as the       Bedouin engaged in processes of
a trans-Iranian railway project dur-     environmental transformation of the        Ottoman state transformation on
ing the nineteenth-century global        Ottoman countryside became inter-          local, imperial, and global scales.
transport revolution to its early        twined with migration and displace-        As the “tribe” became a category of
years of operation on the eve of         ment. Drawing on both Ottoman              Ottoman administration, Bedouin
Iran’s oil nationalization movement      Turkish and Armenian sources,              in the Syrian interior used this
in the 1950s. Weaving together           Gratien brings rural populations into      category both to gain political
various individual experiences,          the momentous events of the period:        influence and to organize commu-
Koyagi considers how the infra-          Ottoman reform, Mediterranean              nity resistance to maintain control
structural megaproject reoriented        capitalism, the First World War, and       over land. Narrating the lives of
the flows of people and goods. The       Turkish nation-building. Through           Bedouin individuals, Barakat
railway project simultaneously           the ecological perspectives of every-      brings this population to the center
brought the provinces closer to          day people in Çukurova, he charts          of modern state-making, while
Tehran and pulled them away from         how familiar facets of quotidian           also placing the Syrian interior in
it, thereby constantly reshaping         life like malaria, cotton cultivation,     a global context of imperial expan-
local, national, and transnational       labor, and leisure attained modern         sion into regions formerly deemed
experiences of space among               manifestations. As the history of this     marginal. She illuminates Ottoman
mobile individuals.                      pivotal region reveals, the remark-        state formation attempts and the
                                         able ecological transformation of          unique trajectory of Bedouin
“Koyagi transports us through
the various stations that dotted         late Ottoman society configured            in Syria, who maintained their
Iran’s path to modernity. Much           the trajectory of the contemporary         control over land.
more than a narrative of the railway     societies of the Middle East.              “Bedouin Bureaucrats is a marvel.
project, Iran in Motion reveals a                                                   It is necessary reading for anybody
deep understanding of the mobility       “Environmental history at its finest.
                                         Gratien tells the story of an empire,      interested in the complexities of
networks that connected and divided                                                 state-building, governance, and
Middle Eastern communities.              meticulously researched, exceptionally
                                         insightful—all grounded in the lives       sovereignty. Nora Barakat has given
A groundbreaking book.”                                                             us a book that will be debated and
                                         and lands of Çukurova.”
            —Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet,                                                admired for years to come.”
            University of Pennsylvania                             —Sam White,
                                                            Ohio State University                       —Pekka Hämäläinen,
                                                                                                        University of Oxford
296 pages, 2021
9781503613133 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale   328 pages, 2022                            344 pages, April 2023
                                         9781503631267 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale     9781503635623 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
                                                                                                             HISTORY           7
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Lives and Deaths of                      Transnational Palestine                   A House in the Homeland
    Jubrail Dabdoub                              Migration and the Right of Return         Armenian Pilgrimages to Places of
    Or, How the Bethlehemites                    before 1948                               Ancestral Memory
    Discovered Amerka                            Nadim Bawalsa                             Carel Bertram
    Jacob Norris                                 Tens of thousands of Palestinians         Survivors of the Armenian
    This book tells the fantastical, yet         migrated to the Americas in the final     Genocide took refuge across the
    real, story of Jubrail Dabdoub, from         decades of the nineteenth century         globe, and the idea of returning to
    his childhood in rural Bethlehem             and early decades of the twentieth.       their homeland was unthinkable.
    to his travels as a merchant across          This is the first book to explore the     But decades later, some children
    Europe, East Asia, and the Americas,         history of Palestinian immigration        and grandchildren felt compelled
    culminating in a recorded miracle:           to Latin America, the struggles           to travel back. Hoping to satisfy
    in 1909, Jubrail was brought back            Palestinian migrants faced to secure      spiritual yearnings, this new genera-
    from the dead. To tell such a tale is to     Palestinian citizenship in the inter-     tion called themselves pilgrims—and
    delve into realms the historian rarely       war period, and the ways in which         their journeys, pilgrimages. Bertram
    treads. Through the story of Jubrail’s       these challenges contributed to the       joined scores of these pilgrims
    life, Norris explores the porous lines       formation of a Palestinian diaspora       on over a dozen pilgrimages, and
    between history and fiction, the nor-        and to the emergence of Palestinian       amassed accounts from hundreds
    mal and the paranormal, the everyday         national consciousness. Bawalsa           more who made these journeys. In
    and the extraordinary. Drawing on            considers the migrants’ strategies for    telling their stories, this book docu-
    aspects of magical realism combined          economic success in the diaspora,         ments how pilgrims encountered
    with elements of Palestinian folklore,       for preserving their heritage, and for    the ancestral house or town as both
    Norris recovers the atmosphere of            resisting British mandate legislation,    real and metaphorical centerpieces
    late nineteenth-century Bethlehem            including citizenship rejections          of family history. These Armenian
    as scores of young men set off for           meted out to thousands of Palestin-       stories reflect the resilience of
    faraway lands, and offers an original        ian migrants.                             diaspora in the face of trauma,
    approach to historical writing,              “A significant contribution to the        separation, and exile in ways that
    capturing a fantastic story of global        history of Palestinian transnational      each of us, whatever our history,
    encounter and exchange.                      activism. Bawalsa amplifies the           can recognize.
