Reorienting the Middle East
Reorienting the Middle East

Author: Dale Hudson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2024-01-16

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0253067596

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Stories of desert landscapes, cutting-edge production facilities, and lavish festivals often dominate narratives about film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is a more complicated history that reflects long-standing interconnections between the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. Just as these waters are fluid spaces, so too is the flow of film and digital media between cultures in East Africa, Europe, North Africa, South Asia, Southwest Asia, and Southeast Asia. Reorienting the Middle East examines past and contemporary aspects of film and digital media in the Gulf that might not otherwise be apparent in dominant frameworks. Contributors consider oil companies that brought film exhibition to this area in the 1930s, the first Indian film produced on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1970s, blackness in Iranian films, the role of Western funding in reshaping stories, Dubai's emergence in global film production, uses of online platforms for performance art, the development of film festivals and cinemas, and short films made by citizens and migrants that turn a lens on racism, sexism, national identity, and other rarely discussed social issues. Reorienting the Middle East offers new methods to analyze the often-neglected littoral spaces between nation-states and regions and to understand the role of film and digital media in shaping dialogue between area studies and film and media studies. Readers will find new pathways to rethink the limitations of dominant categories and frameworks in both fields.

Reorienting the Middle East
Reorienting the Middle East

Author: Dale Hudson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2023-12-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780253067562

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Stories of cutting-edge production facilities, generous tax incentives, and lavish film festivals often dominate perceptions of film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula, but there is a much longer and more complicated history that connects it with the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. In Reorienting the Middle East, contributors consider oil companies that brought film to this area in the 1930s and '40s, the first Indian film produced on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1970s, Blackness in Iranian films, the role of Western funding in reshaping stories, Dubai's emergence in global film production, uses of online platforms for performance art, the evolution of film festivals and cinemas, and short citizen-made films that critique racism and sexism perpetrated against migrants from Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Just as the Gulf is a fluid space where film and digital media reflect long-standing connections among the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, Reorienting the Middle East offers a way to analyze the oft-forgotten spaces between regions and disciplines and challenges the definition of film in the Middle East.

ReOrienting the Sasanians
ReOrienting the Sasanians

Author: Khodadad Rezakhani

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2017-03-15

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1474400302

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A narrative history of Central Asia after the Greek dynasties and before IslamCentral Asia is commonly imagined as the marginal land on the periphery of Chinese and Middle Eastern civilisations. At best, it is understood as a series of disconnected areas that served as stop-overs along the Silk Road. However, in the mediaeval period, this region rose to prominence and importance as one of the centres of Persian-Islamic culture, from the Seljuks to the Mongols and Timur. Khodadad Rezakhani tells the back story of this rise to prominence, the story of the famed Kushans and mysterious aAsian Huns, and their role in shaping both the Sasanian Empire and the rest of the Middle East.Contextualises Persian history in relation to the history of Central Asia Extends the concept of late antiquity further east than is usually done Surveys the history of Iran and Central Asia between 200 and 800 bc and contextualises the rise of Islam in both regions "e;

Reorienting the East
Reorienting the East

Author: Martin Jacobs

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2014-09-30

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0812246225

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Reorienting the East explores the Islamic world as it was encountered, envisioned, and elaborated by Jewish travelers from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The first comprehensive investigation of Jewish travel writing from this era, this study engages with questions raised by postcolonial studies and contributes to the debate over the nature and history of Orientalism as defined by Edward Said. Examining two dozen Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic travel accounts from the mid-twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries, Martin Jacobs asks whether Jewish travelers shared Western perceptions of the Islamic world with their Christian counterparts. Most Jews who detailed their journeys during this period hailed from Christian lands and many sailed to the Eastern Mediterranean aboard Christian-owned vessels. Yet Jacobs finds that their descriptions of the Near East subvert or reorient a decidedly Christian vision of the region. The accounts from the crusader era, in particular, are often critical of the Christian church and present glowing portraits of Muslim-Jewish relations. By contrast, some of the later travelers discussed in the book express condescending attitudes toward Islam, Muslims, and Near Eastern Jews. Placing shifting perspectives on the Muslim world in their historical, social, and literary contexts, Jacobs interprets these texts as mirrors of changing Jewish self-perceptions. As he argues, the travel accounts echo the various ways in which premodern Jews negotiated their mingled identities, which were neither exclusively Western nor entirely Eastern.

