Episode 442with Sunil Sharmahosted by Shireen Hamza and Naveena NaqviDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudIn this episode, Professor Sunil Sharma shares his research on the cast of poets who wrote Persian poetry in India, and the poetic idea of Mughal India as a paradise, or an “Arcadia.” (He also shares some excerpts of this lovely poetry with us!) We discuss how specific regions, like Kashmir, became a hot new topic in Persian poetry, and explore the kinds of competitions that emerged between poets from different places across a broader “Persianate” world. The courtly environments in which these poets found patronage were multilingual and multiracial environments — where someone could enjoy poetry in Persian, Braj Bhasha, Hindavi and Chaghatai Turkish — but in this time, Persian poetry was what got you a job. By studying both poetry and painting, he reflects on the racial differences mentioned by poets, especially the initial difference between those born in India and those who had migrated from Iran and were “native speakers” of Persian. Finally, we discuss different meanings of the term “Indo-Persian,” in the study of the centuries that Persian was used as a language of governance, literature and science in India. « Click for More »

Imagination & Diaspora: Best of 2019

Mughal Persian Poetry and Persianate Cultures

Episode 436with Rawan Arar, Andrew Arsan, Reem Bailony, and Neda Maghboulehhosted by Chris GratienAudience questions by Joshua Donovan, Nihal Kayali, Nova Robinson, and Ben SmithDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudIn this roundtable entitled "Narrating Migration: Emerging Methods and Cross-Disciplinary Directions," held at the 2019 Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, two historians--Reem Bailony and Andrew Arsan--and two sociologists--Rawan Arar and Neda Maghbouleh discuss their experiences and approaches to studying migration. Throughout this conversation with our four authors about their own research, we speak to the following questions: What are the promises and dangers of narrative in migration studies? What role do language and affect play in writing migrant stories? How should we write them? How do different disciplines approach migration? What challenges and possibilities are presented by the source base? How do various sources (e.g., state, personal, oral) intersect or diverge? What are overlooked areas (e.g., spatial, temporal, political, social) with regard to migration and the modern Middle East? How do experiences of MENA migration and diaspora contribute to migration studies broadly speaking? How does this work impact historiographies of the Global North, South-South relations, and other places where MENA migrants have gone? What promise might the study of MENA migration hold for decolonial scholarship? « Click for More »

Narrating Migration: A Cross-Disciplinary Roundtable

Episode 434with Sarah Abrevaya Steinhosted by Sam DolbeeDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudIn this episode, historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein speaks to us about the journey of one Jewish family from Ottoman Salonica in the late nineteenth century to Manchester, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and beyond during the twentieth century. In her new book Family Papers, she reveals the poignant continuities and changes that accompanied the Sephardic family&#39;s movement from an imperial world into a national one through stories of displacement and genocide, endurance and survival. She also discusses the cache of family papers that allowed her to provide this uniquely intimate vantage on large-scale historical transformations.« Click for More »

Family Papers and Ottoman Jewish Life After Empire

Episode 433with David Gutmanhosted by Sam DolbeeDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudBeginning in the 1880s, thousands of Ottoman Armenians left the Harput region bound for places all around the world. The Ottoman state viewed these migrants as threats, both for their feared political connections and their possession of foreign legal protections. In this episode, David Gutman discusses the smuggling networks that emerged in response to these legal restrictions, as well as the evolving understandings of citizenship they entailed. Restrictions on movement were repealed after the Constitutional Revolution in 1908, but the respite from control of motion would be short-lived for Harput&#39;s Armenians, many of whom were killed in the genocide of 1915. « Click for More »

The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America

Episode 430with Nurfadzilah Yahayahosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudDuring the 19th century, Southeast Asia came under British and Dutch colonial rule. Yet despite the imposition of foreign institutions and legal codes, Islamic law remained an important part of daily life. In fact, as our guest Fadzilah Yahaya argues, Islamic law in the region underwent significant transformation as a result of British and Dutch policies. But rather than merely a top-down transformation, Yahaya highlights the role of the small and largely mercantile Arab diaspora as a major factor in European policy towards Islamic law in Southeast Asia. In our conversation, we  discuss Islamic law and the Arab diaspora in Southeast Asia during the colonial period as well as some of the more unusual court cases arising from this period and the implications of this history for Southeast Asia today.« Click for More »

