Pomeps Conversations

Stacey Philbrick Yadav of Hobart and William Smith Colleges joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Yemen in the Shadow of Transition: Pursuing Justice Amid War. The book shows how the transitional process was ultimately overtaken by war, and explains why features of the transitional framework nevertheless remain a central reference point for civil actors engaged in peacebuilding today. (Starts at 1:09). Gregory Gause of Texas A&M University, Waleed Hazbun of the University of Alabama, and Sarah Bush of Yale University join Marc Lynch at this years POMEPS Annual Conference to discuss American primacy, multipolarity and the region's response to changes in the international system. (Starts at 31:34).

Dying Abroad and The Racial Muslim (S. 12, Ep. 27) by Marc Lynch

In this week's episode, Marc Lynch speaks with Sebnem Gumuscu of Middlebury College about her book, Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia. The author draws upon extensive fieldwork in three countries to explain why some Islamist governments adhered to democratic principles and others took an authoritarian turn following electoral success. (Starts at 0:53). Today's episode also includes a roundtable discussion of the upcoming Turkish elections, with Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University, Şebnem Yardımcı Geyikçi of University of Bonn, and Harun Ercan of Binghamton University.  (Starts at 31:22).

Samuel Helfont of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Iraq Against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post-Cold War Order. In the book, Helfont offers a new narrative of Iraqi foreign policy after the 1991 Gulf War to argue that Saddam Hussein executed a political warfare campaign that facilitated this disturbance to global norms. The book explores how the move away from post-Cold War unipolarity and the rise of revisionist states like Russia and China pose a rapidly escalating and confounding threat for the liberal international order. (Starts at 0:52). Khalid Mustafa Medani of McGill University discusses the current situation in Sudan and prospects for moving forward. Medani is the author of Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and North Africa. (Starts at 33:47). Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.

Rita Stephan of North Carolina State University and Maro Youssef of the University of Southern California join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, COVID and Gender in the Middle East. Stephen, editor of the book, gathers an impressive group of local scholars, activists, and policy experts, to provide empirical evidence of COVID’s gendered effects. The book examines a range of national and localized responses to gender-specific issues around COVID’s health impact and the economic fallout and resulting social vulnerabilities, including the magnified marginalization of Syrian refugees; the inequitable treatment of migrant workers in Bahrain; and the inadequate implementation of gender-based violence legislation in Morocco. Mai Hassan of Massachusetts Institute of Technology also joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss the recent developments in Sudan's civil war crisis. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.

David Roberts of King’s College London  joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies: Continuity and Change. Roberts offers a definitive guide to continuity and change in the Gulf region. He explores the forces challenging and bolstering the status quo across the political, social, economic, military, and environmental dimensions of security. Jeroen Gunning of King's College London, also joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new paper, Who you gonna call? Theorising everyday security practices in urban spaces with multiple security actors – The case of Beirut's Southern Suburbs . This paper explores the ways in which residents and security actors – state and nonstate – negotiate everyday (in)security in contested urban spaces with multiple security actors . Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.

Sarah Bush of Yale University and Lauren Prather of the University of California, San Diego join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections. Bush and Prather explain how and why outside interventions influence local trust in elections, a critical factor for democracy and stability. Marsin Alshamary of the Harvard University Kennedy School and Hamzeh Hadad of the European Council of Foreign Relations also join Marc Lynch to discuss their article, The Collective Neglect of Southern Iraq: Missed Opportunities for Development and Good Governance. They conceptualize southern Iraq as an imagined region, whose identity has been shaped by the collective neglect it has suffered from both internal and external actors.

Dawn Murphy of the US National War College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her book, China's Rise in the Global South: The Middle East, Africa, and Beijing's Alternative World Order.The book examines China's behavior as a rising power in two key Global South regions, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Murphy compares and analyzes thirty years of China's interactions with these regions across a range of functional areas: political, economic, foreign aid, and military. Houda Mzioudet of the University of Toronto also spoke on anti-blackness and racial identity in Tunisia. In the Q&A with Houda Mzioudet she spoke on the state of the anti-immigrant and anti-black sentiment in Tunisia in light of President Kais Saied’s fear-mongering statements about migrants last month.

Davis Wight of the University of North Carolina joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his book, Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967-1988. The book is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East–US relations and the geopolitics of globalization. Although petrodollar ties often augmented the power of the United States and its Middle East allies, Wight argues they also fostered economic disruptions and state-sponsored violence that drove many Americans, Arabs, and Iranians to resist Middle East–US interdependence, most dramatically during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. (Starts at 00:50). Simon Mabon of XX discusses his new book, The Struggle for Supremacy in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Starts at 31:06). In this book, Mabon presents a more nuanced assessment of the rivalry [between Saudi Arabia and Iran], outlining its history and demonstrating its impact across the Middle

Mohammad Ali Kadivar of Boston College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his book, Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy. The book challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization. (Starts at 0:54). Killian Clarke of Georgetown University discusses his new article, "Ambivalent allies: How inconsistent foreign support dooms new democracies." (Starts at 32:53). Shreya Parikh discusses the recent wave of anti-African/anti-immigrant/anti-black sentiments unleashed by President Khais Said in Tunisia. You can read her recent article, "Making Tunisia non-African again – Saied’s anti-Black campaign" here. (Starts at 50:02). Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram.

