New scholarship Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Centro Primo Levi New York

Arabic, Persian, and Turkic Poetics

Hany Rashwan, Liverpool University Press, 2024 This volume challenges the Eurocentric lens through which Arabic, Persian, and Turkic literatures are often read, and advocates for centering the literary theories – often termed balāgha – of these customs when engaging with…

CPL

February 24, 2026

Empire · New scholarship

The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East

Phillip Lieberman, Cambridge University Press, 2022 Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history—that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a…

CPL

February 24, 2026

Culture · New scholarship

The Ottomans: A Cultural Legacy

Diana Darke, Middle East Institute, 2025 A richly illustrated guide to the Ottoman Empire, 100 years since its dissolution, unravelling its complex cultural legacy and profound impact on Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. At its height, the Ottoman…

CPL

February 15, 2026

New scholarship

Shahs and Grand Dukes: Medici–Safavid Diplomatic Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Davide Trentacoste, Routlege, 2026 The book uncovers a forgotten century-long conversation between Christian Tuscany and Shiʿi Persia —one that reshaped power, politics, and diplomacy in the early modern world. Moving beyond the familiar story of Europe versus the Ottoman Empire,…

CPL

February 15, 2026

The Ottoman Catalogue is a curated section of our Bookstore featuring English-language classics and new scholarship on Ottoman history and culture. It explores the impact of nationalism on the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of its decline and dissolution for Europe, and the histories of peoples, lands, religions, and their books before the concept of “the Middle East” emerged as a political and geographical term.

Following two decades of research, programming, and publishing on the history of nationalism, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, Centro Primo Levi moved its attention to the period before 1922, exploring the stories, ideas, exchanges, and transformations that occurred over six centuries of Ottoman rule.

The era that ushered in the rise of the workers movement, totalitarianiasm, the Spanish Civil War, the fall of three empires, the shaping of modern nation-states, and the establishment of an economy based on industrial and scientific growth, banking, and warfare, also brought to an end cultures, concepts of time, language, and rituals that today’s observers often struggle to appreciate.

Much of this history has attracted modest attention from American and English-language scholarship. However, over the past few years, there has been an increase in original and translated research and publications, showcasing this period from various angles and perspectives. As the “Middle East” storms into our societies, challenging the vocabulary of public life, as well as its ethical and epistemological paradigms, we feel that attempting to move our gaze back into this past may help us refine our sensibility and interpretational tools.