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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Alda Benjamen, "Assyrians in Modern Iraq: Negotiating Political and Cultural Space" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Description: Today I talked to Alda Benjamen about his book Assyrians in Modern Iraq: Negotiating Political and Cultural Space (Cambridge UP, 2021)Examining the relationship between a strengthened Iraqi state under the Baʿth regime and the Assyrians, a Christian ethno-religious group, 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 b...