[Michael Gilsenan's "festpod": Intimate interviews about politics, religion, books, life, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Singapore with Talal Asad, Khaled Fahmy, Darryl Li, Maya Mikdashi, Sherene Seikaly and many more colleagues, students, and friends."]
Michael Gilsenan, anthropologist, social historian, and scholar of religion, narrative, law and language across Arab and Muslim worlds, retired from New York University where he had been, since 1995, the David B. Kriser Professor in Anthropology and Middle East Studies. It was the closing days of 2020, that year that changed all of our worlds in different ways.
The Covid-19 pandemic interrupted plans for a conference and a festschrift that had been in the works. In light of these changed circumstances, the growing popularity of the podcast, and our collective appreciation of Michael’s spell-binding storytelling and his remarkable memory, we--students, friends, and colleagues--hit upon a radical idea. We invented “the Festpod.”
Over the next two years, on zoom and in person, we engaged Michael in conversations about his work and life. We recorded riveting tales about experiences, people, and events. We eagerly elicited his worldly insights about matters of the intellect and the spirit. We followed our curiosity about his many “excavations and wanderings” (as he had put it in the poetic afterword he wrote to Recognizing Islam). The afterword carried the evocative title, “A Way of Walking,” and we walked with him on the paths that crossed our own. We share them here.
Project Team: Lila Abu-Lughod, Fatima Ahmad, Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Naye Idriss, Nadine Fattaleh, JJ Mitchell, Sami Omeish.