Excavating Pre-Islamic Arabic | Elias Muhanna

E393 | In this episode from our friends at Trending Globally (https://soundcloud.com/watsoninstitute/sets/trending-globally), Sarah Baldwin talks with Elias Muhanna about an essay he wrote for the New Yorker in May 2018 in which he describes recent advances in translating pre-Islamic Arabic texts. The conversation focuses on the groundbreaking translations of Muhanna's friend and colleague Ahmad Al-Jallad and how his work has changed our understanding of life on the Arabian peninsula before Islam. This episode comes directly from our friends at Trending Globally, a podcast of Brown University's Watson Institute. https://watson.brown.edu/news/trending-globally Elias Muhanna is the Manning Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is a scholar of classical Arabic literature and Islamic intellectual history. Sarah C. Baldwin is the host of Trending Globally and a writer for the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. CREDITS Episode No. 393 Release Date: 13 December 2018 Recording Location: Brown University Audio editing by Babette Thomas Music by Henry Ross Bloomfield http://www.heybloomfield.com/