                                                 diasporic dimension of the ‘right         “Bertram’s gifts of empathy and
    “A most original treatise on local           of return.’ A must read for scholar-
    knowledge. Norris weaves an astute                                                     storytelling make for a book that is
                                                 activists of the modern Middle East,      at once heartbreaking and inspiring.
    combination of historical discourse          inter-war politics, and national
    and magical realism.”                                                                  Essential for anyone interested in
                                                 liberation struggles.”                    place, memory, and mass violence.”
                                 —Salim Tamari
                                                                  —Sarah M.A. Gualtieri,
                                                       University of Southern California                 —Heghnar Watenpaugh,
    290 pages, January 2023                                                                          University of California, Davis
    9781503633759 Paper $25.00 $20.00 sale       296 pages, 2022                           312 pages, 2022
                                                 9781503632264 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale    9781503631649 Paper $25.00 $20.00 sale

8            WORLDING THE MIDDLE EAST
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Western Privilege                           Years of Glory                               Maghreb Noir
Work, Intimacy, and Postcolonial            Nelly Benatar and the Pursuit of             The Militant-Artists of North
Hierarchies in Dubai                        Justice in Wartime North Africa              Africa and the Struggle for a
                                            Susan Gilson Miller                          Pan-African, Postcolonial Future
Amélie Le Renard
                                            This book offers a rich biography            Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik
Nearly 90 percent of residents
in Dubai are foreigners with no             and a deeper understanding of the            This book dives into the personal
Emirati nationality. Le Renard              complex currents that shaped Jewish,         and political lives of the militant-
explores how race, gender, and class        North African, and world history over        artists who collectively challenged
backgrounds shape experiences               the course of the Second World War.          the neo-colonialist structures and
of privilege, and investigates the          The traumas of genocide, the struggle        authoritarianism of African states.
processes that lead to the formation        for anti-colonial liberation, and the        Drawing on Arabic, Spanish,
of Westerners as a social group.            eventual Jewish exodus from Arab             Portuguese, French, and English
Through an ethnography informed             lands all take on new meaning when           sources, as well as interviews with
by postcolonial and feminist theory,        reflected through the interstices of         the artists themselves, Tolan-Szkilnik
she reveals the diverse experiences         Benatar’s life. A courageous woman           expands our understanding of
and trajectories of white and non-          with a deep moral conscience and an          Pan-Africanism geographically,
white, male and female Westerners           iron will, Nelly Benatar helped to lay       linguistically, and temporally. This
to understand the shifting and              the groundwork for crucial postwar           network of militant-artists argued
contingent nature of Western-               efforts to build a better world over         for the creation of a new ideology of
ness—and also its deep connection           Europe’s ashes.                              continued revolution—one that was
to whiteness and heteronormativity.         “Years of Glory illuminates                  transnational, trans-racial, and in de-
This book offers a singular look at         major themes: that period’s refugee          fiance of the emerging nation-states.
the lived reality of structural racism      crisis, resistance in Morocco to             Maghreb Noir establishes the impor-
in cities of the global South.              the Vichy regime, a talented woman’s         tance of North Africa in nurturing
                                            professional advancement in a                these global connections—and
“A must-read for those interested in        traditional society, and the life of a
race and racialization. Le Renard                                                        uncovers a lost history of grassroots
                                            once-vibrant Jewish community in             collaboration among militant-artists
shows us how these structuring              North Africa. An exemplary
categories are both integral to Gulf        unearthing of the remarkable legal           from across the globe.
social hierarchies and have an              career of Nelly Benatar.”                    “Maghreb Noir takes us from Rabat
enduring global influence.”
                                                                   —Robert O. Paxton,    to Algiers to Tunis to demonstrate how
                            —Neha Vora,                            Columbia University   1960s North Africa was an epicenter
                        Lafayette College                                                of pan-African thought and Black
                                            248 pages, 2021                              radicalism. A meticulously researched,
256 pages, 2021                             9781503628458 Cloth $30.00 $24.00 sale
9781503629233 Paper $26.00 $20.80 sale                                                   effortlessly transnational work.”
