Book Displays

In this insightful and often surprising analysis, Harvard University professor Leila Ahmed describes the adoption of hijab (the practice of wearing head coverings and other concealing garments in public) as a “quiet revolution” among Muslim women. Ahmed intertwines her observations as a scholar of feminism and Islam with her own history growing up in a mid-twentieth-century family in Egypt, adding nuance and complexity to Americans’ understanding of the recent resurgence of hijab.

The co-founder of the renowned polling firm Zogby International draws from 40 years of the most extensive polls from the Arab World to lift the fog that has obscured this culture for centuries--Provided by publisher.

Arab cultural representation of the United States has variously changed and developed since 9/11, and again in the wake of the protests in 2011 and the ensuing political turmoil in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and of course, Syria. Taking this into account, Mohamed offers an examination of the ways in which stereotypes of America are both presented and challenged through cinema, fiction and the wider media and intellectual production.

Many of us can recall the targeting of South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh people in the wake of 9/11. We may be less aware, however, of the ongoing racism directed against these groups in the past decade and a half. In We Too Sing America, nationally renowned activist Deepa Iyer catalogs recent racial flashpoints, from the 2012 massacre at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to the violent opposition to the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and to the Park 51 Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Iyer asks whether hate crimes should be considered domestic terrorism and explores the role of the state in perpetuating racism through detentions, national registration programs, police profiling, and constant surveillance.

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox.

Women's transgressive behaviors and perspectives are challenging societal norms in the Arab world, giving rise to anxiety and public debate. Simultaneously, however, other Arab women are unwillingly finding themselves labeled "bad" as authority figures attempt to redirect scrutiny from serious social ills such as patriarchy and economic exploitation, or as they impose new restrictions on women's behavior in response to uncertainty and change in society. Bad Girls of the Arab World elucidates how both intentional and unintentional transgressions make manifest the social and cultural constructs that define proper and improper behavior, as well as the social and political policing of gender, racial, and class divisions.

Arab Masculinities provides a groundbreaking analysis of Arab men's lives in the precarious aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings. It challenges received wisdoms and entrenched stereotypes about Arab men, offering new understandings of rujula, or masculinity, across the Middle East and North Africa.

Drawing on primary sources such as club minutes, census records and interviews, this text explores the experience of late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrant women from Lebanon and Syria. The author considers the contrast between this and the experience of their daughters and granddaughters.

Investigating the connections between multiculturalism, minorities, citizenship, and democracy in North Africa, this book argues that multiculturalism in this region- and in the Arab world at large - has reached a significant level in terms of scale and importance. In the rest of the world, there has been a trend - albeit a contested one - toward a greater recognition of minority rights. The Arab world however, particularly North Africa, seems to be an exception to this trend, as Arab states continue to promote highly unitary and homogenizing ideas of nationhood and state unity, whilst discouraging, or even forbidding, minority political mobilization. The central theoretical premise of this book is that North Africa is a multicultural region, where culture is inherently linked to politics, religion, gender, and society, and a place where democracy is gradually taking root despite many political and economic hurdles

The Long War for Freedom is the first book to investigate whether a real base of support for reform, moderation, and democratization even exists in the region. Barry Rubin, one of the West's most trusted experts on Arab opinion and political culture, takes a close look at the brave, promising group of Arab liberals who have shown great personal courage and faced overwhelming odds to advocate new freedoms for their fellow citizens.

An in-depth, comprehensive, and theoretically-informed examination of Arab politics of the last decade. The Arab Spring revolts of 2011 and the rise of ISIS in 2014, demand an updated analysis of the topic.

In this anthology, Salma K. Jayyusi brings together a list of distinguished scholars to reflect the range and depth of Arab thinking on this subject. Translated from the best-selling Arabic edition, this work offers English readers a fresh and original insight into the rich literature of human rights.

This book presents a varied and critical picture of how the Arab Spring demands a re-examination and re-conceptualization of issues of transitional justice. It demonstrates how unique features of this wave of revolutions and popular protests that have swept the Arab world since December 2010 give rise to distinctive concerns and problems relative to transitional justice, and explores how these issues in turn add fresh perspective and nuance to the field more generally.

The House of Wisdom in Baghdad stands as a symbol of the great synthesis of Greek science and philosophy, Indian mathematics, and Persian literature brought about by their translation into Arabic in the eighth century CE. Jim Al-Khalili details scientific advances within Islamic civilization that resulted from this burst of intellectual activity and experimentation. Al-Khalili provides fascinating insights into the process through which Islamic civilization stimulated the European renaissance.

Dwight F. Reynolds brings together a collection of essays by leading international scholars to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of modern Arab culture, from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The chapters survey key issues necessary to any understanding of the modern Arab World: the role of the various forms of the Arabic language in modern culture and identity; the remarkable intellectual transformation undergone during the 'Nahda' or 'Arab Renaissance' of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the significant role played by ethnic and religious minorities, and the role of law and constitutions.

“Islamic Art” is a tricky label. While it does refer to art created and used in Muslim rituals and practices, it also encompasses a wide range of art that has no religious significance, but is made by and for people who once lived, or who now live, in Muslim-majority societies. This survey of Islamic Arts is an excellent introduction and overview of the subject, covering twelve centuries and a wide range of artistic and architectural genres and styles.

In the Qur’an, Muslims are instructed that at least once in their lives they must take part in the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the spiritual center of the Islamic world . Over the centuries, artists, craftspeople, and others have found innumerable ways to articulate the experience, from calligraphy to decorative tiles and textiles, even scientific instruments, maps, and metalwork.

Celebrating the Barjeel Art Foundation's expansive collection, this book maps a genealogy from modern to contemporary Arab art and offers one of the most extensive presentations of modern Arab art in print.

She Who Tells a Story introduces the pioneering work of twelve leading women photographers from Iran and the Arab world: Jananne Al-Ani, Boushra Almutawakel, Gohar Dashti, Rana El Nemr, Lalla Essaydi, Shadi Ghadirian, Tanya Habjouqa, Rula Halawani, Nermine Hammam, Rania Matar, Shirin Neshat, and Newsha Tavakolian. As the Middle East has undergone unparalleled change over the past twenty years, and national and personal identities have been dismantled and rebuilt, these artists have tackled the very notion of representation with passion and power. Their provocative images, which range in style from photojournalism to staged and manipulated visions, explore themes of gender stereotypes, war and peace, and personal life, all the while confronting nostalgic Western notions about women of the Orient and exploring the complex political and social landscapes of their home regions.

Ten Arab Filmmakers provides an up-to-date overview of the best of Arab cinema, offering studies of leading directors and in-depth analyses of their most important films.

This anthology brings together the voices of both new and established Arab American writers in a compilation of creative nonfiction that reveals the stories of the Arab diaspora in styles that range from the traditional to the experimental.

In his masterwork Muqaddimah, the Arab Muslim Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a Tunisian descendant of Andalusian scholars and officials in Seville, developed a method of evaluating historical evidence that allowed him to identify the underlying causes of events. His methodology was derived from Aristotelian notions of nature and causation, and he applied it to create a dialectical model that explained the cyclical rise and fall of North African dynasties. The Muqaddimah represents the world's first example of structural history and historical sociology. Four centuries before the European Enlightenment, this work anticipated modern historiography and social science.

Chronicles the history of Arab civilization, looking at the beauty of the great mosques, the importance attached to education, the achievements of Arab science, the role of women, internal conflicts, and the Palestinian question.

The book aims to explore the foresight of prominent Middle Eastern authors and artists who anticipated the Arab Spring, which resulted in demands for change in the repressive and corrupted regimes. Eventually, it led to cracking down on the protests with excessive force, which caused tremendous human suffering, destruction, and also escalation of extreme insurgency. The author analyzes major literary and artistic works from Egypt, Syria and Tunisia, and their political context.

One of the most important developments in the modern history of the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring began in Tunisia in December 2010, bringing down dictators, sparking a civil war in Libya, and igniting a bloody uprising in Syria. Its long-term repercussions in Egypt and elsewhere remain unclear. In this book, the author explores the uprisings, offering rare insight into their origin, significance, and possible futures.

