Ajam Media Collective Podcast

In this episode, Belle interviews James Gustafson, Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University, about his new book, The Lion and the Sun: Environmental History and the Formation of Modern Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2025).  In The Lion and the Sun (and our podcast episode), Gustafson presents an overview of Iran’s environmental history from the Safavid Empire (1501-1722) to the rise of Reza...

In this episode, Belle interviews Dr. Annika Schmeding, Senior Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), about her first book, Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan (Stanford University Press, 2023).  In Sufi Civilities (and in our podcast episode), Schmeding examines how contempor...

In this episode, Belle interviews Arang Keshavarzian, Associate Professor in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, about his recent book, Making Space for the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2024).  In Making Space for the Gulf (and in our podcast episode), Keshavarzian offers a relational understanding of the Persian Gulf that fo...

In this episode, Belle interviews Niloofar Haeri, Anthropology Professor at Johns Hopkins University, about her recent book, Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2021).  In Say What Your Longing Heart Desires (and in our podcast episode), Haeri illustrates how poetry shaped and transformed the religious lives and practices of a group of...

In this episode, Belle interviews Dr. Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University, about her recent book, The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran (Duke University Press, 2024). They discuss the history of enslavement in Iran, and the erasures surrounding those histories of enslavement following abolition in Iran in 1929, particularly of enslaved Black people, i...

In this episode, Belle interviews Dr. Pouya Alimagham, a Lecturer at MIT, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, about his recent book, Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings (Cambridge University Press, 2020). This June marks 15 years since millions of Iranians took to the street in protest after Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was announced as the win...

In this episode, Belle interviews Golnar Nikpour, Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College, about her recent book, The Incarcerated Modern: Prisons and Public Life in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2024).  In The Incarcerated Modern (and our podcast episode), Nikpour addresses the history of imprisonment and incarceration in Iran, and how it is intertwined with threads of carceral inf...

In this episode, Belle interviews Seema Golestaneh, Associate Professor in Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, about her recent book, Unknowing and the Everyday: Sufism and Knowledge in Iran (Duke University Press, 2023). 

In this episode, Belle interviews Samuel Hodgkin, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University, about his recent book, Persianate Verse and the Poetics of Eastern Internationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

In this episode, Dr. Belle Cheves interviews Pamela Karimi, Professor of Art Education, Art History & Media Studies at UMass Dartmouth, about her book, Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (Stanford University Press, 2022).

In this episode, Lindsey, Rustin, and Ali interview Dr. Teren Sevea, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School about his recent book, Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Dr. Sevea reveals the significance of Islamic miracle workers, called pawangs or bomohs, in the Malay world from the 19th century to t...

In this episode, Ali interviews Dr. Mana Kia, an Associate Professor in Columbia University’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies about her book, [Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism](http://https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29033) (Stanford University Press, 2020). If contemporary notions of being Persian are rooted in recent history, wh...

In this episode, Ali interviews Dr. Manan Ahmed Asif, an Associate Professor in Columbia University’s History department, about his book, [The Loss of Hindustan, the Invention of India](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987906) (Harvard University Press, 2020). Before nationalism—before even the European colonization of South Asia—the term Hindustan signified a regional identity...

In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin interview Armenian-American composer and performer Joseph Bohigian about his latest musical composition, “The Water Has Found Its Crack” (2020), which explores concepts of displacement, dispersion, and cultural preservation in Armenian music. The composition’s title refers to an anecdote shared by Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink about a French-Armenian wom...

In this episode, Lindsey and Ali interview Dr. Jyoti Gulati Balachandran, Assistant Professor of History at Penn State, about her book [Narrative Pasts: The Making of a Muslim Community in Gujarat, c. 1400-1650](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/narrative-pasts-9780190123994?cc=us&lang=en) (Oxford University Press, July 2020) The Gujarat region of western India has a long role as a marit...

In this episode, Rustin and Ali interview Dr. Kelly Anne Hammond, Assistant Professor of East Asian History in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas, about her book, China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire: Centering Islam in World War II (University of North Carolina Press, November 2020). During World War II, Sino-Muslims (Hui Muslims) were an important focal point for Imperial Japa...

In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin welcome back Dr. Stefan Williamson Fa to talk about the extraordinary life and music of Sufi-Flamenco star, Aziz Balouch. Stefan has re-issued Balouch's EP, *Sufi Hispano-Pakastani*, originally produced in 1962, with [Death is Not the End Records ](https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/sufi-hispano-pakistani) in 2020. Dr. Williamson Fa traces Aziz's biography, fr...

In this episode, Ali and Lindsey are joined by Dr. Keelan Overton, an independent scholar in Santa Barbara, and Dr. Subah Dayal, Assistant Professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, to talk about [Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400-1700 (Indiana University Press, 2020)](https://iupress.org/9780253048912/iran-and-the-deccan/). They hi...

In this episode, Rustin interviews Dr. Huma Gupta, the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at Brandeis University, about her 2017 article, “['Nostalgic Desire': The Restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan"](https://www.academia.edu/41646389/_Nostalgic_Desire_The_Restoration_of_Dar_ul_Aman_Palace_in_Kabul_Afghanistan) (Thresholds Journal, MIT Press). Gupta shows how the Darul Aman Palac...

In this episode, Rustin interviews Dr. Aria Fani, Professor of Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Washington, about his upcoming book project, **Making Persian Literature: Iran and Afghanistan in the Age of Romantic Nationalism**. Dr. Fani’s research explores how literature was utilized in the nation-building process in both Iran and Afghanistan during the turn of the twentieth centu...

In this episode, Lindsey is joined by Dr. Johan Mathew, Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University, to talk about the circulation of goods and people in the 19th century Indian Ocean. He is the author of **[Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea](https://history.rutgers.edu/people/faculty/publications/publication-details/1093-margins-of-the-market-traffi...

In this episode, Kamyar is joined by Murat Keyder, a New York City-based musician and composer, to talk about his recent album, *[Rüya](https://open.spotify.com/album/1UgDWDZVXJRKhyhH7FjBVm?highlight=spotify:track:5OqTvH0D8t0vZBnMDR7rCd)* (2019). He is also the author of *[Learning Balkan and Middle Eastern Music on Guitar](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N6M5YYE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_t...

In this episode, Rustin and Ali are joined by Professor Najam Haider, Professor of Religion at Barnard College, to talk about his recent book, The Rebel and the Imām in Early Islam: Explorations in Muslim Historiography. The lack of contemporary sources for the first century of the Islamic period poses many challenges for historians past and present. Engaging with many of the impasses that still a...

In this episode, Lindsey is joined by Dr. Michael Christopher Low, Assistant Professor of History at Iowa State University, to talk about his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (Columbia University Press, 2020). Dr. Low discusses the challenges the Ottomans faced in administering the province of Hijaz and the hajj in the rapidly transforming 19th century. He explain...

In this episode, Rustin is joined by Dr. Neda Maghbouleh and Dr. Amy Malek to interview Dr. Narges Bajoghli, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, about her new book, [“Iran Re-Framed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.”](http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29666) Dr. Bajoghli talks about how she came to spend...