                                                                                                                   —Hisham Aidi,
                                                                                                              Columbia University
                                                                                         288 pages, July 2023
                                                                                         9781503635913 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
                                                                                     WORLDING THE MIDDLE EAST                       9
MIDDLE EAST STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Arabic Glitch                            Alternative Iran                          Media of the Masses
 Technoculture, Data Bodies,              Contemporary Art and Critical             Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt
 and Archives                             Spatial Practice                          Andrew Simon
 Laila Shereen Sakr                       Pamela Karimi                             This book investigates the social
 This book explores an alternative        Alternative Iran offers a unique          life of the cassette tape to offer a
 origin story of twenty-first century     contribution to the field of              multisensory history of modern
 technological innovation in digital      contemporary art, investigating           Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s,
 politics—one centered on the             how Iranian artists engage with           cassettes became a ubiquitous
 Middle East and the 2011 Arab            space and site amid the pressures         presence in Egyptian homes and
 uprisings. Developed from an             of the art market and the state’s         stores. Enabling an unprecedented
 archive of social media data col-        regulatory regimes. Attending to          number of people to participate in
 lected over the decades following        nonconforming curatorial projects,        the creation of culture and circula-
 the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq,          independent guerrilla installations,      tion of content, cassette players
 Arabic Glitch interrogates how the       escapist practices, and tacitly           and tapes soon informed broader
 logic of programming technology          subversive performances, Karimi           cultural, political, and economic
 influences and shapes social move-       discloses the push-and-pull between       developments and defined “mod-
 ments. Sakr formulates a media           the art community and the authori-        ern” Egyptian households. Drawing
 theory that advances the concept         ties, and discusses myriad instances      on a wide array of audio, visual, and
 of the glitch as a disruptive media      of tentative coalition as opposed to      textual sources that exist outside the
 affordance. She employs data             outright partnership or uncompro-         Egyptian National Archives, Simon
 analytics to analyze tweets, posts,      mising resistance. Illustrated with       demonstrates how cassettes and
 and blogs to describe the political      more than 120 full-color images,          cassette players did not simply join
 culture of social media, and per-        this book provides entry into             other twentieth century mass media
 forms the results under the guise        unique artistic experiences without       like records and radio; they were the
 of the Arabic-speaking cyborg VJ         catering to voyeuristic curiosity         media of the masses.
 Um Amel. This book teaches us            around Iran’s often-perceived             “Simon’s masterful history of the
 how a region under transforma-           “underground” culture.                    cassette crystallizes the crucial
 tion became a vanguard for new           “A fascinating analysis of the            importance of technology. Important
 thinking about digital systems: the      continuing cultural effervescence         for historians of modern Egypt, and
 records they keep, the lives they        observable in Iranian society.”           a stellar contribution to the history
 impact, and how to create change                                                   of new media.”
                                                           —Houchang Chehabi,
 from within.                                           University of St. Andrews                         —Walter Armbrust,
                                                                                                         University of Oxford
 224 pages, August 2023                   452 pages, 2022
 9781503635883 Paper $26.00 $20.80 sale   9781503631809 Paper $35.00 $28.00 sale    STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE
                                                                                    EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES
                                                                                    AND CULTURES
                                                                                    304 pages, 2022
                                                                                    9781503631441 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
10       CULTURE AND MEDIA
Unknown Past                             Recording History                        States of Cultivation
Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim           Jews, Muslims, and Music across          Imperial Transition and
Star of Egypt                            Twentieth-Century North Africa           Scientific Agriculture in the
Hanan Hammad                             Christopher Silver                       Eastern Mediterranean
Hammad writes a story centered           If twentieth-century stories of Jews     Elizabeth R. Williams
on Murad’s persona and legacy,           and Muslims in North Africa are          The final decades of the Ottoman
and broadly framed around a              usually told separately, Recording       Empire and the period of the French
gendered history of twentieth-           History demonstrates that we have        mandate coincided with a critical pe-
century Egypt. Murad was a Jew           not been listening to what brought       riod of transformation in agricultural
who converted to Islam in the            these communities together: Arab         technologies and administration.
