Boston College Associate Professor of History Dana Sajdi was recently interviewed by Elliot Brandow of BC Libraries about her book, The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press, 2013). In the interview, Sajdi talks about her book, which focuses on a barber’s chronicle of life in Damascus in the 18th century, and the concept of nouveau literacy–scholarly works produced by commoners.