1001 Nights at the Cinema | Samhita Sunya

E424 | The 1001 Nights, an Arabic collection of tales, have been translated into numerous languages and adapted to many cultural contexts. In this episode, we explore the impact of the 1001 Nights on the history of cinema. As our guest Samhita Sunya explains, the 1001 Nights corpus influenced Western cinema from the earliest decades of the medium's rise. However, in our conversation, we focus on the cinematic influence of the tales beyond Europe and North America. From Japan and South Asia to Iran and the Caucasus, we discuss the many forms the 1001 Nights have assumed in cinema the world over and reflect on the significance of the often ignored connections between these different world regions. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2019/08/1001-nights.html Samhita Sunya is an Assistant Professor of Cinema in the Department of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Virginia. Supported by a Spring 2018 residence at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and 2018-2019 Mellon Humanities Fellowship, her current project builds on research conducted at the National Film Archive of India as well as the American University of Beirut, exploring South-South histories of cinema over the decades of the Cold War. Chris Gratien is Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region of the former Ottoman Empire from the 1850s until the 1950s. CREDITS Episode No. 424 Release Date: 30 August 2019 Recording Location: Charlottesville, VA Audio editing by Chris Gratien Bibliography and clips courtesy of Samhita Sunya available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2019/08/1001-nights.html