The Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East. As a way of keeping up with tradition of book launches for members of our community, as well as discussing new and noteworthy books with authors from outside our community. Each episode is 20-30 minutes in length. 

The podcast stream for these can be found here and also as a booktalk playlist on the MEC YouTube here

A list of our MEC Booktalk guest speakers can be found below:

1. David Rundell, Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads (Bloomsbury, 2020)
2. Aaron Tugendhaft, The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and Joshua Craze
3. Ahmed El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020)
4. Andrew March, The Caliphate of Man: The Invention of Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought (Harvard University Press, 2021)
5. Fatemeh Shams, A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2021)
6. David Warren, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (Routledge, 2021)
7. Chihab El Khachab, Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry (American University in Cairo Press, 2021)
8. Carl Rommel, Egypt's Football Revolution: Emotion, Masculinity, and Uneasy Politics (University of Texas Press, 2021)
9. Deborah Starr, Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema (University of California Press, 2020)