In a question-and-answer format, this book explores all aspects of the revolutionary protests that have rocked the Middle East. The author, a historian begins with an overview: What sparked the Arab uprisings? Where did the demands for democracy and human rights come from? How appropriate is the phrase "Arab Spring"? before turning to specific countries around the region.

New York City's main Arab communities exemplify the continuity and change that has taken place throughout the city's rich history. The Museum of the City of New York, in partnership with the Middle East Institute at Columbia University and a group of local Arab and non-Arab scholars, activists and educators, undertook a long overdue exploration of New York's Arab populations. The result is a revealing collection of writings and photographs that document and tell the stories of these communities.

Middle Eastern Muslim men have been widely vilified as terrorists, religious zealots, and brutal oppressors of women. The New Arab Man challenges these stereotypes with the stories of ordinary Middle Eastern men as they struggle to overcome infertility and childlessness through assisted reproduction. Drawing on two decades of ethnographic research across the Middle East with hundreds of men from a variety of social and religious backgrounds, Marcia Inhorn shows how the new Arab man is self-consciously rethinking the patriarchal masculinity of his forefathers and unseating received wisdoms.

Drawing from a long history of indigenous traditions and incorporating diverse influences of surrounding cultures, music in Palestine and among the millions of Palestinians in diaspora offers a unique window on cultural and political events of the past century.

This timely book examines the power and role of the image in modern Middle Eastern societies. The essays explore the role and function of image making to highlight the ways in which the images ""speak"" and what visual languages mean for the construction of Islamic subjectivities, the distribution of power, and the formation of identity and belonging.

Written by a pioneer in the field of Middle Eastern women's history, Women in the Middle East is a concise, comprehensive, and authoritative history of the lives of the region's women since the rise of Islam.

Economic liberalization has failed in the Arab world. Instead of precipitating democratic reform, it has over the last three decades resulted in greater poverty, inequality and unemployment. In How Capitalism Failed the Arab World, Richard Javad Heydarian shows how years of economic mismanagement, political autocracy and corruption have encouraged people to revolt, and how the initial optimism of the uprisings is now giving way to bitter power struggles and continued economic stagnation.

The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis.

This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East. In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the uprisings occurring from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen have been driven by a delayed defiance that signifies no less than the end of postcolonialism. As he brilliantly explains, the permanent revolutionary mood has the potential to liberate not only those societies already ignited but ultimately many others as well.

Addressing the question of how neoliberal ideology has served to conflate the radical left with extremism, this book examines how the Arab left has asserted itself in the context of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism during and after the Arab uprisings. It examines how the Arab cultural left has offered a critique of the signifying practices of political hegemonies in the region and argues that though creative expression as constituted in the very language of the Arab uprisings, it has put forward its own alternatives

New Voices in Arab Cinema focuses on contemporary filmmaking since the 1980's, but also considers the longer history of Arab cinema. Taking into consideration film from the Middle East and North Africa and giving a special nod to films produced since the Arab Spring and the Syrian crisis, Roy Armes explores themes such as modes of production, national cinemas, the role of the state and private industry on film, international developments in film, key filmmakers, and the validity of current notions like globalization, migration and immigration, and exile.

The uprisings that transformed the Middle East beginning in 2011 have left experts scrambling to understand where the region is likely to go in years to come. But missing from most of the analysis is a longer view of the evolution of Arab Public opinion and identity and how this is likely to influence this fast-changing region. In The World Through Arab Eyes, Shibley Telhami shows how the roots of these rebellions stretch back decades and explains how they will continue to affect the stability of the Middle East in the years to come.

Whether through government propaganda or popular transnational satellite television channels, Arab citizens encounter a discourse that reinforces a sense of belonging to their own state and a broader Arab world on a daily basis. Looking through the lens of nationalism theory, this book examines how and why Arab identity continues to be reproduced in today's Middle East, and how that Arab identity interacts with strengthening ties to religion and the state.

Available online
Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gained strength. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interview data, Palestinian Chicago charts the origins of these changes and the multiple effects they have had on identity across religious, political, class, gender, and generational lines. The perspectives that emerge through this rich ethnography challenge prevailing understandings of secularity and religion, offering critical insight into current debates about immigration and national belonging.