Abstract
All history writing chooses to give voice to certain people, ideas, facts, events and places, while consciously or unconsciously silencing others. This is unavoidable, since the historian's craft is predicated on investigation and selection of what to record and report, as a preliminary step toward analysis and explanation. It is all about retrieving absences and silences. In this respect, Middle East history is not different from other histories. They have all glossed over specific discourses, narratives, and practices. While scholarly investigation generally concentrates on topics previously unexplored – that, after all, is the point of research – research projects are often offshoots of well-rehearsed subjects or attempts to apply existing methodologies to new materials. Leaps into the great unknown are rarer, the motivations for them less obvious. This volume aims to present several such leaps, and to reflect as well on the dynamics which have created silence around the topic of each chapter.