Description: Examining the relationship between a strengthened Iraqi state under the Baʿth regime and the Assyrians, a Christian ethno-religious group, Alda Benjamen studies the role of minorities in twentieth-century Iraqi political and cultural history. Relying 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. Assyrian intellectuals not only negotiated but also resisted government policies through their cultural production, thereby achieving a softening of Baʿthist policies towards the Assyrians that differed markedly from those of later repressive eras.
Brief description: Alda Benjamen is Faculty Fellow in the Department of History at University of California, Berkeley where her work concerns questions about memory, home, and belonging in multilingual and diasporic communities in the context of rural-to-urban and global migrations. She is editor of a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World, 'Co-existence and Pluralism in Northern Iraq' (2020), and a roundtable for the International Journal of Middle East Studies, 'Minoritization and Pluralism in the Modern Middle East' (2018).
Review Quotes: 'Benjamen's timely book offers an original, extensive, and meticulously researched exploration of Assyrian history during a critical period of the twentieth century. Benjamen not only locates Assyrian experiences within Iraq's social, political, and cultural context but also considers their essential place within the study of minorities and Christians in the Middle East. Assyrians in Modern Iraq is a much-needed study that will surely set the tone for future examinations of an understudied topic.' Febe Armanios, Middlebury College