Sonic Icons: Religion, Ethnicity, and Genocide’s Afterlives in a Syriac Christian World

Presented by the Department of Sociology & Sexuality Studies

A talk by Lecturer of Sociology Sarah Bakker Kellogg about her forthcoming book:

In “Sonic Icons: Kinship, Christianity, and the Ethics of Recognition in a Syriac World” (Fordham University Press forthcoming), Sarah Bakker Kellogg uses the tools of multisensory ethnography to track a diasporic network of Syriac Orthodox Christians — also known as Assyrians, Aramaeans and Syriacs — in the Netherlands who intertwine religious practice with political activism to “save” Syriac Christianity from the twin threats of political violence in the Middle East and cultural assimilation in Europe. Coming of age in a historical moment when much of their tradition has been destroyed or forgotten by war, dispossession, displacement and genocide — their story of self-discovery is a story of survival, revival and reinvention. This book rethinks foundational theoretical accounts of ethnicization, racialization and secularization by examining how kinship gets made, claimed and named in the global politics of minority recognition.

Coming from Fordham University Press, Fall 2024

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