Jonathan Shannon is a professor of anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is the author of Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria (2009), A Wintry Day in Damascus: Syrian Stories (2012), and Performing al-Andalus: Music and Nostalgia across the Mediterranean (2015), as well as of numerous articles in journals devoted to culture and anthropology. He has conducted extensive research into musical aesthetics and cultural politics in the Arab world and the Mediterranean and is an accomplished performer of the ‘ūd (fretless lute).