Every Year we try to build the collection to help our community in their research needs. This page will highlight new titles to our collection in the past year.
The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism by
Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fath'ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls "dislocative nationalism," in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran. Akhundzadeh and Kermani's nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity. 12/14/17
Destroying a Nation by
Following the Arab Spring, Syria descended into civil and sectarian conflict. It has since become a fractured warzone that operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements, including ISIS, as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history. In this book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria, Nikolaos van Dam, explains the recent history of Syria: the growing disenchantment with the Asad regime, the chaos of civil war, and the fractures that led to an immense amount of destruction in the refined social fabric of what used to be the Syrian nation. Through an in-depth examination, van Dam traces political developments within the Asad regime and the various opposition groups from the Arab Spring to the present day, and provides a deeper insight into the conflict and the possibilities and obstacles for reaching a political solution. 12/14/17
Sea of the Caliph by
Christophe Picard recounts the adventures of Muslim sailors who competed with Greek and Latin seamen for control of the 7th-century Mediterranean. By the time Christian powers took over trade routes in the 13th century, a Muslim identity that operated within, and in opposition to, Europe had been shaped by encounters across the sea of the caliphs.
3/11/19
Recasting Iranian Modernity by
Critically deploying the idea of uneven and combined development this book provides a novel non-Eurocentric account of Iran's experience of modernity and revolution. Recasting Iranian Modernity presents the argument that Eurocentrism can be decisively overcome through a social theory that has international relations at its ontological core. This will enable a conception of history in which there is an intrinsic international dimension to social change that prevents historical repetition. This hitherto under-theorized international dimension is, the book argues, manifest in combined patterns of development, which incorporate both foreign and native forms. It is the tension-prone and unstable nature of these hybrid developmental patterns that mark Iranian modernity, and fuelled the socio-political dynamics of the 1979 revolution and the rise of political Islam. Challenging solely comparative approaches to the Iranian Revolution that explain it away as either a deviation from, or a reaction to, modernity on the grounds of its religious form, this book will be valuable to those interested in an alternative theoretical approach to the Iranian Revolution, modern Iran and political Islam, working in the fields of International Relations, Middle East and Islamic Studies, History, Political Science, Political Sociology, Postcolonialism, and Comparative Politics. 12/14/17
The Kurdish Question Revisited by
The Kurds, once marginal in the study of the Middle East and secondary in its international relations, have moved to center stage in recent years. In Turkey, where the Kurdish question is an issue of national significance, and in Iraq, where the gains made by the Kurdistan Regional Governmenthave allowed it to impose its authority, moves are afoot to solve "the Kurdish Question" once and for all. In Syria, where the Kurds have borne the brunt of the Islamic State's onslaught as they defended their three self-declared cantons of Afrin, Kobane, and Cezire, and in Iran, where they struggleto express their cultural distinctiveness and suffer disproportionately at the hands of the Islamic Republic's security and intelligence services, the picture is less positive. Yet the situations in both countries remain in flux, affected by developments in Iraq and Turkey in a manner that suggestswe may have to revise the notion of the Kurds being forever divided by the boundaries of the Middle East and subsumed into the state projects of other nations.The contributors to The Kurdish Question Revisited offer insights into how this once seemingly intractable, immutable phenomenon is being transformed amid the new political realities of the Middle East. 12/14/17
An Introduction to the Modern Middle East by
Combining elements of comparative politics with a country-by-country analysis, author David S. Sorenson provides a complete and accessible introduction to the modern Middle East. With an emphasis on the politics of the region, the text also dedicates chapters specifically to the history, religions, and economies of countries in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa. In each country chapter, a brief political history is followed by discussions of democratization, religious politics, women's issues, civil society, economic development, privatization, and foreign relations. In this updated and revised second edition, An Introduction to the Modern Middle Eastincludes new material on the Arab Spring, the changes in Turkish politics, the Iranian nuclear issues, and the latest efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma. Introductory chapters provide an important thematic overview for each of the book's individual country chapters and short vignettes throughout the book offer readers a chance for personal reflection.
3/11/19
