New Books in Islamic Studies

Marshall Poe
  • 4.8 (30)
  • Islam
  • Updated Weekly

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  1. 3d ago

    Muslims and the Minority Question across the Indian Ocean: A Conversation With Roy Bar Sadeh

    In this conversation, we are entering an Indian Ocean world connected by steamships, telegraphs, pilgrimage routes, and print. From Bombay and the Gulf to Cairo and Mecca—and onward to Moscow and Geneva—merchants, scholars, activists, and political exiles debated a question that still feels urgent: how can different communities live together without being reduced to permanent majorities and minorities? Bombay sits near the center of our story. Under British rule, it was a major imperial port. But it was also a meeting place where Indian Ocean merchants financed publications, hosted traveling scholars, and helped ideas cross borders. At the same time, British censuses and representative politics produced a striking paradox. South Asia contained the world’s largest Muslim population, yet Muslims were increasingly classified as a political minority within India. Dr. Roy Bar Sadeh is a historian of modern South Asia and the broader Islamic world, joining the University of Oxford in September 2026 as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History and at St Antony’s College. He is currently a Lecturer at the University of Manchester. His many articles and forthcoming book with University of Chicago Press,  Muslims and the Minority Question: A Global History of South Asia, 1856–1947, follow the people who refused to accept that minority label as their political destiny. Along the way, we’ll talk about food and language, Gulf pearl merchants and printing presses, rival plans for Mecca, an unlikely Soviet-Saudi partnership, and the search for protection beyond the nation-state. Host: Dr. Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi, an assistant professor of history at New York University Abu Dhabi. Co-host: Dr. Mohammed Alsudairi, a Lecturer of Politics and International Relations of the Arabic-speaking world at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  2. 6d ago

    Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)

    Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East. In her debut book, Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) Paulina Banas analyzes the context and process of production of these highly illustrated publications, from their conceptualization to the finished product and its afterlife, from marketing to the sales of these books, and from circulation to their reception by nineteenth-century audiences. By tracing the long, arduous, and often risky publishing journeys of the makers of these books, including publishers, writers, and artists, such as the Frenchman Émile Prisse d’Avennes, Banas reveals a complex terrain of changing market demands, collaborations, and conflicting views, and the unsettled authorship of these works, prompting us to think more profoundly about artistic and intellectual exchange in the world of nineteenth-century Orientalist book production. Visualizing Egypt considers nineteenth-century book illustrations on Egypt and the “Orient” not merely as expressions of enduring ideology and colonial propaganda, but as representations shaped by the often-overlooked commercial exigencies of the growing publishing industry and the reckless competition within it. Paulina Banas is an Assistant Professor of Art History at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she teaches course on Islamic world arts, 19th century European visual culture, and cross-cultural encounters between Europe and the Middle East. Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  3. Jul 29

    Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan eds., "Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family, and Healing" (U Regina Press, 2026)

    Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan's new edited volume Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family and Healing (U Regina Press, 2026) is a powerful anthology that brings together writers, activists, and scholars who meditate, reflect, and share stories of queer Muslim life, that contains the complexity of rage, grief and resilience but also joy, love, and healing. In the process, Thawer and Khan deconstruct the limitations of western centric formulations of mental health and wellness, which is often individualistic and commodified, and invite readers to think through a decolonial approach that honours Muslim spirituality, religiosity, and culture, which can help us shift towards collectivistic and liberatory goals of healing. This anthology is a great resource for those who are mental health practitioners, and relevant to those who think about gender, sexuality, and Islam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  4. Jul 3

    Xian Aubin Wang, "Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024" (Cornell UP, 2026)

    Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan: State Violence and Resistance, 1949–2024 (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Xian Aubin Wang investigates decades of contentious relations between the Communist party-state of China and the Muslim community of southern Yunnan centered on the village of Shadian, site of an incident of state violence in 1975 that resulted in 1600 civilian deaths. Examining the causes and legacies of the Shadian massacre, Dr. Wang draws on an extensive review of internal official documents, original written testimonies, and firsthand interviews with Muslim villagers. By exploring interactions among Beijing, the Yunnan provincial government, county officials, CCP Muslim cadres, and Shadian villagers against the backdrop of the CCP's nationwide political campaigns since the early 1950s, Dr. Wang shows how Islam and Maoism influenced the ways that local villagers and party cadres saw and dealt with each other—and how these encounters shaped the developing conflict and its aftermath. Providing an in-depth account of Chinese religious groups living under the CCP, Islam and Maoism in Southern Yunnan reveals how religion and politics shaped Muslim villagers' responses to the party-state's efforts to control and secularize them. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  5. Jul 1

