How do contemporary social scientists analyze the historical formation of minorities in the Middle East? What frameworks help us understand the rise of minorities amidst the collapse of Asian empires, the impact of European colonialism, the rise of nationalism, and waves of uprisings over the course of modern Middle East history? Join our discussion as two prominent social scientists discuss their methods of study and teaching the concepts of minority and majority for the region.
Jonathan Wyrtzen is Associate Professor of Sociology and History at Yale University. His research engages a set of related thematic areas that include empire and colonialism, state formation and non-state forms of political organization, ethnicity and nationalism, and religion and socio-political action in North Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Cornell University Press, 2015; 2016 Social Science History Association President's Book Award winner). His current book project, Reimagining the Middle East in the Long Great War, is under contract with Columbia University Press.
Laura Robson is Oliver-McCourtney Professor of History at Penn State University. She has written or edited five books, most recently The Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East (Oxford, 2020), a history of the relationship between violence and the state in the twentieth-century Eastern Mediterranean, and Partitions: A Transnational History of 20th Century Territorial Separatism (with Arie Dubnov; Stanford, 2019), a comparative examination of the political “solution” of ethnic partition in the decolonizing world. Her current research considers the twentieth century rise of schemes for mass refugee removal and resettlement, in the Middle East and beyond.
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies