New Books Network

About SherAli Tareen

SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia.

NBN Episodes hosted by SherAli:

Islamic Studies April 9, 2021

Transformations of Tradition

Islamic Law in Colonial Modernity

Junaid Quadri

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In his much anticipated and equally brilliant book Transformations of Tradition: Islamic Law in Colonial Modernity (Oxford UP, 2021), Junaid Quadri explores the productive tensions, fissures, and creative interpretive projects …
Islamic Studies March 12, 2021

Print and the Urdu Public

Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India

Megan Eaton Robb

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
What is the relationship between print culture, religious identity, and formations of social consciousness in the modern period? In her brilliant new book, Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers …
Islamic Studies February 12, 2021

The Feeling of History

Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia

Charles Hirschkind

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Charles Hirschkind’s lyrical and majestic new book The Feeling of History: Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia (University of Chicago Press, 2020) represents a profound work of retrieval that launches and executes a …
Islamic Studies January 15, 2021

The Bruce B. Lawrence Reader

Islam Beyond Borders

Bruce B. Lawrence and Ali Altaf Mian

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
For more than four decades, Bruce Lawrence’s multivalent and fulsomely prolific scholarship has influenced and imprinted the Western study of Islam and Religious Studies more broadly in singularly profound ways …
Islamic Studies December 18, 2020

The Occupied Clinic

Militarism and Care in Kashmir

Saiba Varma

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her majestic and magisterial new book, The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir (Duke UP, 2020), Saiba Varma disrupts and upsets the care/violence binary by examining and vividly describing …
Islamic Studies November 20, 2020

Minding their Place

Space and Religious Hierarchy in Ibn al-Qayyim’s Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma

Antonia Bosanquet

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
How was the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim communities theologically and spatially imagined in the premodern world? How did religious hierarchies map onto notions of place and spatial distinction and …
Islamic Studies October 23, 2020

Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India

From Balance to Fervor

Margrit Pernau

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her stunning and conceptually adventurous new book Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India: From Balance to Fervor (Oxford University Press, 2020), Margrit Pernau examines the varied and hugely consequential …
South Asian Studies September 25, 2020

Far from the Caliph’s Gaze

Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Qadian

Nicholas H. A. Evans

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
A sustained and compelling critique of the doubt/belief binary in the anthropology of religion and Islam, Nicholas H. A. Evans’ Far from the Caliph’s Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the …
South Asian Studies August 28, 2020

Translating Wisdom

Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia

Shankar Nair

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Shankar Nair’s new book Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2020) is an intellectually daring and dazzlingly imaginative study of scholarly interactions …
Literary Studies July 3, 2020

Rediscovering the Islamic Classics

How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition

Ahmed El-Shamsy

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Ahmed El-Shamsy’s Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020) is an astonishing scholarly feat that presents a detailed, sophisticated, and …
Literary Studies June 12, 2020

Arabic Poetics

Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature

Lara Harb

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Lara Harb’s Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a delightful and formidable study on the details and development of poetics and aesthetics in …
South Asian Studies May 8, 2020

Dying to Serve

Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army

Maria Rashid

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her spellbindingly brilliant new book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University Press, 2020), Maria Rashid conducts an intimate and …
British Studies April 3, 2020

Faithful Fighters

Identity and Power in the British Indian Army

Kate Imy

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her fascinating and remarkable new book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army (Stanford University Press, 2019), Kate Imy explores the negotiation of religious identity, military …
African American Studies March 20, 2020

The Aliites

Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali

Spencer Dew

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In his dazzling new book The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Spencer Dew treats his readers to a riveting …
Middle Eastern Studies March 6, 2020

Recalling the Caliphate

Decolonization and World Order

Salman Sayyid

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In his paradigm shifting book, Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order (Hurst, 2014), which was recently translated into Arabic as Isti‘adat al-Khilafa Tafkik al-Isti‘mar wa al-Nizam al-‘Alami, Salman Sayyid …
Middle Eastern Studies February 21, 2020

Law and Politics Under the Abbasids

An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni

Sohaira Siddiqui

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her intimidatingly brilliant new book Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Sohaira Siddiqui conducts a masterful analysis of how conditions …
Middle Eastern Studies February 7, 2020

Slavery and Islam

Jonathan A. C. Brown

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In his majestic and encyclopedic new book Slavery and Islam (Oneworld Academic, 2019), Jonathan A. C. Brown presents a sweeping analysis of Muslim intellectual, political, and social entanglements with slavery …
Middle Eastern Studies January 13, 2020

Iran Reframed

Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic

Narges Bajoghli

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Narges Bajoghli’s gripping new book Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford UP, 2019) presents a riveting ethnography of pro-regime media networks in Iran, and sketches an …
Middle Eastern Studies December 16, 2019

Women and Gender in Iraq

Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation

Zahra Ali

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her powerful new book Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Zahra Ali presents a detailed and fascinating account of Muslim feminist discourses …
South Asian Studies November 26, 2019

Delusional States

Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier

Nosheen Ali

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her pioneering and politically urgent new book Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier (Cambridge UP, 2019), Nosheen Ali presents a lyrical and at many times …
South Asian Studies October 16, 2019

Shariʿa and the State in Pakistan

Blasphemy Politics

Farhat Haq

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Few doctrinal and political issues are more controversial in Pakistan today than that of blasphemy. In her excellent and engaging new book Shariʿa and the State in Pakistan: Blasphemy Politics …
South Asian Studies October 8, 2019

Resisting Disappearance

Military Occupation and Women’s Activism

Ather Zia

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Ather Zia’s Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism (University of Washington Press, 2019) is a brilliant, bold, and urgent ethnography centered on Kashmiri women of the APDP (Association of …
American Studies August 9, 2019

Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics

Nazia Kazi

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Nazia Kazi’s Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) is a brilliant and powerful meditation on the intersection and interaction of Islamophobia, racism, and U.S. imperial state power …
Middle Eastern Studies June 11, 2019

Giving to God

Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times

Amira Mittermaier

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her stunning new book, Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times (University of California Press, 2019), Amira Mittermaier, Associate Professor of Religion and Anthropology at the University of …