• About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me

Alex Shams

  • About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me
Search for:

Alex Shams

  • About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me
Search for:
Tag:

Ottoman

Opinion

Bulgarian Habibi: How Orientalist Stereotypes in Chalga Music Recover Memories of the Balkans’ Ottoman Past

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Balkanist on January 10, 2019. The tension inherent to chalga and turbofolk music – is it local or foreign? – hints at the deeper paradox beneath contemporary

  • Share

About me

Alex Shams is an Iranian-American writer and a PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

follow me on

Recent posts

  • “Why Did So Many People Think This War Was a Good Idea?”
  • Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran’s Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
  • Iran After Khamenei
  • Iran’s Protesters Are Caught Between State Repression and Foreign Intervention
  • Quiet Solidarity: The Underground Networks that Defied Israel’s War on Iran
Search for:

About

Born and raised in an Iranian-American family in Los Angeles, Alex Shams has long been fascinated by the stories that places can tell us. Growing up, he learned Persian and Spanish; in college, he learned Arabic and studied abroad at the American University of Cairo before moving to Beirut after graduation. After receiving his master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard, he moved to Bethlehem, Palestine, where he was a journalist at Ma’an News Agency, the largest independent Palestinian news organization. He received his PhD. from the University of Chicago in Sociocultural Anthropology. His dissertation, entitled “Constructing Islamic Modernity: Power, Religion, and Masculinity in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” was based on three years of ethnographic research in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan as well as archival research in the British Library and Ba’ath Party Archives.

follow

Popular posts

  • The Weaponization of Nostalgia: How Afghan Miniskirts Became the Latest Salvo in the War on Terror
    The Weaponization of Nostalgia: How Afghan Miniskirts Became the Latest Salvo in the War on Terror
  • Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran's Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
    Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran's Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
  • The Arab heart of Mexico City
    The Arab heart of Mexico City
  • Inside Mexico's deep and unexpected legacy of Iranians
    Inside Mexico's deep and unexpected legacy of Iranians
  • Parsi Mumbai: The Legacy of Zoroastrianism in India’s Urban Fabric
    Parsi Mumbai: The Legacy of Zoroastrianism in India’s Urban Fabric
  • إيران “فارسية” ؟: تحديات الأسطورة الآرية والتعصب العرقي الفارسي
    إيران “فارسية” ؟: تحديات الأسطورة الآرية والتعصب العرقي الفارسي
  • Amba: The Iraqi Mango Pickle from India That Tops Palestinian Shawarma
    Amba: The Iraqi Mango Pickle from India That Tops Palestinian Shawarma
  • 'We Have Broken the Wall of Fear': Iranian protesters on what brings them back to the streets four weeks in
    'We Have Broken the Wall of Fear': Iranian protesters on what brings them back to the streets four weeks in
  • Universities should defend students' right to free speech, not aid their repression
    Universities should defend students' right to free speech, not aid their repression
  • Filming America 1979: Iranian-American Memories of the Year Our Lives Turned Upside Down
    Filming America 1979: Iranian-American Memories of the Year Our Lives Turned Upside Down

Archive

Categories

  • Academic Work
  • Arab World
  • El Salvador
  • Featured
  • India
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Israel
  • Lebanon
  • Mexico
  • Oman
  • Opinion
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
  • Reporting
  • USA
Back to top
Copyright © 2009–2026 Alex Shams