shadow of the first Arab-Israeli         music. Popular songs broadcast on        This book examines the processes
war. Her career blossomed under          radio, performed in concert, and         and effects of agrarian transformation
the Egyptian monarchy, gave a            circulated on disc carried with them     as Ottoman, Syrian, Lebanese, and
singing voice to the Free Officers       the power to send Jewish-Muslim          French officials grappled with these
and the 1952 Revolution, and             audiences into a frenzy—or French        new technologies, albeit with differ-
ended on the eve of the 1956 Suez        colonial officials into a fury. With     ent end goals. Williams investigates
War. Egyptians have long told their      this book, Silver provides the first     the increasingly fragmented natures
national story through interpreta-       history of the music scene and           produced by these contrasting priori-
tions of Murad’s life, intertwining      recording industry across Morocco,       ties and the results of their intersec-
the individual and Egyptian state        Algeria, and Tunisia, and offers         tion with regional environmental
and society to better understand         striking insights into Jewish-Muslim     limits. Not only did post–World
Egyptian identity. As Unknown            relations through the rhythms that       War I policies realign the economic
Past recounts, there’s no life           animated them. He recovers a world       space of the mandate states, but they
better than Murad’s to reflect the       of many voices—of daring female          shaped an agricultural legacy that
tumultuous changes experienced           stars, cantors turned composers,         continued to impact Syria and Leba-
over the dramatic decades of the         and national and nationalist icons—      non post-independence. Williams
mid-twentieth century.                   whose music still resonates well into    offers the first comprehensive account
“Just as Layla’s life was bigger than    our present.                             of the shared technocratic ideals
the screen, this book goes beyond        “Analyzing the silences, echoes, and     that animated these policies and the
the history of cinema to illuminate      sounds of Jewish-Muslim relations,       divergent imperial goals that not only
questions about religion, society,       this delightful book is a classic in     reshaped the region’s agrarian institu-
gender, and politics.”                   the making.”                             tions, but produced representations
                       —Beth Baron,                             —Aomar Boum,      of the region with repercussions well
          The Graduate Center, CUNY       University of California, Los Angeles   beyond the mandate’s end.
328 pages, 2022                          320 pages, 2022                          464 pages, July 2023
9781503629776 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale   9781503631687 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale   781503634688 Cloth $75.00 $60.00 sale

                                                       CULTURE AND MEDIA               STANFORD OTTOMAN                   11
                                                                                            WORLD SERIES
Colonizing Palestine                     Dear Palestine                             Screen Shots
 The Zionist Left and the Making          A Social History of the 1948 War           State Violence on Camera in Israel
 of the Palestinian Nakba                 Shay Hazkani                               and Palestine
 Areej Sabbagh-Khoury                     This book offers a new history             Rebecca L. Stein
 Based on extensive empirical             of the 1948 War, focusing on the           Stein investigates the wide range of
 research in local colony and na-         people caught up in the conflict           communities and institutions—
 tional archives, this book offers a      and its transnational reverbera-           Palestinian activists, Israeli and
 microhistory of frontier interac-        tions. Through their letters home,         international human rights workers,
 tions between Zionist settlers           the young men and women who                Israeli military, and Jewish set-
 and indigenous Palestinians              fought the war come to life, writing       tlers—who have placed increasing
 within the British imperial field.       about everything from daily life           value on photographic technologies
 Even as left-wing kibbutzim of           to nationalism, colonialism, race,         and networked visuals as political
 Hashomer Hatzair helped lay the          and the character of their enemies.        tools. While these constituencies
 groundwork for settler colonial          Dear Palestine also examines how           have dramatically divergent political
 Jewish sovereignty, its settlers did     the architects of the conflict worked      aims, they all invested in the same
 not conceal the prior existence of       to influence and indoctrinate              camera dream: that the advances
 the Palestinian villages and their       key ideologies in these ordinary           in photography of the digital age
 displacement, which became the           soldiers, by examining battle orders,      would not only capture reality with
 subject of enduring debate in the        pamphlets, army magazines, and             greater fidelity, but also deliver on
 kibbutzim. Juxtaposing history           radio broadcasts. Through two nar-         their respective visions of justice
 and memory, examining events             ratives—the official and unofficial,       and accountability. Activists and
 in their actual time and as they         the propaganda and the personal            human rights workers would
 were later remembered, Sabbagh-          letters—Dear Palestine reveals the         painfully learn the lesson that even
 Khoury demonstrates that the             fissures between sanctioned                the most “perfect” visual evidence
 dispossession and replacement of         nationalism and individual identity.       of state violence typically failed to
 the Palestinians in 1948 was not a       “Hazkani makes a brilliant                 persuade either the Israeli justice
 singular catastrophe, but rather a       contribution to the literature on the      system or the Israeli public of
 protracted process instituted over       1948 Palestine War. Impeccably             military wrongdoing.
 decades. Colonizing Palestine traces     balanced and engagingly written,           “Screen Shots instructs as it unsettles.
 social and political mechanisms by       Dear Palestine is a remarkable book.”      Stein’s lucid account of photographic
 which forms of hierarchy, violence,                             —Eugene Rogan,      encounters with Israeli state violence
 and supremacy that endure into the                           University of Oxford   strikes precisely and pointedly at
 present were gradually created.          352 pages, 2021                            witnessing that misses its mark.”
