Culture

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Muslim twittersphere was on fire this week with the news that Kanye West’s Adidas lines would offer two new sneakers, Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Israfil and Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Asriel. Israfil and Azrael are angels in the Islamic tradition. According to Dubai-based Alarabya, many Muslims found the names […]

African-Americans

Black Lives Mattering: HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ demonstrates that Racism is the True Horror

The Conversation

By Guy Stephen Webster | – Lovecraft Country, a new series from HBO adapted from the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, takes a critical look at the legacy of the controversial but classic horror writer, HP Lovecraft. By doing so it also sheds a light on the mode of literature he famously pioneered: weird fiction. […]

Culture

Leon Fleisher – the Pianist Who Reinvented Himself and Inspired the World

Shamai Leibowitz

It was a sad day for the music world when we heard that concert pianist, conductor, and teacher par excellence Leon Fleisher died on August 2 at the age of 92. But it’s also an opportunity to celebrate the legacy of a great musician who was an inspiration to countless music lovers and anyone struggling […]

Featured

In our Era of Plague and Depression, Ecstasy: Juan Cole on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam for NIAC (Video):

Juan Cole

Juan Cole is interviewed. “We are living in an era of plague, economic depression, and civil unrest. We worry about our loved ones every day as tensions between the US and Iran increase, and coronavirus magnifies the impacts of US sanctions. In this context, what are the everlasting implications of multiple crises happening at the […]

art and photography

A Drunken Nightingale: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Honolulu’s Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art

Juan Cole

Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design | Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art |- Here is a short video made while I was Scholar-in Residence at Shangri La in Honolulu in December of 2016. The grounds are the former mansion and guest house of the billionaire art collector Doris Duke, who filled […]

Omar Khayyam

Don’t Hesitate to Raise a wine Glass High: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Juan Cole

For the earliest collection of verse attributed to Omar Khayyam see my just-published The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian (NB: the poem above isn’t in this collection– there are lots of such anthologies, and Whinfield favored the late Indian manuscripts.) Here is what novelist Michael Chabon said about my new […]

African-Americans

Riot or resistance? How media frames unrest in Minneapolis will shape public’s view of protest

The Conversation

Danielle K. Kilgo | – A teenager held her phone steady enough to capture the final moments of George Perry Floyd’s life as he apparently suffocated under the weight of a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck. The video went viral. What happened next has played out time and again in American cities after […]

Books

Fundamentalist Pandemics: What Evangelicals and Khomeinists Could Learn From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam

Juan Cole

This essay by Juan Cole was originally published in Tomdispatch.com. See the original for a perceptive introductory essay by Tom Engelhardt. This spring, the novel coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of the relationship between the blindest kind of religious faith and rational skepticism — this time in two countries that think of themselves as […]

Donald Trump

Iran et États-Unis: l’ironie d’une curieuse affinité

Juan Cole

Introduction par Tom Engelhardt 19 mai 2020. Traaduit de l’américain par Jean Granoux Nous sommes dans un moment religieux étrangement viral. Récemment encore, une Maison Blanche dans laquelle peu de choses, y compris la mort d’Américains, comptent plus que le soutien des évangélicaux, a rejeté les directives initiales préparées par les Centers for Disease Control […]