Islamic Law and Arab Diaspora in Southeast Asia

Episode 425with Alp Eren Topalhosted by Susanna Ferguson and Sam DolbeeDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudIn this episode, Alp Eren Topal traces the history of medical metaphors for describing and diagnosing state and society in Ottoman political thought. From the balancing of humors prescribed by Galenic medicine to the lifespan of the state described by Ibn Khaldun and the germ theory of nineteenth-century biomedicine, we explore some of the ways people thought about the state and its health or illness in the early-modern and modern Mediterranean world. How did these metaphors and images change over time, and how did they inform the policies of the Empire and its rulers? « Click for More »

Medical Metaphors in Ottoman Political Thought

Episode 424with Samhita Sunyahosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudThe 1001 Nights, an Arabic collection of tales, have been translated into numerous languages and adapted to many cultural contexts. In this episode, we explore the impact of the 1001 Nights on the history of cinema. As our guest Samhita Sunya explains, the 1001 Nights corpus influenced Western cinema from the earliest decades of the medium&#39;s rise. However, in our conversation, we focus on the cinematic influence of the tales beyond Europe and North America. From Japan and South Asia to Iran and the Caucasus, we discuss the many forms the 1001 Nights have assumed in cinema the world over and reflect on the significance of the often ignored connections between these different world regions.« Click for More »

1001 Nights at the Cinema

Bölüm 422 Fatih Artvinli ve Ebru AykutSunucu Can GümüşPodcast&#39;i indirFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudEdebiyat ve kurmacanın tarihyazımına sunduğu imkânlar nelerdir? Bu bölümde, aynı kuşaktan 14 genç tarihçinin arşiv belgesi, gazete kupürü, günlük, mektup gibi tarihsel bir malzemeden ya da metinden yola çıkarak kurguladığı öykülerden oluşan "Tarihçilerden Başka Bir Hikâye" kitabı üzerine sohbet ediyoruz. Kitabın editörlerinden Fatih Artvinli ve Ebru Aykut ile tarihsel gerçeklik, edebiyat ve kurmacanın ilişkisini değerlendirirken, kitabın nasıl bir tarihyazımsal müdahaleye işaret ettiğini tartışıyoruz. « Click for More »

Tarihçilerden Başka Bir Hikâye

 a:hover { cursor:pointer; } Episode 419 with İpek Hüner Corahosted by Işın Taylan Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudOttoman literature is heavily associated with verse, namely, Ottoman court poetry, and to some extent, folk literature. Ottoman stories, however, remain unexplored, even though they circulated in the empire and entertained many. For us, today, they are an invaluable source to study daily life, gender and space in the early modern Ottoman world. What is an Ottoman story? What do Ottoman stories tell us? In this episode, İpek Hüner Cora joins the podcast to talk about fictional prose stories in the Ottoman Empire and we discuss the gendered and spatial aspects of stories scattered in manuscript collections. « Click for More »

The Story Has It

Episode 417with Devi Mayshosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudAfter their expulsion from the Iberian peninsula during the 15th century, Jewish communities settled throughout the Mediterranean, with many finding new homes in the cities of the ascendant Ottoman Empire. Centuries later, Ottoman Jews descended from this early modern diaspora still spoke a language related to Spanish, often referred to as Ladino. During the late 19th century, a new wave of migration out of the Eastern Mediterranean began, giving rise to a modern Sephardi diaspora of migrants from modern-day Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and other parts of the former Ottoman world. As our guest Devi Mays explains in this interview, the Iberian heritage and language of these migrants played a distinct role in their global migration experience, as many ended up settling in countries like Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina. In this episode, we explore the history of the modern Sephardi diaspora and its relationship to the history of Mexico. In some cases, Ladino-speaking Jews from the former Ottoman Empire appeared as welcome immigrants in Mexico even when Jews from other parts of the world faced discrimination and increased immigration restriction during the 20th century. In other cases, Iberian heritage meant that Jews looking to settle in the United States could pass as Mexican or Cuban nationals when seeking to cross the border. Through the individual experiences and lives that comprise the modern Sephardi diaspora, we highlight the unique experiences of migrants mediated by gender and class, and we appreciate the strategies such people developed to navigate an increasingly anti-immigrant world. « Click for More »

