About the Author

Zayde Antrim is Associate Professor of History and International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World (2012).

Reviews

"Mapping the Middle East presents an intellectual history of the Middle East as a geographical concept, connecting ancient worldviews to contemporary geopolitical realities. Antrim demonstrates exceptional familiarity with the scores of manuscripts and maps that structure the development of her narrative, adding to the record her own valuable commentary regarding myth and memory and how they are preserved in the cartographic record of this region. . . . This volume is beautifully illustrated and should not be read without careful reference to the meticulous footnotes provided, as well as to the detailed bibliography and index. This book will be particularly valuable for scholars and professionals supporting humanitarian and human rights outreach programs, and political scientists engaged in community-based comparative studies."-- "H-Maps"

"Throughout her pleasingly-written book, Antrim displays a creative, inquisitive, and eclectic mind that will content scholars and non-scholars alike. For its illustrations alone, Mapping the Middle East earns its place on library bookshelves. This certainly was the intent of the publisher, who has helped produce a narrative that will be agreeable to a non-academic audience, and that is at times almost pedagogical without, however, compromising its intellectual integrity. Moreover, this work is a visual feast, containing eighty-two gorgeous illustrations, mostly maps (evidently), as well as posters, stamps, art works, and other material artifacts. Antrim has thus produced an impressive work, both in its historical scope and in its expansive use of primary sources. . . . Mapping the Middle East also (explicitly and) effectively offers a needed alternative narrative to the Eurocentric narcissism, and implicit universalism, of many cartography studies, as well as to Eurocentric articulations of politics and culture, power and representation, and space and identity."-- "Canadian Journal of History / Annales canadiennes d'histoire"