 352 pages, July 2023                     9781503627659 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale                                 —Ann Stoler,
 9781503602700 Cloth $75.00 $60.00 sale                                                                       The New School

                                                                                     248 pages, 2021
                                                                                     9781503628021 Paper $26.00 $20.80 sale

12        STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES
The Politics of Art                       Revolutions Aesthetic                       Showpiece City
Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in         A Cultural History of Ba’thist Syria        How Architecture Made Dubai
Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan            Max Weiss                                   Todd Reisz
Hanan Toukan                              This book offers the first cultural         In 1959, experts agreed that if Dubai
This book considers the entangle-         and intellectual history of Ba’thist        was to become something more than
ment of art and international politics    Syria, from the coming to power             an unruly port, a plan was needed.
to understand the aesthetics of           of Hafiz al-Asad through the Syria          Specifically, a town plan was prescribed
material production within liberal        War, and reconceptualizes contem-           to fortify the city from obscurity
economies. Toukan outlines the            porary Syrian politics, authoritari-        and disorder. With the proverbial
political and social functions of         anism, and cultural life. Engaging          handshake, Dubai’s ruler hired British
transnationally connected and             rich original sources—novels, films,        architect John Harris to design Dubai’s
internationally funded arts organiza-     and cultural periodicals—Weiss              strategy for capturing the world’s
tions and initiatives, and reveals        highlights themes crucial to the            attention—and then its investments.
how the production of art within          making of contemporary Syria:               Reisz explores the overlooked history
global frameworks can contribute          heroism and leadership, gender and          of a city that did not simply rise from
to hegemonic structures even as it is     power, comedy and ideology, sur-            the sands. In the city’s earliest modern
critiquing them—or be counterhe-          veillance and the senses, witnessing        architecture, he finds the foundations
gemonic even when it first appears        and temporality, and death and the          of an urban survival strategy of debt-
not to be. Toukan proposes not only       imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic          wielding brinkmanship and constant
a new way of reading contemporary         places front and center the struggle        pitch making. Dubai became a testing
art practices as they situate them-       around aesthetic ideology that has          ground for the global city—and prefig-
selves globally, but also a new way of    been key to the constitution of state,      ured how urbanization now happens
reading the domestic politics of the      society, and culture in Syria over the      everywhere.
region from the vantage point of art.     course of the past fifty years.             “Gripping and insightful, Showpiece
“Toukan brilliantly reveals a critical,   “Innovative, meticulous, and                City is a much-needed history of the
often hidden component of art-mak-        brilliantly written, Revolutions            making and remaking of Dubai. A
ing in the Middle East: how powerful      Aesthetic will serve as the standard        must-read for anyone interested in
political and economic interests have     bearer for studies on the modern            architecture and urban planning.”
shaped what kinds of art are even         cultural history of the Arab world                                      —Rosie Bsheer,
possible. A brave intervention and        and the broader Middle East”                                         Harvard University
required reading.”                                              —Kamran Rastegar,     416 pages, 2020
                    —Jessica Winegar,                              Tufts University   9781503609884 Cloth $30.00 $24.00 sale
               Northwestern University
                                          456 pages, 2022
336 pages, 2021                           9781503631953 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
9781503627758 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale

                     STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES                                     13
Protesting Jordan                          States of Subsistence                    Street-Level Governing
 Geographies of Power and Dissent           The Politics of Bread in                 Negotiating the State in
 Jillian Schwedler                          Contemporary Jordan                      Urban Turkey
 This book considers how space              José Ciro Martínez                       Elise Massicard
 and geography influence protests           Despite the ubiquity of bread in         This book is the first to investigate
 and repression, and offers the             accounts of Middle East politics and     how muhtars, the lowest level elected
 first in-depth study of rebellion in       society, rarely do we consider how       political position in Turkey, carry
 Jordan. Based on twenty-five years         it is prepared and consumed—and          out their role. Muhtars exist at the
 of field research, it examines pro-        what this represents. This book          intersection of everyday life and the
 tests as they are situated in the built    considers the welfare program that       exercise of power. Their position
 environment, bringing together             ensures bread’s widespread availabil-    offers a personalized point of contact
 considerations of networks, spatial        ity. Following bakers and bureaucrats,   between citizens and state institu-
 imaginaries, space and placemaking,        Martínez offers an immersive             tions, enabling close oversight of the
 and political geographies at local,        examination of social welfare provi-     citizenry, yet simultaneously project-
 national, regional, and global scales.     sion. He argues that the state is best   ing the sense of an accessible state to
 Schwedler considers the impact             understood as the product of routine     individuals. Challenging common
 of time and temporality in the             practices and actions, through which     theories of the state, Massicard out-
 lifecycles of individual movements.        it becomes a stable truth in the         lines how the position of the muhtar
 She illuminates the geographies of         lives of citizens. This book not only    throws into question an assumed
 power and dissent, highlighting the        describes logics of rule in contempo-    dichotomy between domination and
 political stakes of competing nar-         rary Jordan—and the place of bread       social resistance, and suggests that
 ratives about Jordan’s past, present,      within them—but also unpacks how         considerations of circumvention and
 and future.                                the state endures through forms,         accommodation are normal attributes
 “Superbly researched, Protesting           sensations, and practices.               of state-society functioning.
