Project

Making Nations, in the Mahjar [Diaspora]: Syrian and Lebanese Long-Distance Nationalisms in New York City, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, 1913–1929

Program

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Department

History

Abstract

This dissertation studies Syrian and Lebanese political culture in the diaspora during the interwar period. Tracing intellectual and activist networks between the Syrian communities in São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and New York City, the project triangulates the Levant’s colonies abroad and analyzes the political culture they shared. It documents transnational activism from the 1916 Arab Revolt to the emergence of the Syrian Nationalist Movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Through building transnational political infrastructure—the press, patriotic communities, and charities, emigrants also imparted their own vision of political community, one which emphasized familial nationalism and altered gender roles, family patterns, and ideas about social welfare and responsibility.