نشریات | Publications
Reflecting my interests in the arts, popular culture, and sound studies, I maintain an active research agenda in the fields of global history, Central/South Asian & Middle Eastern history, and urban history.
My open-access article, “Soundwaves of Dissent: Resistance Through Persianate Cultural Production in Afghanistan” was published in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Iranian Studies. It highlights the examples of Farīda ʿUsmān Anwarī, a noted radio announcer, producer, and journalist, and Aḥmad Ẓāhir, Afghanistan’s most popular musical icon to date, to showcase the ways in which the Persianate literary canon served as the medium for sounding dissent amid the changing social and political dynamics in twentieth century Afghanistan.
A chapter titled “Radio’s Internationalism: A View from Modern Afghanistan” appears in the volume, South Asia Unbound, edited by Elisabeth Leake and Bérénice Guyot-Réchard. University of Amsterdam Press, 2023. The chapter provides a historical journey through the country’s modern experiences of broadcasting, highlighting transnational collaborations in the 1940s that cemented relationships with international collaborators who helped build the national infrastructure for radio in Afghanistan in the 1960s. It is between these decades that the development of global communication technology offered another avenue of Afghanistan’s internationalism with(in) South Asia.
An essay titled “Sonic Narratives of Resistance and Cultural Memory in Afghanistan” (2023) appears in The New Paradigm, the digital magazine of the Institute for New Global Politics. The essay discusses how musical artists from the Persian speaking northern regions of Afghanistan are emerging as some of the fiercest resisters against the Taliban.
Source: Sony radio advertisements in Zhvandūn Magazine published by the Ministry of Information and Culture, No. 40-41, December 23, 1972.
My previous work on global and urban histories of diversity, race, and religion include the following co-edited publications:
Urban Diversity: Space, Culture, and Inclusive Pluralism in Cities Worldwide
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010
Book Reviews
Book Review of Andrew Simon’s “Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt” (Stanford University Press, 2022) in Critical Studies in Media Communication, forthcoming 2023.
Book Review of Elisabeth Leake’s “Afghan Crucible: The Soviet Invasion and the Making of Modern Afghanistan” (Oxford University Press, 2022) Roundtable in H-Diplo, forthcoming 2023.
Book Review of Omar Sadr’s “Negotiating Cultural Diversity in Afghanistan” (Routledge, 2021) in The Journal of Conflict Transformation and Security, Special Issue on “Security on Afghan Crisis – Decolonial Perspectives,” Vol. 10, No. 1, 2023.
Book Review of Gavin Steingo and Jim Sykes, eds. “Remapping Sound Studies” (Duke University Press, 2019) in the special issue “Radio Cultures of the Global South” in The Global South Journal, forthcoming 2022.
Book Review of Wazhmah Osman’s “Television and the Afghan Culture Wars: Brought to you by Foreigners, Warlords, and Activists” (University of Illinois Press, 2020) in Iranian Studies, Taylor and Francis, January 2022.
Book Review of Stuart Elden’s “Terror and Territory; the Spatial Extent of Sovereignty” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Vol No. 22, No. 2 (Spring 2011).
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
“Soundwaves of Dissent: Resistance Through Persianate Cultural Production in Afghanistan” in Iranian Studies, Special Issue on “Canon Formation and Persian Cultural Production in the Twentieth Century,” 55, 2022, 697-718.
“Sonic Narratives of Resistance and Cultural Memory in Afghanistan” The New Paradigm, Digital Journal of the Institute for New Global Politics, September 4, 2023.
“Ottoman Topologies: Spatial Experience in an Early Modern Empire and Beyond” Conference Precis in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2015.
“Religious Fundamentalism, the Modern City, and the Arab Spring” in the Journal of International Affairs, Columbia University, V.65, No. 2 (Spring 2012).
“Poverty and the Periphery: Cities in Latin America and the Former Soviet Union” in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Issue 8.2 Summer/Fall 2007. MIT Press Journals, 2007.
Policy Briefs
“Cities and Fundamentalisms” in Urban Update September 2007 No. 12 Comparative Urban Studies Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Washington, DC: 2007.
Conference Volume: Global Urban Poverty: Setting the Research Agenda. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars & USAID: Washington, DC, 2007.