 Jordan provides a fascinating and          “States of Subsistence sets aside        “One of the most interesting and
 groundbreaking alternative history         dominant questions of bread riots,       original recent books I have read on
 of Jordan. Jillian Schwedler skillfully    food security, regime survival, and      contemporary Turkey. Massicard gives
 unpacks and challenges traditional         economic reforms to craft a uniquely     us a vivid and up-close account of
 accounts of state-making in Jordan as      important and absolutely fascinating     the muhtarlık in the context of state-
 a top-down process. An essential read      look into the political meaning of the   society relations.”
 for those seeking to better understand     lived experience of subsidized bread.”                    —Resat Kasaba Kasaba,
 Jordan’s history and how protests                                                                   University of Washington
                                                                   —Marc Lynch,
 maintain state power.”                              George Washington University    344 pages, 2022
                          —Janine Clark,                                             9781503631854 Paper $32.00 $25.60 sale
                    University of Toronto   368 pages, 2022
                                            9781503631328 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
 392 pages, 2022
 9781503631588 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale

14        STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES
Bread and Freedom                            Paradoxes of Care                            Between Dreams and Ghosts
Egypt’s Revolutionary Situation              Children and Global Medical Aid              Indian Migration and Middle
Mona El-Ghobashy                             in Egypt                                     Eastern Oil
Once celebrated as an awe-inspiring          Rania Kassab Sweis                           Andrea Wright
irruption of people power, Egypt’s           Billions are spent on global                 More than one million Indians travel
2011 revolution is now often judged          humanitarian efforts intended to             annually to work in oil projects in the
a tragic failure. Moving away from           care for suffering bodies, especially        Gulf. This book follows their migra-
such sweeping judgments, Bread               those of distressed children living          tion, across sites in India, the United
and Freedom argues that conceiv-             in poverty. But global medical aid           Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, from
ing of a “Revolution” propelled by           can also unintentionally prolong the         villages to oilfields. Engaging the
revolutionaries is untenable—it is the       very conditions that hurt children           migrants themselves, the recruiting
uprising that made revolutionaries           and undermine local aid givers.              agencies that place them, the govern-
and their opponents, not the other           This book illustrates how child aid          ment bureaucrats that regulate their
way around—and takes seriously               recipients and local aid experts             emigration, and the corporations
the political conflicts set into motion      grapple with global aid’s shortcom-          that hire them, Wright examines
by the uprising. El-Ghobashy sifts           ings and its paradoxical outcomes.           labor migration as a social process,
through a documentary record                 Sweis reveals how global aid fails to        one deeply informed both by work-
hidden in plain sight to reveal not a        “save” these children according to           ers’ dreams for the future and the
mythical unity undone by schisms,            its stated aims, and often maintains         ghosts of colonial capitalism. Placing
but hordes of new and old actors             social disparities in children’s lives.      migrants at the center of global
clamoring over the state’s mate-             Foregrounding vulnerable children’s          capital, Wright shows how migrants
rial and symbolic power. This book           responses, Sweis demonstrates how            are not passive bodies at the mercy
rethinks how we study revolutions,           children manage their own bodies             of abstract forces—and reveals a
looking past causes and consequences         and lives, and engages with the              new understanding of contemporary
to train its sights on the collisions of     question of what medical caregivers          resource extraction, governance, and
revolutionary politics.                      and donors alike gain from such              global labor.
“A must-read for anyone concerned            global humanitarian transactions.            “A landmark contribution that
with deeper conceptual questions             “Sweis’ clear analysis demonstrates          pushes our understanding of oil,
surrounding the entanglement of              the inherent paradoxes of seeking            labor, and migrant lives in new
revolution and democracy”                    to save the ‘vulnerable,’ while leaving      and unexpected directions.”
