Indiana University Press blog

Book reviews: Connected in Cairo

"Connected in Cairo provides an accessible and instructive reading of the everyday construction and negotiation of what is oftentimes glossed as globalization, and will be of value to students and academics interested in the importance of social imagination in the making of local worlds in global times." —Journal of African History

"This book is thus a valuable contribution for scholars in a variety of social sciences who have taken the wave of revolutions in the Arab world as their subject matter, and for those who will be paying close attention to how these elites in Cairo and elsewhere respond to existential threats to their structural privileges." —Anthropological Quarterly

Manoogian Museum to host book launch for A Legacy of Armenian Treasures

The Manoogian Museum in Southfield, MI, will host a book launch party for A Legacy of Armenian Treasures Thursday, May 16 at 6:30 p.m. Fr. Garabed Kochakian of St. John Armenian Church will give a traditional book blessing. Following the blessing, A Legacy of Armenian Treasures's executive editor Edmond Y. Azadian and editorial coordinator Sylvie L. Merian will give a presentation. A reception will conclude the evening. Copies of the book will also be available for purchase at a special price during the event.

The book launch is open to the public, but please RSVP by May 13 to 248-569-3405 or 248-557-5977.

For more information about A Legacy of Armenian Treasures visit our website or look inside the book. 

Three IUP books reviewed in American Ethnologist

Three IUP books are reviewed in the current issue of American Ethnologist:

The American War in Contemporary Vietnam
"The American War in Contemporary Vietnam is essential reading for anyone teaching or wanting to understand Vietnam today and would be useful in teaching seminars or upper-level courses on Vietnam, Asia, memory, and history, as well as discussions of ethnographic methodology."

Islamophobia/Islamophilia
"Overall, the volume is an impressive collection of serious discursive analyses that heighten our sensitivities to the forms arguments about Islam take; while always indexes of power, it is clear that the shared terms of global debates about Islamic reform do not always correspond
to shared meanings."

Live from Dar es Salaam
"In Live from Dar es Salaam, Alex Perullo focuses on the creative practices Tanzanians in the music economy in Dar es Salaam utilize as they try to make something of a living in difficult economic times. Perullo also shows how music in Tanzania transitioned from work to a commodity as the country itself moved from a socialist to a capitalist political–economic ideology."

Book review: Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon

"Volk’s identification of subjacent gender and class issues in memorialization points the way to fertile ground for future scholarship. ... Would memorials commemorating the contributions of women or the working-class bring into question the status quo by relativizing the power of elite males? These are not questions that Memorials and Martyrs foregrounds but the book makes it much easier and more plausible to ask them. The next time somebody asks what good scholarship can do for civil society, I’ll try to remember this." —Journal of Arabic Literature

Book review: Public Opinion in the Middle East

"The anthology speaks directly not only to enterprising students hoping to glean inspiration from one of ther senior deans of survey research in the Middle East but also to any scholar who questions the utility of tracking public opinion over time." —International Journal of Middle East Studies

Book review: Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon

"Lucia Volk’s Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon sheds much needed light on the fraught politics of commemoration in a nation haunted by a history of inter-confessional violence." —International Journal of Islamic Architecture

Book review: Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon

"Volk presents a wonderful narrative of key turning points in the history of modern Lebanon. ... [A] rigorous study and a pleasure to read." —H-Urban

5 IU Press books named Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2011

We are pleased to announce that five of our books have been chosen as Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2011! This selective list includes just under 10 percent of the 7,000 titles that Choice reviewed in 2011. IU Press honorees are:

African American Actresses
Arab Filmmakers of the Middle East
Jane Campion
Tabloid Journalism in South Africa
West African Narratives of Slavery

For a complete lists of titles, visit Choice Reviews Online.

Book review: Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace

"Intended to provide a framework for diplomats to apply and students to learn, the book is an ambitious effort to understand and codify 'the still unfinished business of Arab-Israeli peacemaking.'" —Middle East Journal

Author event: Mark Allen Peterson to speak at University of Kentucky

Connected in Cairo author Mark Allen Peterson will give the first of three addresses in this year’s annual anthropology colloquium at the University of Kentucky.

Peterson's talk is entitled “Egyptian Youth in Urban and Virtual Spaces” and will be held Oct. 21 at 4 p.m. in the Student Center.

The colloquium theme is “Youth and Urban Spaces in the Middle East.”

For more information on the event, read this University of Kentucky news release or click on the flyer below: