“Could,” ask Are John Knudsen and Kjersti Berg, “refugee camps, as traditionally understood, be scaled up to embrace a region hosting millions of refugees and migrants?”
Here they discuss their new book, CONTINENTAL ENCAMPMENT: GENEALOGIES OF HUMANITARIAN CONTAINMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE, which explores responses to mass migration and traces the genealogy of humanitarian containment, containment which we now see on a vast scale.
April 24 marks the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is held annually to recognize and mourn more than 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide, the most tragic element of Armenian history.
Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, Urban Violence in the Middle East explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. Below, contributors to the volume tell about their personal relationship as historians to present echoes of their work.
Continue reading “Historians Relate to Present Echoes of their Work”
April 24 marks the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and tens of thousands are expected to march to commemorate the event.
In recognizing the significance of the occasion we would like to bring to your attention a small but select number of titles which deliver scholarly expertise and informed opinion around the subject.
Continue reading “Observing 102nd Anniversary of Armenian Genocide”
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the history of the lives and work of middle eastern artisans. Bread from the Lion’s Mouth: Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities, soon to be published, uses archival documents to re-create a scene of life in the Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries. Following, editor Suraiya Faroqhi discusses the history of this project and her interest in this region.
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What drew you to the study of artisans in Ottoman cities? Why do you think there is a renewed interest in this field today?
Perhaps because I am fond of my own work, as a historian I have for a long time been interested in people that work – as opposed to those that pray, govern, or fight. Moreover I like to see the things that artisans/artists have made; and we must keep in mind that the beautiful things we admire in museums did not come into being ‘just like that’ but are the product of human work, especially that of artisans and artists.
Continue reading “Artisan Society and Struggles in the Ottoman Empire”
Anthropology of the Middle East
Volume 9, Issue 1
This issue focuses on the critical political anthropology of the Middle East.
Continue reading “Hot Off the Presses – New Journal Issues for January”
Recently published in paperback, Post-Cosmopolitan Cities: Explorations of Urban Coexistence offers readers an in-depth view into the lives of urban dwellers in six cities, from Venice to Warsaw and Odessa to Thessalonica. Below, volume editors Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja reflect on the content of their volume and how the study sites and subjects may have changed in the two years since its original publication.
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Our book Post-Cosmopolitan Cities: Explorations of Urban Coexistence contains three chapters about Odessa, the port city on the Black Sea, but they were written before the recent events in Ukraine. We argued that cities famed for their cosmopolitanism, including the ‘merry’, ‘worldly’ Odessa, deserve deeper investigation of what lies beneath the surface and the uncertain effects of the past on the present.
From Idea to Book is an occasional series in which Berghahn authors and Editors discuss the origins of their work. Here, Marcia Inhorn and Soraya Tremayne describe how the volume Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, which was recently published by Berghahn, came about.
Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologiesis the result of a wonderful conference workshop, held from 18 to 20 September 2009 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, on the theme of “Islam and the Biotechnologies of Human Life.” Following a day of public presentations, the contributors to this volume remained at Yale for an intensive, two-day workshop discussion of their conference papers, which have ultimately become the polished chapters of this edited volume.
To our knowledge, this volume is unique, for it represents the work of nearly all of those scholars whose research focuses on Islam and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Meeting (often for the first time), discussing our work, and producing this volume together has been an immensely rewarding experience. For us as co-conveners, the project and the process have been especially gratifying, for we have been able to bring together our junior colleagues, many of whom are producing nuanced, field-based research on ARTs in a variety of Islamic settings. As a result, all of the chapters in this volume can be said to be original, timely, and “cutting edge,” reflecting the rapidly evolving ART landscape in the Muslim world in the second decade of the new millennium. Continue reading “From Idea to Book- Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Sunni and Shia Perspectives”