Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Moving Stories (Moving Stories: Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-04-01 bis 2024-09-30
The global history of sectarianism has long been neglected. This is because no project has endeavoured to connect the writings, experiences, and lives of Middle Eastern communities into a single analytical framework. Instead, the existing scholarship is fragmented and divided along linguistic, disciplinary, and scholarly lines. As a result, even the most basic questions have yet to be answered. In what ways did sectarianism express itself, or not as the case may be, in the diverse localities of the globalizing Middle East? Why did some individuals reject sectarian practices, ideas, and aspirations, while others took refuge in confessional identities even when they found themselves far from their places of origin in the Middle East? What forms of oral, written, and visual storytelling represented sectarianism, and who were the multiple publics that developed around these narratives? These are questions that naturally raise a set of wider issues at the intersection of social, political, intellectual, and even literary history.
Answering these questions requires a global approach to the study of sectarianism, one that takes seriously the transformations wrought by migration, globalization, and the circulation of literature in this period. In adopting such a framework, the Moving Stories project seeks to answer a fundamental question about the meaning, scale, and variety of sectarianism, that is, was there a core set of processes that united the diverse sectarianisms that developed in the Global Middle East?
In sum, the project seeks to set a new agenda for the historical study of sectarianism, communalism, and religious difference in the Middle East, and beyond. It has four objectives. First, it will identify, recover, and analyse a vast corpus of relevant sources in Middle Eastern and Western languages. Second, it will use these sources to write the first global history of sectarianism in the Middle East. It will do so in a way that combines the study of the circulation of sectarianism with an interpretation of its expressions in different contexts. The project’s third objective is to contribute a sophisticated methodology to the use of family papers and literary sources in Middle Eastern history. Finally, the project will provide a model for understanding how other modern sectarianisms have developed through complex shifts in identity in which émigré and diaspora communities have often played a formative role. Looking beyond the Middle East, therefore, the project seeks to open new avenues for further research into the comparative study of sectarianism among historians, social scientists, and literary scholars.
Answering these questions requires a global approach to the study of sectarianism, one that takes seriously the transformations wrought by migration, globalization, and the circulation of literature in this period. In adopting such a framework, the Moving Stories project seeks to answer a fundamental question about the meaning, scale, and variety of sectarianism, that is, was there a core set of processes that united the diverse sectarianisms that developed in the Global Middle East?
In sum, the project seeks to set a new agenda for the historical study of sectarianism, communalism, and religious difference in the Middle East, and beyond. It has four objectives. First, it will identify, recover, and analyse a vast corpus of relevant sources in Middle Eastern and Western languages. Second, it will use these sources to write the first global history of sectarianism in the Middle East. It will do so in a way that combines the study of the circulation of sectarianism with an interpretation of its expressions in different contexts. The project’s third objective is to contribute a sophisticated methodology to the use of family papers and literary sources in Middle Eastern history. Finally, the project will provide a model for understanding how other modern sectarianisms have developed through complex shifts in identity in which émigré and diaspora communities have often played a formative role. Looking beyond the Middle East, therefore, the project seeks to open new avenues for further research into the comparative study of sectarianism among historians, social scientists, and literary scholars.
In the first year of the project, the PI carried out a systematic programme of literature review and source discovery in advance of the recruitment of the research team. Particular emphasis was given in this initial period to developing an approach to a generation of Middle Eastern migrants who were the first to experience large-scale violence between and within religious communities in the Ottoman Empire from the 1860s onwards. This focus on several generations of Ottoman subjects is at the heart of the research of all members of the project team.
The first fruits of the project’s research were disseminated in a wave of presentations in the UK and Europe stretching over 2022 to 2023. In spring 2023, the PI successfully recruited five Research Associates from a competitive field of international applicants, and a Project Administrator was enlisted to provide administrative support for the project. A project website was established, and the project team agreed a set of processes to track the progress made on primary sources of relevance to the project during the period of ‘source discovery’. In summer 2024, two new RAs joined the team, with a particular focus on Egypt and Lebanon.
The project team has made immense progress in developing a body of publications that speak to the five main research questions of the project. These energies have included both individually-authored publications – with three publications accepted and five further pieces currently under review or in preparation – as well as the collaborative work involved with the preparation of the Project Sourcebook. The project website contains research updates that reflect the ongoing research of the project, as well as specific research trips made to the Middle East and North America. Moreover, the team has collaborated with several researchers visiting from other institutions through project seminars, international workshops, and meetings with other networks. This has included three workshops or conferences: a first on 'Race, Religion, and Concepts of Difference' in June 2024; a second on 'Narratives of Conflict in 19th-Century Syria' in December 2024; and a third planned on 'Global Shi'ism' to take place in April 2025. Taken together, these accomplishments have set the stage for the research team to advance its work on the project’s four main objectives.
