Middle East Centre Booktalk

Episode 2, with Dr Faisal Devji, (St Antony’s College, Oxford), talks with Joshua Craze (University of Chicago) and writer Aaron Tugendhaft about Aaron's new book The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet, University of Chicago Press 2020. Aaron Tugendhaft is an author and educator based in Berlin. He studied art history, political philosophy, and the history of religion at the University of Chicago, New York University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Sorbonne, and has taught humanities to diverse audiences on four continents. In 2013, he was awarded the Jonas C. Greenfield Prize by the American Oriental Society.

Joshua Craze is a fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a writer-in-residence at the Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva, where he is finishing a book on displacement and grief. He has taught political philosophy and anthropology at Sciences-Po, Paris, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. He has published essays and fiction in the Guardian, N+1, Cabinet, and Foreign Policy, amongst other venues, and was the 2014 UNESCO Artist Laureate in Creative Writing. His work is available at https://www.joshuacraze.com/

Abstract from the book

In 2015, the Islamic State released a video of men smashing sculptures in Iraq's Mosul Museum as part of a mission to cleanse the world of idolatry. This book unpacks three key facets of that event: the status and power of images, the political importance of museums, and the efficacy of videos in furthering an ideological agenda through the internet. Beginning with the Islamic State's claim that the smashed objects were idols of the "age of ignorance," Aaron Tugendhaft questions whether there can be any political life without idolatry. He then explores the various roles Mesopotamian sculpture has played in European imperial competition, the development of artistic modernism, and the formation of Iraqi national identity, showing how this history reverberates in the choice of the Mosul Museum as performance stage. Finally, he compares the Islamic State's production of images to the ways in which images circulated in ancient Assyria and asks how digitization has transformed politics in the age of social media. An elegant and accessibly written introduction to the complexities of such events, The Idols of ISIS is ideal for students and readers seeking a richer cultural perspective than the media usually provides.

Episode chaired by

Dr Faisal Devji, St Antony’s College. Faisal has held faculty positions at the New School in New York, Yale University and the University of Chicago, from where he also received his PhD in Intellectual History. Devji was Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, and Head of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, from where he directed post-graduate courses in the Near East and Central Asia.

First episode of Booktalk, where host Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford) talks with David Rundell on his book Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads, Bloomsbury Publication (2020. The book is available for purchase with the 30% discount code: VOM30 from https://www.Bloomsbury.com/uk/vision-or-mirage-9781838605933 (NB discount code expires end of February 2021)

David Rundell. David came to Oxford in 1976 to read for the M.Phil. in modern Middle Eastern studies. He was a student of Albert Hourani’s and a direct contemporary of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. After completing the MPhil in 1978, David entered the U.S. Foreign Service. In 1981 he was posted as a political officer to the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, marking the beginning of a 30-year career in diplomacy – 16 of those years spent in Saudi Arabia alone. As America’s most experienced Saudi hand, friends and colleagues have long anticipated his book on Saudi Arabia. Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury’s I.B. Tauris.

Abstract from the book itself

Something extraordinary is happening in Saudi Arabia. A traditional, tribal society once known for its lack of tolerance is rapidly implementing significant economic and social reforms. An army of foreign consultants is rewriting the social contract, King Salman has cracked down hard on corruption, and his dynamic though inexperienced son, the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is promoting a more tolerant Islam. But is all this a new vision or Saudi Arabia or merely a mirage likely to dissolve into Iranian-style revolution? David Rundell- one of America's foremost experts on Saudi Arabia - explains how the country has been stable for so long, why it is less so today, and what is most likely to happen in the future. The book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat. Vision or Mirage demystifies one of the most powerful, but least understood, states in the Middle East and is essential reading for anyone interested in the power dynamics and politics of the Arab World.