                      —Omnia El Shakry,      unchanged the structural conditions                                 —Adam Hanieh,
           University of California, Davis   that produce those very vulnerabilities.”                 SOAS University of London

392 pages, 2021                                                    —Sherine Hamdy,        288 pages, 2021
9781503628151 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale                 University of California, Irvine   9781503630109 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale
                                             208 pages, 2021
                                             9781503628632 Paper $26.00 $20.80 sale

                     STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES                                         15
The Paranoid Style in                       On Salafism                                Practicing Sectarianism
 American Diplomacy                          Concepts and Contexts                      Archival and Ethnographic
 Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq            Azmi Bishara                               Interventions on Lebanon
 Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt                     On Salafism offers a compelling new        Edited by Lara Deeb,
 Iraq has been the site of some of           understanding of this phenomenon,          Tsolin Nalbantian, and
 the United States’ most sustained           both its development and contempo-         Nadya Sbaiti
 military campaigns since the                rary manifestations. Bishara critically    This book explores the imaginative
 Vietnam War. This book weaves               deconstructs claims of continuity          and contradictory ways how sectari-
 together histories of Arab national-        between early Islam and modern mili-       anism, and reveals the many ways
 ists, US diplomats, and Western             tancy and makes a counterargument:         sectarianism is used to exhibit, imag-
 oil execs to expose the origins             Salafism is a wholly modern construct      ine, or contest power. Essays analyze
 of US intervention in Iraq over             informed by specific sociopolitical        how people experience sectarianism,
 the arc of the twentieth century            contexts. He distinguishes reformist       sometimes pushing back, sometimes
 and tell the parallel stories of the        from regressive Salafism, and exam-        evading it, sometimes deploying it
 Iraq Petroleum Company and                  ines patterns of modernization in the      strategically, to a variety of effects
 the resilience of Iraqi society.            development of contemporary Islamic        and consequences. The collection
 American policymakers, who                  political movements and associations.      advances an understanding of sec-
 inflated concerns about access to           In deconstructing the assumptions          tarianism simultaneously constructed
 and potential scarcity of oil, gave         of linear continuity between tradi-        and experienced. Even as the book’s
 rise to a “paranoid style” in US            tional and contemporary movements,         focus is Lebanon, its analysis fractures
 foreign policy. Wolfe-Hunnicutt             Bishara details various divergences in     the association of sectarianism
 deconstructs these policy practices         both doctrine and context of modern        with the nation-state and suggests
 to reveal how they fueled decades           Salafisms, plural. On Salafism is a        possibilities that can travel to other
 of American interventions, and              crucial read for those interested in       sites. Practicing Sectarianism argues
 shines a light on those places that         Islamism, jihadism, and Middle East        that sectarianism can only be fully
 America’s covert empire-builders            politics and history.                      understood—and dismantled—if we
 might prefer we not look.                   “A timely, erudite account. Bishara        first take it seriously as a practice.
 “The gripping backstory that reveals        provides important correctives to recent   “Provocative, incisive, grounded in
 the historical truths of US-Iraqi           scholarly approaches, and forcefully       lived realities, the book delivers a
 relations. American cold warriors           demonstrates that modern articulations     powerful antidote to those who see
 inherited Britain’s imperial role but       of Salafism are facets of ideological      Lebanon simplistically through the
 failed to stop Iraqis from pursuing         projects, not natural culminations of      lens of religion. A necessary read.”
 natural resource sovereignty.”              classical Islamic traditions.”
                                                                                                                —Suad Joseph,
                                                                    —Ahmad Dallal,                University of California, Davis
                        —Nathan J. Citino,               American University in Cairo
                          Rice University
                                                                                        258 pages, 2022
                                             246 pages, 2022
 336 pages, 2021                                                                        9781503633865 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale
                                             9781503630352 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale
 9781503627918 Paper $26.00 $20.80 sale

16        STANFORD STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN AND                                        POLITICS
          ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AND CULTURES
Sextarianism                               Crossing a Line                             The Contemporary Middle
Sovereignty, Secularism, and the           Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to           East in an Age of Upheaval
State in Lebanon                           Palestinian Political Expression
                                                                                       Edited by James L. Gelvin
Maya Mikdashi                              Amahl Bishara
                                                                                       This book engages six themes to
This book offers a new way to              Palestinians living on different sides      understand the contemporary
understand state power, theorizing         of the Green Line assert that they          Middle East—the spread of sectari-
how sex, sexuality, and sect shape         share a single political struggle for       anism, abandonment of principles
and are shaped by law, secularism,         national liberation. Yet, obstacles and     of state sovereignty, the lack of a
and sovereignty. Mikdashi shows            geopolitical boundaries inhibit their       regional hegemonic power, in-
how political difference is entangled      ability to speak to each other and as       creased Saudi-Iranian competition,
with religious, secular, and sexual        a collective. Crossing a Line enters        decreased regional attention to the
difference. She presents state power       these distinct environments and             Israel-Palestine conflict, and fallout
as inevitably contingent, focusing         considers how Palestinian political         from the Arab uprisings—as well
on the regulation of religious             expression is differently impacted          as offers individual country studies.
conversion, the curation of                by dispossession, settler colonialism,      With analysis from historians,
legal archives, state and parastatal       and militarism. Bishara looks to sites      political scientists, sociologists, and
violence, and secular activism.            of political practice—journalism,           anthropologists, and up-to-date
Sextarianism locates state power in        commemorations, demonstrations,             discussions of the Syrian Civil War,
the experiences, transitions, upris-       social media, in prison—to analyze          impacts of the Trump presidency,
ings, and violence that people in the      how Palestinians create collectivities      and the 2020 uprisings in Lebanon,
Middle East continue to live.              in these varied circumstances. In           Algeria, and Sudan, this book will
“A tour de force by one of the             considering different environments          be an essential guide for anyone
most dynamic, iconoclastic, and            for political expression and action,        seeking to understand the current
original socio-political analysts of       Bishara illuminates how expression          state of the region.
