Emrah Yildiz, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences College Fellow, 2016-17; and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and MENA Studies, Northwestern University.

His work is a historical anthropology of routes of mobility between Iran, Turkey and Syria. Emrah’s research lies at the intersection of historiography and ethnography of borders and their states; ritual practice, saints and visitation in Islam; as well as paper currency and contraband commerce in trans-regional political economy. His current book project, The Ways of Zaynab via Turkey: Genealogical Geographies and Arrested Mobilities across Iran and Syria, brings these areas of scholarship into conversation as it follows the pathways of a ziyarat (visitation) route, often referred to as Hajj-e Fuqara’ (pilgrimage of the poor) from bus stations in Iran, through informal bazaars in Turkey, to the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Syria. He is also interested in studies of gender and sexuality in the Middle East and is currently at work on a second project on LGBT and queer Iranian asylum-seekers at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Turkey.

Emrah is co-editor of Jadaliyya’s Turkey Page, and co-editor (with Anthony Alessandrini and Nazan Üstündag) of the collection “Resistance Everywhere:” The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey (2014).

Paper Title: “Rerouted Displacements: The Ways of Zainab between Iran and Syria via Turkey”