Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval

James L. Gelvin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to Know (2018) and The Modern Middle East: A History, now in its fifth edition (2020), among other books.

"The essays in The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval, edited by distinguished historian James Gelvin, are an indispensable guide to making sense of the Middle East's current disorder and future direction. A must-read for academics, policy makers, and informed general audiences."—Frederic Wehrey, Senior Fellow, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "A first-rate collection of analyses from leading scholars across a range of disciplines, The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Middle East has and has not changed since the uprisings of 2011."—Jillian Schwedler, Hunter College, CUNY "In the past two decades, the Middle East has faced an external invasion, civil wars and populist uprisings. Thus, it is fitting that a collection of Middle East scholars have come together to assess the future of this turbulent region."—Ray Takeyh, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy "The Contemporary Middle East is a much-needed interdisciplinary study about the state of the Middle East in the early decades of the twenty-first century."—Arab Studies Quarterly

• 1. Is There a New Middle East? What Has Changed, and What Hasn't?—Joel Beinin2. What Future for the Private Sector in the New Middle East?—Ishac Diwan3. Education and Human Security: Centering the Politics of Human Dignity—Laurie A. Brand4. Myths of Middle-Class Political Behavior in the Islamic Republic—Kevan Harris5. Poets of the Revolutions: Authoritarians, Uprisings, and Rappers in North Africa, 1990s–Present—Aomar Boum6. Islamism at a Crossroads? The Diffusion of Political Islam in the Arab World—Peter Mandaville7. Islamists before and after 2011: Assuming, Overlooking, or Overthrowing the Administrative State?—Nathan J. Brown8. Homeland (Dis-)Engagement Processes among the New Syrian Diaspora—Lindsay A. Gifford9. Saudi Arabia: How Much Change?—F. Gregory Gause III10. Erdoğan, Turkish Foreign Policy, and the Middle East—Henri J. Barkey11. The Syrian Civil War and the New Middle East—James L. Gelvin12. State Building, Sectarianization, and Neo-Patrimonialism in Iraq—Harith Hasan13. The Post-Uprising Transformation of International Relations in the Middle East and North Africa—Fred H. Lawson14. Proxy War and the New Structure of Middle East Regional Politics—Marc Lynch16. Afterword: The Fourth Dream—Moncef Marzouki