the Arab world of this generation.         is always grounded in place—and
Maya Mikdashi’s Sextarianism will                                                      “These essays are an indispensable
                                           how a people can struggle together          guide to making sense of the Middle
transform the way Lebanon has              for liberation even when they cannot
been understood; more radically,                                                       East’s current disorder and future
                                           join together in protest.                   direction. A must-read for academics,
it will force everyone to rethink how
religious and sexual differences           “Offering a sensitive reading of            policy makers, and informed
work at/as the nexus of states             Palestinian peoplehood and political        general audiences.”
and citizenship.”                          difference, Crossing a Line brings                              —Frederic Wehrey,
                      —Lila Abu-Lughod,    social movement theory into critical                      Carnegie Endowment for
                                                                                                          International Peace
                     Columbia University   engagement with settler colonial and
                                           native studies.”                            368 pages, 2021
288 pages, 2022                                                  —Rema Hammami,        9781503627697 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale
9781503631557 Paper $28.00 $22.40 sale                            Birzeit University
                                           376 pages, 2022
                                           9781503632097 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
                                                                                                                POLITICS         17
How to Make a Wetland                      Return to Ruin                             Afterlives of Revolution
 Water and Moral Ecology in Turkey          Iraqi Narratives of Exile                  Everyday Counterhistories in
 Caterina Scaramelli                        and Nostalgia                              Southern Oman
 This book tells the story of two           Zainab Saleh                               Alice Wilson
 Turkish coastal areas, both shaped         With the US invasion of Iraq,              This book considers the “social
 by ecological change and political         Iraqis abroad, hoping to return            afterlives” of revolutionary values
 uncertainty. Farmers, scientists,          one day to a better Iraq, became           and networks in Oman where
 fishermen, and families grapple            uncertain exiles. Return to Ruin           veteran militants have used kinship
 with livelihoods in transition, as         tells the human story of this exile.       and daily socializing to reproduce
 their environment is bound up in           Focusing on debates among Iraqi            networks of social egalitarianism
 national and international conserva-       exiles about what it means to be an        and commemorate the revolution
 tion projects. Scaramelli offers an        Iraqi after years of displacement,         in unofficial ways. These afterlives
 anthropological understanding              Saleh weaves a narrative that draws        highlight lasting engagement with
 of sweeping environmental and              attention to a once-dominant,              revolutionary values, the agency
 infrastructural change, and the            vibrant Iraqi cultural landscape           of former militants in postwar
 moral claims made on livability and        and social and political shifts            modernization, and the limitations
 materiality. Beginning from a moral        among the diaspora after decades           of government patronage for eliciting
 ecological position, she takes into        of authoritarianism, war, and              conformity. Recognizing that those
 account the notion that politics is        occupation in Iraq. She illuminates        typically depicted as coopted can
 not simply projected onto animals,         how Iraqis continue to fashion a           still reproduce counterhegemonic
 plants, soil, and water. Rather,           sense of belonging and imagine a           values, this book considers a condi-
 people make politics through               future, built on the shards of these       tion all too common across South-
 them. Scaramelli highlights the            shattered memories.                        west Asia and North Africa: the
 aspirations, moral relations, and                                                     experience of defeated revolutionar-
 care practices in constant play in         “In this outstanding book, we              ies living under the authoritarian
                                            encounter the poignant life stories
 contestations and alliances over           of Iraqis, stories too often reduced       state they once contested.
 environmental change.                      to statistics and stereotypes when         “Advances a brilliant critique
 “Scaramelli’s lucid ethnography is a       they are visible at all. Return to         of reductionist perceptions that
 crucial addition to studies of lived       Ruin is an illuminating study of           often define revolutions merely
 environments and environmental             Iraqi diasporic subjectivities.”           with references to their success or
 infrastructure—a refreshing new take                               —Sinan Antoon,     failure. Ethnographically rich and
 on anthropocentric development                                  New York University   theoretically sophisticated.”
 processes in Turkey and beyond.”                                                                   —Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi,
                                            280 pages, 2020
                             —Elif Babül,   9781503614116 Paper $25.00 $20.00 sale                       Princeton University
                   Mount Holyoke College
                                                                                       328 pages, May 2023
 240 pages, 2021                                                                       9781503635784 Paper $30.00 $24.00 sale
 9781503615403 Paper $26.00 $20.80 sale

18        POLITICS
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