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The Middle East is drowning in oppressive utopias
Read more: The Middle East is drowning in oppressive utopiasSimon Wolfgang Fuchs and Thomas Pierret explore the gap between oppressive and emancipatory utopias in the Middle East and North Africa

Writing about the People of Iraq
by Catherine Cobham and Fabio Caiani 23 March 2023 marked the twentieth anniversary of the attack on Iraq. Predictably, western mainstream media made little or no reference to contemporary Iraqi culture. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in…

Q&A with Leandro Losada on ‘Machiavelli in the Spanish-Speaking Atlantic World’
by Leandro Losada Tell us a bit about your book. Machiavelli in the Spanish-Speaking Atlantic World, 1880-1940 pursues two comparative approaches. One is the history of liberal and anti-liberal political thinking. The other is the reception of Machiavelli’s works in…

Heritage and Identity: Debunking 5 myths about Middle Eastern Christians
By Elizabeth Marteijn Recent tragedies in the Middle East brought more attention to Christians living in the region. Events such as a series of popular uprisings (‘Arab Spring’) and humanitarian disasters in countries such as Syria and Iraq, have made…

Xenophon’s Anabasis in 16 Pictures
This selection of sixteen photographs together with the accompanying descriptions by Xenophon aim to provide a sense of the travel experience from the journey’s beginning at Sardis to the army’s famous sighting of the Black Sea from the mountains south of modern Trabzon.

Richard III, Thomas More and ‘Jane’ Shore: A royal mistress and a royal mystery
by Tim Thornton The Princes in the Tower The discovery of King Richard III’s body under a Leicester carpark in 2012 revitalised the public’s attention to one of the most controversial figures in British history, and to the mysteries surrounding…

Scottish Diaspora Virtual Issue
Our Scottish Studies Scottish Diaspora Virtual Issue has just launched, and features almost 30 journal articles and book chapters from across our Scottish Studies lists, with introductions written by Beth Cowen from Glasgow University and Ersev Ersoy and Kristian Kerr…

When Pashto Became Divine
by William E. B. Sherman O you mangled souls: fear the sigh of the dervish.It’s a sigh exhaled by passioned love for Godthat burns the mountains to ash like straw.…If you see with the eye of your heart,everywhere will you…

Surveying the Anthropocene: Destruction of natural systems: forests
by Patricia Macdonald This is the first of a series of blogs featuring themes and participants from the book Surveying the Anthropocene: Environment and photography now, edited by Patricia Macdonald (for an introduction to the book, see Q & A blog…

Folk Songs as Communication, Resistance, Lament, and Entertainment Among Women in Northeastern Afghanistan
By Wolayat Tabasum Niroo In the northeastern provinces of Afghanistan, talented women sing folk songs to entertain each other in female-only gatherings on happy occasions. The songs are accompanied by a diara or daff, a colorful frame drum made of…