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The Pharmakon of Shame
Read more: The Pharmakon of ShameSéan Kennedy and Joseph Valente, editors of Irish Shame, explore the intricate relationship between empathy and shame in this blog.
Five Reasons why the Middle East Matters for World Christianity
Events such as the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria have brought Middle Eastern Christians into the public eye in Europe and North America. Yet the academic field of World Christianity still gives little attention to the Middle…
The “Afghan Genizah”: A New Source for the History of Pre-Mongol Bāmiyān
How did Abū Naṣr Yehuda, a Jewish landowner from 11th-century Bāmiyān, conduct his business affairs with his Muslim neighbors? What was the role of Shujāʿ al-Dīn Muḥammad in the administration of Bāmiyān prior to its destruction by Genghis Khan in…
7 things you may not know about the history of Muslims in Central Asia
By Galina M. Yemelianova 1) There are both narrow and broad notions of Central Asia. The narrow one relates to the 5 Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, which until 1991 were part of the Soviet…
Does the British government learn from the history of military interventions?
From Iraq to Libya, Louise Kettles asks whether the UK has learned to learn from its past mistakes in Middle-Eastern military interventions.
Translating ‘The Sorrowful Muslim’s Guide’ – a labour of love
When we first thought about translating The Sorrowful Muslim’s Guide by Hussein Ahmad Amin, it was not just because the book had generated so much heated discussion locally as well as regionally in the Arab world. Nor that the book is…
Lord Seaforth: Highland proprietor in the age of the Clearances and plantation slave owner
Highland landowners in the decades before and after 1800, and Scots associated with plantation slavery in the same period, have had a bad press. The view of many people of the Highland Clearances comes from John Prebble’s book. First published…
Challenging Cosmopolitanism
The temptation to look longingly to idealised visions of Islamic cosmopolitanism as the antithesis to the militant communal solidarity associated with contemporary groups, such as the Islamic State (IS), can be quite powerful. Many scholars and popular writers have pointed…
Documentary Landscapes of the Holocaust
Journey to Poland: Documentary Landscapes of the Holocaust is about the journeys undertaken by survivors, members of the postgeneration, and filmmakers to the places where the Jews lived before the war and to the places where they were murdered. This…
Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke
In 2008, I saw Jia Zhangke’s film Still Life, and it changed my life. I had never seen a film that had affected me so intensely and knew that, after that moment, I needed to research this director and his films further. What impacted me the most about Jia’s films were their emotional and affective qualities, and how they evoked feelings that lingered long after the films had ended.