Sara Farhan, "Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Sara Farhan, "Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959 (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) by Dr. Sara Farhan offers a rigorous social and cultural history of the formation of medical professionals in modern Iraq and their role in shaping public health institutions. Tracing developments from late Ottoman medical reforms to the establishment of the Medical College of Mosul, the book examines the institutionalization of medical education as a critical element of the social transformation of Iraq. It reveals how shifting imperial, colonial and national frameworks sought to cultivate a cadre of physicians who would serve state and society. These experts, however, often found themselves navigating competing ideological imperatives. This extensively researched study highlights a wealth of rarely consulted sources gathered from 14 archives, family collections, medical journals, student newspapers, film and oral interviews. Drawing on these materials, it interrogates the contradictions inherent in state-driven efforts, wherein doctors functioned as agents of reform and subjects of bureaucratic oversight. Through this, Dr. Farhan reveals the nexus between medical pedagogy, professional authority, public health policy and the broader political transformations that continually redefined medicine in Iraq. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/securing-peace-in-angola-and-mozambique-9781350407930/] focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/special-series/new-books-with-miranda-melcher], wherever you get your podcasts.

Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, "Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781399550536] (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) asks how a (world) community can be created to allow structural minorities equitable access to intellectual and material resources * Draws on a range of primary sources * Brings the work of W.E.B. Du Bois into conversation with his Indian contemporaries * Adds a novel historical perspective to recent scholarship on critical social epistemology * Diversifies current ways of doing Indian philosophy Abstract: In this book, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach studies how Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956), W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Mohammed Iqbal (1877-1938), Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) diagnose the epistemic oppression they perceive and experience, their analysis of the coloniality of being as its cause, and their proposals to counter it. Kirloskar-Steinbach explores how these voices seek to co-create a space in which they can experience what it means to be free from the conceptual domination of academic frameworks, relish that freedom with their collaborators and, in the equal participation that that space affords, develop open-ended concepts that help them to resist the coloniality of being. Jessica Zu's personal reflection: This book models for readers and scholars alike on how to practice "hermeneutical democracy." The notion of hermeneutical philosophy resonates strongly with Artruso Escobar's philosophy of "pluri-verse" instead of Eurocentric metaphysics of "uni-verse", Roger Ames's "zeotology" or philosophy of the living in Chinese traditions, and Brook Ziporyn's mystical atheism against the dominant paradigm of "nous as arché".

Kate Dannies, "Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781399563055](Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Kate Dannies examines the gender and family dimensions of mobilisation for the First World War in the Ottoman Empire, situating the war in a long-nineteenth-century social history of Ottoman military reform for the first time. It focuses on the military legal concept of muinsizlik (sole breadwinning) and how this concept shaped Ottoman military policy – namely, how militarisation and mobilisation were supported by the exploitation of women’s care and social reproductive labour, as well as the extraction of material and physical resources from Ottoman families. In exploring how war worked at the level of the body, the individual and the family, this book demonstrates how Ottoman society and war became imbricated through processes of militarisation that led to significant consequences during the First World War and its aftermath. Based on a gendered reading of Ottoman military and bureaucratic archives, it addresses a pivotal moment in the modern history of the Middle East that has long awaited further study from a bottom-up perspective. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/securing-peace-in-angola-and-mozambique-9781350407930/] focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/special-series/new-books-with-miranda-melcher], wherever you get your podcasts.

Marta Dominguez Diaz, "Tunisia's Andalusians: The Cultural Identity of a North African Minority" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Tunisia’s Andalusians: The Cultural Identity of a North African Minority [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781474428019] (Edinburgh UP, 2025) tells the captivating story of those Andalusians, descendants of Muslims expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century, who sought refuge in Tunisia. Rather than simply replicating Iberian traditions, Andalusian culture in Tunisia stands as a vibrant and evolving phenomenon, shaped by complex dynamics of interaction and adaptation over four centuries. The book dismantles the romanticised view of Andalusian culture as a mere transplantation of al-Andalus, analysing distinctive cultural features that distinguish Andalusians as an ethnic group within Tunisia’s diverse social fabric. Drawing on historical records and contemporary ethnographic data, including personal accounts and family archives, the book sheds light on how Andalusians navigate their unique cultural position amidst a Tunisian national narrative often focused on Arabo-Muslim homogeneity. By examining the complexities of cultural preservation and assimilation, the book offers a nuanced perspective on Andalusian identity, revealing its dynamism and resilience in the face of changing social, political, and economic circumstances.

Charles J. Stivale, "Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars, 1970–1987: Summaries and Commentary" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

From the inside flap: “A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing * Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessions available in transcripts and recordings * Summaries are based on research for the Deleuze Seminars project (co-directed by Charles J. Stivale and Daniel W. Smith), where full transcripts and translations, to which readers will have access for simultaneous or subsequent consultation, have been developed by an international team of scholar-translators * Alongside summaries, an attached critical apparatus provides references to corresponding links within Deleuze’s writings, seminars, and other sources to facilitate additional research The texts in this volume - summaries of the 216 seminars taught by Gilles Deleuze - provide unique insight into the latter half of Deleuze’s teaching career. Deleuze understood his seminars as a laboratory for developing his ongoing research, and this volume is a guide to the creative becomings in the development of his philosophical works through teaching. From Anti-Oedipus (1972) to The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1987), Deleuze examined a wide range of philosophical perspectives in pursuit of successive thematic topics. These summaries and commentaries serve as incitement for further research, allowing readers familiar with Deleuze’s work to find new angles of approach and providing greater access to readers coming to his work for the first time." New Books Network: * Stivale, Charles J., and Daniel W. Smith. (2025-10-21). "Gilles Deleuze, On Painting" [https://newbooksnetwork.com/on-painting#entry:419840@1:url] Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour: * Stivale, Charles J., Taylor Adkins, and Cooper Cherry. (2025-08-12). "Deleuze and Guattari – How Do You Make Yourself A Body Without Organs" [https://www.patreon.com/posts/deleuze-and-how-138243795] * Stivale, Charles J., Daniel W. Smith. (2023-06-29). "Deleuze on Painting and Cinema" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kjwJHcZXjs]. The Deleuze Seminars: here [https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/] Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu [nathan.smith@yale.edu]