“My dissertation project intervenes in the scholarship on religion in politics by taking seriously the role of Middle East Christians, both as an agential, politicized people advocating on behalf of their communities, and as a political category wielded within US politics for partisan gain. ”
US interests in the Middle East are often discussed narrowly through the lenses of oil and terrorism, ignoring the US’ religious attachment to the Middle East as the site of Christianity’s origin. At a time of growing authoritarian repression and the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, my dissertation examines how Middle East Christians, specifically Coptic Christian Egyptians, became a contested category of political concern in US foreign policy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Washington, DC, I argue that it matters for collective memory and geopolitics whether the “problem” of Christians in the Middle East, and specifically Coptic Egyptian Christians, is framed as a matter of religious freedom, Christian persecution, human and citizenship rights, or something else altogether.