New Books Network

About Nancy Ko

Nancy Ko is a PhD student in History at Columbia University, where she works at the intersection of Jewish and Middle East Studies.

Nancy's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Nancy:

Middle Eastern Studies March 23, 2021

Egypt's Occupation

Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism

Aaron G. Jakes

Hosted by Nancy Ko
The story is a familiar one. In 1882, the British invaded Egypt to secure payment on the country’s crippling foreign debts and quash the movement for fiscal sovereignty and constitutional …
Middle Eastern Studies January 5, 2021

The Lost Archive

Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue

Marina Rustow

Hosted by Nancy Ko
What does it mean that our single greatest source of medieval Islamic government documents comes from the attic of a Jewish synagogue in Cairo? This is the seeming paradox that …
Middle Eastern Studies November 10, 2020

Oilcraft

The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy

Robert Vitalis

Hosted by Nancy Ko
We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this strategic resource; that the "special" relationship …
African Studies May 25, 2020

A Slave between Empires

A Transimperial History of North Africa

M’hamed Oualdi

Hosted by Nancy Ko
In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrated their studies of North Africa on colonial violence …
Literary Studies February 17, 2020

Alien Capital

Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism

Iyko Day

Hosted by Nancy Ko
In our efforts to comprehend the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Israel, the notion that "invasion is a structure …