A History of Middle Eastern Modernism - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1009753231 ISBN 13: 9781009753234

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

This comprehensive History examines Middle Eastern modernism through analyses of its roots and development across Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and other regional languages. An international team of contributors explains the modernist movement in the Middle East from its beginnings in the nineteenth century until today. Combining linguistic breadth and focused treatments of canonical works of Middle Eastern modernist art and literature, this History highlights remarkable connections in modernist form and content that link the Arab world to the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic as well as Qajar and Pahlavi Iran, Central Asia, and even India, often to the exclusion of Western modernist norms and experiments. Working within the broader framework of global modernisms while attending to the movement's local particularities, this volume establishes Middle Eastern modernism as a vibrant field of inquiry and a cornerstone for modernist studies more generally.

About this title

About the Author

Levi Thompson is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Levi's first book, Reorienting Modernism in Arabic and Persian Poetry (2022), won the inaugural edition of the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Middle Eastern Studies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009753231
• ISBN 13: 9781009753234
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 375
• Editor: Edited By Levi Thompson