Channel: Library of Congress

Category: Education

Tags: library of congress

Description: The Kluge Center Director, will interview former Kluge Fellow, Alda Benjamen, on her new book based on her research at the Library of Congress while a fellow at the Kluge Center. Examining the relationship between a strengthened Iraqi state under the Baʿth regime and the Assyrians, a Christian ethnoreligious group, Alda Benjamen studies the role of minorities in twentieth-century Iraqi political and cultural history. Her book, Assyrians in Modern Iraq, relies on extensive research in Iraq, including sources uncovered at the Iraqi National Archives in Baghdad, as well as in libraries and private collections in Erbil, Duhok, and Mosul, in Arabic and modern Aramaic. Benjamen foregrounds the Iraqi periphery as well as the history of bilingualism to challenge the monolingual narrative of the state. By exploring the role of Assyrians in Iraq's leftist and oppositional movements, including gendered representations of women, she demonstrates how, within newly politicized urban spaces, minorities became attracted to intellectual and political movements that allowed them to advance their own concerns while engaging with other Iraqis of their socio-economic background and relying on transnational community networks. For transcript and more information, visit loc.gov/item/webcast-10263