Brokers of Deceit
Brokers of Deceit

Author: Rashid Khalidi

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0807044768

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Winner of the 2014 Lionel Trilling Book Award An examination of the failure of the United States as a broker in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, through three key historical moments For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. In this book, acclaimed historian Rashid Khalidi zeroes in on the United States’s role as the purported impartial broker in this failed peace process. Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States’ involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine. The first moment he investigates is the “Reagan Plan” of 1982, when Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin refused to accept the Reagan administration’s proposal to reframe the Camp David Accords more impartially. The second moment covers the period after the Madrid Peace Conference, from 1991 to 1993, during which negotiations between Israel and Palestine were brokered by the United States until the signing of the secretly negotiated Oslo accords. Finally, Khalidi takes on President Barack Obama’s retreat from plans to insist on halting the settlements in the West Bank. Through in-depth research into and keen analysis of these three moments, as well as his own firsthand experience as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the 1991 pre–Oslo negotiations in Washington, DC, Khalidi reveals how the United States and Israel have actively colluded to prevent a Palestinian state and resolve the situation in Israel’s favor. Brokers of Deceit bares the truth about why peace in the Middle East has been impossible to achieve: for decades, US policymakers have masqueraded as unbiased agents working to bring the two sides together, when, in fact, they have been the agents of continuing injustice, effectively preventing the difficult but essential steps needed to achieve peace in the region.

Desiring Arabs
Desiring Arabs

Author: Joseph A. Massad

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0226509605

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Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about the value of Arab civilization. In the past, Westerners viewed the Arab world as licentious, and Western intolerance of sex led them to brand Arabs as decadent; but as Western society became more sexually open, the supposedly prudish Arabs soon became viewed as backward. Rather than focusing exclusively on how these views developed in the West, in Desiring Arabs Joseph A. Massad reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. To this aim, he assembles a massive and diverse compendium of Arabic writing from the nineteenth century to the present in order to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization. A work of impressive scope and erudition, Massad’s chronicle of both the history and modern permutations of the debate over representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently oversimplified and vilified culture. “A pioneering work on a very timely yet frustratingly neglected topic. . . . I know of no other study that can even begin to compare with the detail and scope of [this] work.”—Khaled El-Rouayheb, Middle East Report “In Desiring Arabs, [Edward] Said’s disciple Joseph A. Massad corroborates his mentor’s thesis that orientalist writing was racist and dehumanizing. . . . [Massad] brilliantly goes on to trace the legacy of this racist, internalized, orientalist discourse up to the present.”—Financial Times

Re-orienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry
Re-orienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry

Author: Levi Thompson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1009164473

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Comparatively studies, through both form and content, the development of Arabic and Persian modernist poetry during the mid-twentieth century.

Re-Orienting the Renaissance
Re-Orienting the Renaissance

Author: G. Maclean

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2005-10-11

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0230523862

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This book explores how the Renaissance entailed a global exchange of goods, skills and ideas between East and West. In chapters ranging from Ottoman history to Venetian publishing, from portraits of St George to Arab philosophy, from cannibalism to diplomacy, the authors interrogate what all too often may seem to be settled certainties, such as the difference between East and West, the invariable conflict between Islam and Christianity, and the 'rebirth' of European civilization from roots in classical Greece and Imperial Rome.

A Rich and Tantalizing Brew
A Rich and Tantalizing Brew

Author: Jeanette M. Fregulia

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2019-03-04

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1682260879

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The history of coffee is much more than the tale of one luxury good—it is a lens through which to consider various strands of world history, from food and foodways to religion and economics and sociocultural dynamics. A Rich and Tantalizing Brew traces the history of coffee from its cultivation and brewing first as a private pleasure in the highlands of Ethiopia and Yemen through its emergence as a sought-after public commodity served in coffeehouses first in the Muslim world, and then traveling across the Mediterranean to Italy, to other parts of Europe, and finally to India and the Americas. At each of these stops the brew gathered ardent aficionados and vocal critics, all the while reshaping patterns of socialization. Taking its conversational tone from the chats often held over a steaming cup, A Rich and Tantalizing Brew offers a critical and entertaining look at how this bitter beverage, with a little help from the tastes that traveled with it—chocolate, tea, and sugar—has connected people to each other both within and outside of their typical circles, inspiring a new context for sharing news, conducting business affairs, and even plotting revolution.

ReORIENT
ReORIENT

Author: Andre Gunder Frank

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1998-07-31

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780520214743

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"Frank shows how Marx and Weber got it all wrong. A fundamental rethinking of the rise of the West and the origin of the world-system. Absolutely essential to understanding world history."—Albert Bergesen,University of Arizona "The great virtue of this stimulating book is its relentless push to redefine our framework for thinking about the early modern economy. . . . A benchmark study."—R. Bin Wong,University of California, Irvine