Mexico and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora

Episode 414with Suja Sawaftahosted by Chris Gratien and Rebecca AlemayehuDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudAbdul Rahman Munif is one of the most celebrated authors in the Arabic language. In this episode, we sit down with literature scholar Suja Sawafta to learn about the social and political experiences that shaped Munif as an author, and in particular, we explore the role of the environment in some his most important works such as Cities of Salt. We discuss why Munif&#39;s politics led him to literature, and we explore how through his fiction writing, Munif provides a vivid account and critique of the history of oil and its impact in the Middle East. « Click for More »

The Environmental Politics of Abdul Rahman Munif

Episode 412with Ian Nagoskihosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudDuring the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of people from the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman states emigrated to the U.S. Among them were musicians, singers, and artists who catered to the new diaspora communities that emerged in cities like New York and Boston. During the early 20th century, with the emergence of a commercial recording industry in the United States, these artists appeared on 78 rpm records that circulated within the diaspora communities of the former Ottoman Empire in the United States and beyond, singing in languages such as Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Assyrian, Kurdish, and Ladino. Their music included folks songs from their homelands and new compositions about life and love in the diaspora. In this episode, Ian Nagoski of Canary Records joins the podcast to showcase some of these old recordings, which he has located and digitized over the years, and we discuss some of the remarkable life stories of these largely forgotten artists in American music history. « Click for More »

American Music of the Ottoman Diaspora

Episode 407with Heghnar Watenpaughhosted by Emily NeumeierDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudThe genre of biography usually applies to people, but could a similar approach be applied to an object? Can a thing have a life of its own? In this episode, Heghnar Watenpaugh explores this question by tracing the long journey of the Zeytun Gospels, a famous illuminated manuscript considered to be a masterpiece of medieval Armenian art. Protected for centuries in a remote church in eastern Anatolia, the sacred book traveled with the waves of people displaced by the Armenian genocide. Passed from hand to hand, caught in the chaos of the First World War, it was divided in two. Decades later, the manuscript found its way to the Republic of Armenia, while its missing eight pages came to the Getty Museum in LA. In this interview, we discuss how the Zeytun Gospels could be understood as a "survivor object," contributing to current discussions about the destruction of cultural heritage. We also talk about the challenges of writing history for a broader reading public.« Click for More »

Survivor Objects and the Lost World of Ottoman Armenians

Episode 404with Stacy Fahrentholdhosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudBy the time of the First World War, there were roughly 500,000 Lebanese and Syrians in the Americas. And as Stacy Fahrenthold argues in a new book entitled Between the Ottomans and the Entente, this diaspora played a critical role in the transformation of politics in Greater Syria over a period of incredible flux. In our conversation, we discuss how the diaspora embraced and sustained the revolutionary fervor of the post-1908 Ottoman Empire into the First World War, when loyalties to the Ottomans and their Entente adversaries were divided. After the war, this diaspora likewise sought to influence the outcome of the postwar map after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. But what would be the fate of the Greater Syrian diaspora with the establishment of the French Mandates? « Click for More »

WWI in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora

Episode 403with Sarah Abrevaya Steinhosted by Nir ShafirDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudMany students of Middle Eastern history know that that some non-Muslims subjects of the Ottoman Empire became "proteges" of European states in the nineteenth century and thus acquired extraterritorial legal protections. While we know the institutional history of extraterritoriality, the individual motivations and histories of those who chose to become proteges is relatively unknown. In this podcast, Sarah Stein speaks about what extraterritoriality meant to those Jews of the former Ottoman Empire that chose to take this path. In particular, it exposes the tenuous meaning of citizenship in the quickly changing legal world of the early twentieth century, as empires collapsed and new regime of borders and national belonging emerged.« Click for More »

Extraterritoriality, Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century

Our picks for the best and most popular episodes of OHP in 2019 on this year's theme of imagination and diaspora

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Imagination & Diaspora: Best of 2019

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