Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character allegations that label them as 'bad' women in ne...
3 Jul 202551min
Heather Sutherland, "Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, C.1600-c.1906" (NUS Press, 2021)
The eastern archipelagos stretch from Mindanao and Sulu in the north to Bali in the southwest and New Guinea in the southeast. Many of their inhabitants are regarded as “people without history”, while...
2 Jul 202555min
Shayna M. Silverstein, "Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)
A vivid and intricate study of dance music traditions that reveals the many contradictions of being Syrian in the 21st century Dabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the ce...
27 Jun 202554min
Maya J. Berry, "Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press, 2025), anthropologist and dancer Maya J. Berry examines rumba as a way of knowing the embodied and...
25 Jun 20251h 25min
Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowledge has circulated in transnational entanglements, pa...
23 Jun 202543min
Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)
In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spect...
22 Jun 202555min
Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025)
Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once the objects of American missionary effort...
18 Jun 202550min
Yasmin Moll, "The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025)
The New Preachers of Egypt—so named because of their novel preaching styles, which incorporate everything from melodrama to music to self-help—came to prominence on the world's first Islamic televisio...
15 Jun 202559min
