Jewish Arabs in the Israeli Asylum: A Literary Reflection (2015)
In the 1950s two of Mustafa Badawi’s Jewish students left Iraq for Israel. Life in Baghdad had become untenable for Sasson Somekh and David Semah, and they made the perilous trip to the young Zionist state. There they learned Hebrew and become integrated into the predominantly Ashkenazi culture. read more Download article: Jewish Arabs in […]
Near Middle East/North Africa Studies: Culture (2015)
Culture in postindependence Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the ensemble of literary and artistic production that reflects the norms and values of daily life. Fiction, drama, filmmaking, and art play a significant role in the public sphere where intellectuals are often viewed as spokespersons for the people to the regime. They have a […]
Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf (University of California Press, 2014)
“Wading into the dangerous undercurrents of academic debates over embattled concepts like ‘tribal’, ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’, Cooke’s book is refreshing in that it neither wallows in nostalgia for a lost past, nor is it fundamentally critical of processes of globalization and modernization. Cooke proposes a more dynamic, organic interpretation of how these tropes are being […]