Introduction Part I Kurdish studies 1. Kurdish studies in the United States 2. Kurdish studies in EuropePart II Early Kurdish history 3. The Kurdish emirates: Obstacles or precursors to Kurdish nationalism? 4. An overview of Kurdistan of the 19th century 5. The development of the Kurdish national movement in Turkey from Mahmud II to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Part III Kurdish culture 6. Ehmede Xani's Mem u Zin: The consecration of a Kurdish national epic 7. Classical and modern Kurdish literature 8. Calibrating Kurmanji and Sorani: Proposal for a methodology 9. Kurdish cinema Part IV Economic dimensions 10. The oil imperative in the KRG 11. De-development in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia Part V Religion 12. Islam and the Kurds 13. The inadequate Islamic grappling with the Kurdish issue 14. The Jewish communities in Kurdistan within the tribal Kurdish society 15. Yezidi baptism and rebaptism: Resilience, reintegration, and religious adaptation Part VI Geography and travel 16. The geopolitics of the Kurds since World War I: Between Iraq and other hard places 17. Roaming Iraqi Kurdistan Part VII Women 18. Kurdish women Part VIII The Kurdish situation in Turkey 19. The rise of the pro-Kurdish democratic movement in Turkey 20. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Kurdish political parties in the 1970s 21. Turkey's Kurdish complexes and its Syrian quagmire Part IX The Kurdish situation in Iraq 22. The state we're in: Postcolonial sequestration and the Kurdish quest for independence since the First World War 23. The disputed territories of Northern Iraq: ISIS and beyond 24. The continuing problem of KRG corruption 25. The Russian historical and political approach towards nonconventional independence of Iraqi Kurdistan Part X The Kurdish situation in Syria 26. The Kurdish PYD and the Syrian Civil War 27. The evolution of Kurdish struggle in Syria: Between Pan-Kurdism and Syrianization, 1920-2016 28. The roots of democratic autonomy in Northern Syria-Rojava Part XI Iran 29. Iran and the Kurds Part XII The Kurdish diaspora 30. The future of the Kurdish diaspora 31. Diasporic conceptions of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq 32. The Kurds in Germany 33. The Kurdish diaspora in the UK