Perhaps the most satisfying achievement of the initial period of the project has been the consolidation of a community of scholars around the subject of belief and belonging in late Ottoman history, and the exciting way in which this community has connected outwards to scholars working across a range of fields. In this way, Moving Stories seeks to contribute to the development and expansion of several fields in European, Middle Eastern and global history, both internationally and at Oxford.
The first fruits of the project’s research were disseminated in a wave of presentations in the UK and Europe stretching over 2022 to 2023. In spring 2023, the PI successfully recruited five Research Associates from a competitive field of international applicants, and a Project Administrator was enlisted to provide administrative support for the project. A project website was established, and the project team agreed a set of processes to track the progress made on primary sources of relevance to the project during the period of ‘source discovery’. In summer 2024, two new RAs joined the team, with a particular focus on Egypt and Lebanon.
The project team has made immense progress in developing a body of publications that speak to the five main research questions of the project. These energies have included both individually-authored publications – with three publications accepted and five further pieces currently under review or in preparation – as well as the collaborative work involved with the preparation of the Project Sourcebook. The project website contains research updates that reflect the ongoing research of the project, as well as specific research trips made to the Middle East and North America. Moreover, the team has collaborated with several researchers visiting from other institutions through project seminars, international workshops, and meetings with other networks. This has included three workshops or conferences: a first on 'Race, Religion, and Concepts of Difference' in June 2024; a second on 'Narratives of Conflict in 19th-Century Syria' in December 2024; and a third planned on 'Global Shi'ism' to take place in April 2025. Taken together, these accomplishments have set the stage for the research team to advance its work on the project’s four main objectives.
Perhaps the most satisfying achievement of the initial period of the project has been the consolidation of a community of scholars around the subject of belief and belonging in late Ottoman history, and the exciting way in which this community has connected outwards to scholars working across a range of fields. In this way, Moving Stories seeks to contribute to the development and expansion of several fields in European, Middle Eastern and global history, both internationally and at Oxford.
Where scholars working on sectarianism have long focused on a circle of political and ideological works published by reformist thinkers in the Middle East, the Moving Stories project will assemble a range of sources drawn from the multiple contexts of the everyday lives of communities stretching from the Ottoman Empire to the Americas. These sources include: Arabic printed periodicals; first-person narratives such as letters, diaries, and autobiographies; novels, essays, and creative works written by Arab-American immigrants; and the understudied records of civic, cultural, political and religious institutions established by Middle Eastern Christians and Muslims. From a selection of these archival, documentary, and literary sources, the project will publish a Sourcebook, which will model the methodological and interpretative approach of the project.
However, the identification of these sources is not a goal in itself; rather the research team will use these sources to publish a series of works that answer five main questions: (Q1) In what ways did sectarianism express itself differently across the multiple localities in which Christians and Muslims from the Middle East came together?; (Q2) How did migration, globalization, and the circulation of information (especially print media) contribute to the interplay between local sectarianisms in the Global Middle East?; (Q3) In what ways did individuals document, represent, and narrate sectarianism in this period, and what local, national, and international publics developed around stories of sectarianism?; (Q4) How did the lived experience of sectarianism vary across categories of gender, age, and class?; and finally (Q5) What role did political, academic, religious, cultural, and economic institutions play in the act of ‘sect-making’, and how did these roles change across time under various Ottoman, colonial, and national regimes?
However, the identification of these sources is not a goal in itself; rather the research team will use these sources to publish a series of works that answer five main questions: (Q1) In what ways did sectarianism express itself differently across the multiple localities in which Christians and Muslims from the Middle East came together?; (Q2) How did migration, globalization, and the circulation of information (especially print media) contribute to the interplay between local sectarianisms in the Global Middle East?; (Q3) In what ways did individuals document, represent, and narrate sectarianism in this period, and what local, national, and international publics developed around stories of sectarianism?; (Q4) How did the lived experience of sectarianism vary across categories of gender, age, and class?; and finally (Q5) What role did political, academic, religious, cultural, and economic institutions play in the act of ‘sect-making’, and how did these roles change across time under various Ottoman, colonial, and national regimes?