Madi Williamson and Leena Zahra of In-Sight Collaborative share their mission of improving humanitarian aid by promoting autonomy and dignity among displaced populations. They discuss their experiences working on the ground in refugee camps in Greece and what drew them to this line of work. Interview by Krishna S. Kulkarni, Outreach Coordinator for…

Syrian American hip-hop artist, poet, and peace activist Omar Offendum discusses hip-hop as history and education with Thomas E.R. Maguire, Associate Director of the University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). Omar tells the story behind his recent Little Syria project and addresses his experience as Citizen Artist Fellow at the…

In this episode of “Ventures,” Professor Fadi Bardawil of Duke University discusses his new book, Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation. Bardawil traces the rise and fall of the Lebanese New Left during the 1960s. He focuses mainly on the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon, a small group of militant intellect…

In this episode of Ventures, Mandy Terc, the executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (known as MERIP), explains how the organization tries to make the knowledge of academics digestible to a more general audience. She also discusses her own fieldwork in Syria before the civil war, and the ethical questions that arise w…

In this episode of “Ventures,” Professor Tahera Qutbuddin discusses her recently published book, Arabic Oration: Art and Function. Qutbuddin’s book, 10 years in the making, presents theoretical tools to analyze speeches and sermons given in the early Islamic period, from the 7th to 8th centuries AD. Though the book’s true scope is enormous, Qutbudd…

In this episode of Ventures, visiting Israel Institute Professor Noa Lavi explains why it’s worthwhile to analyze Israeli TV through a sociological lens. Interview by Zak Witus.Ideas and opinions expressed in the episode are the participants' own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studie…

“When you change medium of intellectual exchange, what happens to the content?” asks Professor Ahmed El Shamsy. In this episode of Ventures, El Shamsy discusses his forthcoming book Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition. The book examines the era when the printing press was adopted t…

Fadi “the fdz” Baki and Omar Khouri are co-founders and editors of the Lebanese comics magazine Samandal. In this episode of Ventures the two take listeners back to the comic’s early days, to Lebanon in the year 2006; post-war with Israel, but before an established comics scene existed in the country. The two wanted to create a space where people c…

In this episode, Barbara Mann, a professor of Cultural Studies and Hebrew Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary, discusses how graphic novels serve as a unique space for historical discourse. Citing commercially-popular examples like Maus and The Rabbi’s Cat, Mann concludes that the language of graphic novels, their unique way of presenting…

In this episode of Ventures, Professor Angie Heo discusses her new book The Political Lives of Saints. Heo challenges the idea that in Egypt Christian saints and icons hold significance only for the country’s Christian population. She argues that public narratives of saints intertwine with narratives of the nation, and these stories bind Christians…

Is there an Egyptian Orientalism? Joel Gordon approaches this question by tracing the representations of India and Indians in modern Egyptian cinema. In this lecture, Gordon puts these cinematic representations in the context of shifting relations between Egypt and India through the 20th century. Reaching from Suez to Shalimar, Gordon narrates the …

With nearly 25 million attendees, the Arba’een Pilgrimage in Iraq is one of the largest public gatherings in the world. Banned under Saddam Hussein, Shi’a Muslims from around the world have renewed this annual ritual in recent years, defying sectarian violence and the threat of ISIS. Alex Shams, a Ph.D student in Anthropology at the University of C…

In this episode, Sophia Azeb excavates genealogies of the Afro-Arab world. Highlighting the Pan-African Festival of 1969 in Algeria, Azeb shows how art functioned as a cultural exchange between African diaspora communities and Arabs in the Middle East. In the backdrop of the Algerian War for Independence, this festival collected the various anti-co…

In this lecture, Hayder Al-Mohammad discusses how modern-day Iraqis prepare for death, either their own or within their communities. Placing post-invasion Iraq in the context of the Gulf War and subsequent U.S. sanctions, this episode explores a suffering healthcare system where many Iraqis and their families, especially amongst the poor, face dead…

In this interview, Alireza Doostdar plunges into the world of Iranian occult sciences. His ethnographic research, or ‘deep hanging out,’ introduces us to a diverse cast of characters: New Age spiritists, fortune tellers, and ordinary people grappling with what lies beyond the natural. Drawing on the ideas and practices of these interlocutors, Doost…

With almost 2 billion followers, Islam has spread far beyond the land of its birth. Its origins, however, remain difficult for historians to explain. In this episode of Ventures, Fred Donner discusses the challenges of studying early Islam and the narratives of Islam’s emergence in the 7th century CE. Drawing on decades of research, Donner complica…

Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews emigrated to the newly-established state of Israel.In this interview, Orit Bashkin explores the nuanced world of this diaspora: Jews who spoke Arabic and struggled to survive transit camps; sometimes collaborating with Palestinian communists or working with the Israeli government. This history is a cautiona…