    Aditi Chandra, "Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines how Delhi's Sultanate and Mughal architecture, dating from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, became modern monuments and were assimilated and ordered into public consciousness as spaces for tourism, leisure, and intellectual contemplation during the colonial and early postcolonial eras (1828-1963). It examines the resistance that challenges this ordering, rendering monuments unruly and unassimilable despite state efforts to control their narrative. This exposes the nation's contradictory claims of inclusivity while marginalizing subaltern groups. It guides readers through picturesque landscapes, museums, imperial displays, postcards, travel experiences, Partition refugee camps, and cinema. Analyzing these forms reveals how the archive of Indo-Islamic monuments was shaped through presences and absences. Each chapter examines everyday life, untangles knowable public transcripts, illuminates strategic excisions and hidden transcripts, juxtaposes evidence that has not yet been analyzed in conjunction, reads archival material against the grain, and finds archival layers in unfamiliar places. NBN Host: Sohini Majumdar Sohini teaches history at University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  6. Jun 30

    Chiara Formichi, "Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia" (Stanford UP, 2025)

    In her most recent publication, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia (Stanford UP, 2025), Chiara Formichi argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia's progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. While sidelined in the Dutch colonial project of hygienic modernity, women's labor of social reproduction became increasingly visible during the Japanese Occupation and early years of independence. Women from all walks of life were called upon to fulfill domestic and motherly roles for the production and socialization of laborers, soldiers, and citizens. The medicalization of cleanliness, intersecting with multiple patriarchal orders, marginalized women's traditional influence and knowledge. However, leveraging the critical importance of infant care, cleanliness, and nutrition, women pushed against the boundaries imposed on them by the colonial and postcolonial state. Largely absent from government archives, their words and acts are evident in vernacular magazines and visual sources drawn from official outreach, news and lifestyle media, and advertisements. Women writers rearticulated scientific mothering, nationalist maternalism, and Islamic ideals of motherhood to create a public voice through gendered care work. The framework of Domestic Nationalism proposes that as the modern Indonesian nation-state took shape capitalizing on the public function of mothering, so did homemaking become a crossroads of national and international approaches to development, blurring nonaligned self-reliance and global capitalist interests. In this episode Dr. Chiara Formichi (Cornell University) and Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women’s History) discuss Domestic Nationalism. We converse about feminist theory and tensions between Indonesian women and colonial establishments. We talk about food, food choices, food preparation and nutrition to reveal an intersection of hygiene, nutrition, and imperialism. And last, we discuss how imperial and colonial invocation of novel hygiene practices was a global phenomenon in the mid-twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  7. Jun 25

    Marta Dominguez Diaz, "Tunisia's Andalusians: The Cultural Identity of a North African Minority" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

    Tunisia’s Andalusians: The Cultural Identity of a North African Minority (Edinburgh UP, 2025) tells the captivating story of those Andalusians, descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century, who sought refuge in Tunisia. Rather than simply replicating Iberian traditions, Andalusian culture in Tunisia stands as a vibrant and evolving phenomenon, shaped by complex dynamics of interaction and adaptation over four centuries. The book dismantles the romanticised view of Andalusian culture as a mere transplantation of al-Andalus, analysing distinctive cultural features that distinguish Andalusians as an ethnic group within Tunisia’s diverse social fabric. Drawing on historical records and contemporary ethnographic data, including personal accounts and family archives, the book sheds light on how Andalusians navigate their unique cultural position amidst a Tunisian national narrative often focused on Arabo-Muslim homogeneity. By examining the complexities of cultural preservation and assimilation, the book offers a nuanced perspective on Andalusian identity, revealing its dynamism and resilience in the face of changing social, political, and economic circumstances. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

  8. Jun 23

    Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, "Boundaries of Belonging: Sectarianism and Statecraft in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Examining sectarian divergence in the early modern Middle East, Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer's study provides a fresh perspective on the Sunni–Shi'i division. Drawing on Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and European sources, Boundaries of Belonging: Sectarianism and Statecraft in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2026) explores the paradox of an Ottoman state that combined rigid ideological discourses with pragmatic governance. Through an analysis of key figures, events, periods, and policies, Boundaries of Belonging reveals how political, economic, and religious forces intersected, challenging simplistic sectarian binaries. Baltacıoğlu-Brammer provides a comprehensive historical account of Ottoman governance during the long sixteenth century, focusing on its relationship with non-Sunni Muslim subjects, particularly the Qizilbash. As both the founders of the Safavid Empire and the largest Shiʿi-affiliated group within the Ottoman realm, the Qizilbash occupied a crucial yet often misunderstood position. Boundaries of Belonging examines their role within the empire, challenging the notion that they were merely persecuted outsiders by highlighting their agency in shaping imperial policies, negotiating their status, and influencing the Ottoman–Safavid rivalry in Anatolia, Kurdistan, and Iraq, and western Iran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

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4.8
out of 5
30 Ratings

About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

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