Andrew Simon joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt. The book investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households. Also on this week's podcast are Hasret Dikici Bilgin of Istanbul Bilgi University, Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University, Rana Khoury of the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champagne, and Reva Dhingra of Harvard University and Brookings Institution, to discuss Turkey/Syria Earthquake relief.

On this week's episode, Marc Lynch is joined by the editors and authors of the new book, The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution. The book includes  include stories about specific events and struggles, views of the uprising from various regions of the country, and reflections on topics such as the labor struggle, disability, the student movement, foreign interventions, the struggle for preserving environmental spaces, the role of refugees and non-Lebanese within the movement, and women and queer participation. The podcast features: Rima Majed, Jeffery G Karam, Sana Tannoury, Grace Khawam, Sara Mourad, Moné Makkawi, Roland Riachi, and Lama Karamé. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram. You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud:

David Siddhartha Patel of Brandeis University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Order out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq. Combining rational choice approaches, ethnographic understanding, and GIS analysis, this book reveals the interconnectedness of the enduring problem of how societies create social order in a stateless environment, the origins and limits of political authority and leadership, and the social and political salience of collective identity. (Starts at 0:42) Jessica Barnes of the University of South Carolina discusses her book, Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt, which explores the process of sourcing domestic and foreign wheat for the production of bread and its consumption across urban and rural settings. (Starts at 38:15). Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram. You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon M

The War in Court and the Egyptian Economy (S. 12, Ep. 14) by Marc Lynch

Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Beyond the Lines: Social Networks and Palestinian Militant Organizations in Wartime Lebanon. The book shows that most militants approach asymmetrical warfare as a series of challenges centered around information and logistics, characterized by problems such as supplying constantly mobile forces, identifying collaborators, disrupting rival belligerents' operations, and providing essential services like healthcare. (Starts at 0:48). Wendy Pearlman of Northwestern University discusses her article, "Emotional Sensibility: Exploring the Methodological and Ethical Implications of Research Participants’ Emotions," published by Cambridge University Press. (Starts at 35:58). Music for this season’s podcast was created by Myyuh. You can find more of her work on SoundCloud and Instagram. You can listen to this week’s podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or SoundCloud.

Ch12 Triumph over Adversity: Reflections on the Practice of Middle East Political Science by Marc Lynch

Tobias Zumbragel of University of Hamburg joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Political Power and Environmental Sustainability in Gulf Monarchies. The book analyzes the political dynamics behind the sustainable transformation in the oil and gas-rich Gulf and explains the political factors behind the green transformation. (Starts at 1:02). Nermin Allam of Rutgers University discusses her research on women's participation in the Egyptian uprising and the afterlives of that protest. Check out her articles: "The afterlife goes on: The biographical consequences of women's engagement in the 2011 Egyptian uprising," & "Women’s Unveiling in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising: Political Opportunities and Modesty Politics." You can also listen to one of our previous podcast posts about her book, "Women and the Egyptian Revolution: Engagement and Activism During the 2011 Arab Uprisings." (Starts at 32:09). Steffen Hertog of the London School of Economics discusses his chapter in The Political Scienc

Munira Khayyat of The American University in Cairo joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon. The book analyzes life along the southern border of Lebanon, where resistant ecologies thrive amid a terrain of perennial war. (Starts at 1:45). Neil Ketchley of the University of Oxford discusses his new article, Burnings, Beatings, and Bombings: Disaggregating Anti-Christian Violence in Egypt, 2013-2018 (co-authored with Christopher Barrie and Killian Clark). (Starts at 45:27). Also, POMEPS is thrilled to release our latest Professional Development Seminar - Hidden Curriculum: How to Publish Your First Book. In the fourth POMEPS Professional Development Seminar, Marc Lynch and Jillian Schwedler discuss how to submit a book as a first time author. This webinar gives advice to junior scholars who want to turn their dissertation into a book in an effort to demystify the process. They are joined by Caelyn Cobb of C

Dalia Ghanem of the European Union Institute for Security Studies joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria. The book analyzes the secrets behind the Algerian regime’s survival and the pillars of its longevity. (Starts at 0:42). Sammy Zeyad Badran of The American University of Sharjah, discusses his new book, Killing Contention: Demobilization in Morocco during the Arab Spring. The book deepens our understanding of modern political movements and the complicated factors that lead to their demise. (Starts at 35:41).

Aaron Rock-Singer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East. The book analyzes how Salafism is a creation of the twentieth century and how its signature practices emerged primarily out of Salafis’ competition with other social movements. (Starts at 0:55). Rana Khoury of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Lama Mourad of Carleton University, and Rawan Arar of the University of Washington discuss their chapter in The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings, which focuses on how the region has governed and been affected by migration after the Arab Uprisings in 2011 (co-authored with Laurie Brand, Noora Lori, and Wendy Pearlman). (Starts at 28:29). Lindsay Benstead of Portland State University and Kristin Kao of the University of Gothenburg discuss female electability in the Arab world and the benefits of intersectionality