"The Transnational Politics of Christian Persecution"

A perception that Christianity is under attack has animated contemporary American political culture, driving domestic policies that advance Christian political power and foreign policies to protect Christians globally. In this talk, I specifically map how conservative American Christians appropriate the suffering of Christians in the Middle East to claim that Christians everywhere, including in the United States, are persecuted. Drawing on the literature of global memory cultures, I argue that the localization of Christian persecution is facilitated by conservative American Christians who act as members of transnational memory networks, transmitting images and memories of Christian persecution from the Middle East to the United States. In doing so, they transform nation-specific experiences of suffering to a universal injury of Christian persecution, expanding the category of victim to include all Christians everywhere.

Miray Philips is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering between the United States and the Middle East. Her current book project explores conflictual representations of religious difference in the context of the global war on terror. Empirically, it examines claims-making by various transnational actors on behalf of Christians in the Middle East, and specifically Copts in Egypt. Her collaborative projects investigate knowledge production and collective memories of mass violence, specifically in Syria. Her research is published in scholarly journals such as the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Memory Studies, and the Minnesota Journal of International Law. Miray Philips also engages in public-facing work and currently sits on the Board of Advisors of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

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