Jonathan Miran (Liberal Studies) publishes book and article

Jonathan Miran (Liberal Studies) recently had his book "Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa" published in Bloomington, Ind., by Indiana University Press (2009).

Grounded in innovative scholarship that historicizes the social, cultural and religious connections and exchanges across the Indian Ocean world, the book examines how a particular historical conjuncture of amplified global interactions in the second half of the nineteenth century formed and transformed society, culture and notions of identity in the Red Sea port town of Massawa, in present-day Eritrea. The book reconstructs the social, urban, religious and cultural history of a cosmopolitan community in a period of sweeping change and demonstrates how different forms of capital were converted and reconverted in the process of social integration, the construction of urban power and communal authority, as well as the definition of a new moral order. It reveals complex notions of identity and relationships in Massawa by moving between local, regional and macro-regional scales of analysis and interpretation.

Miran also recently published an article titled "Endowing Property and Edifying Power in a Red Sea Port: Waqf, Arab Entrepreneurs, and Urban Authority in Massawa, 1860s-1880s" in the "International Journal of African Historical Studies," Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009, pp. 151-178.