College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Consistent Sounds of War in Iraq: Iraqi Soundscapes 1979-2006(2024) Salive, Natalie; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis explores the evolution of the Iraqi soundscape from the rise of Saddam Hussein in 1979 to the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, focusing on how sound has been employed as a tool of power, control, and resistance. Chapter One introduces the concept of sonic history, with a specific focus on Iraq's unique soundscapes during the Ba'athist regime. It examines the role of sound as an instrument of warfare and propaganda, delving into how Saddam's regime utilized sonic environments to cultivate a pervasive cult of personality and how changing technologies altered Iraq’s auditory experience. The second chapter provides a detailed analysis of the Ba'athi soundscapes, establishing the sonic contexts within which the regime operated. It discusses the sounds associated with sites of violence like Abu Ghraib, the regime's strategies of censorship, and the pervasive sounds of terror that became normalized during the Iran-Iraq War. The chapter also previews the sounds that foreshadowed the "Shock and Awe" campaign during the 1991 Gulf War. Chapter 3 continues the narrative into the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, examining how the invasion perpetuated and transformed the existing aural environments. The chapter highlights the sounds of military vehicles, weapons, and civilian life, contrasting the propagandistic "sounds of freedom" with the persistent terror experienced by the Iraqi populace. The chapter also revisits themes of censorship and the complex auditory experience of "freedom" in wartime. Finally, Chapter 4 concludes the study by reflecting on the continuity and change in Iraq’s soundscape across these pivotal historical moments, underscoring the role of sound in shaping Iraq’s modern history. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of how sound operates within contexts of violence and power, particularly within the framework of modern irregular warfare.Item Between Rebel Flags: Iraqi Vexillology and State Iconography, 1921 - 2017(2020) Andrews, John T; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In under a century of existence, the Republic of Iraq has adopted seven national flags. The circumstances of these modifications occurred under times of tremendous political transformation following wars and military coups. The evolution of Iraqi vexillology often corresponded to sub-national violence and direct challenges to state authority. This thesis considers Iraqi identity through the lens of its national flags and iconography from 1921 to 2017. It argues that Iraqi flags and iconography constitute an archive revealing a national identity organized around an emphasis on ethnicity and transhistorical relationships.Item TWO STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT: THE CONVERGENCE OF COLD WAR POLITICS, LABOR, AND ETHNIC TENSIONS IN THE JULY 1946 STRIKES AT KIRKUK AND ABADAN(2019) Hobson, Tiffany Claire; Wien, Peter; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis explores the convergence of Cold War politics, labor issues, and ethnic conflict on the local scale during the labor strikes which occurred in July 1946 at the oil refineries in Kirkuk, Iraq and Abadan, Iran. The roles of the local communist parties in leading the strikes are weighed against the workers' economic concerns to determine that the workers’ motivations for striking extended beyond political support for any particular party, and claims that the violence which ended the strikes was the result of inherent ethnic conflicts are debunked through examination of both regions’ ethnic histories.Item Negotiating the Place of Assyrians in Modern Iraq, 1960–1988(2015) Benjamen, Alda; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation deals with the social, intellectual, cultural, and political history of the Assyrians under changing regimes from the 1960s to the 1980s. It examines the place of Assyrians in relation to a state that was increasing in strength and influence, and locates their interactions within socio-political movements that were generally associated with the Iraqi opposition. It analyzes the ways in which Assyrians contextualized themselves in their society and negotiated for social, cultural, and political rights both from the state and from the movements with which they were affiliated. Assyrians began migrating to urban Iraqi centers in the second half of the twentieth century, and in the process became more integrated into their societies. But their native towns and villages in northern Iraq continued to occupy an important place in their communal identity, while interactions between rural and urban Assyrians were ongoing. Although substantially integrated in Iraqi society, Assyrians continued to retain aspects of the transnational character of their community. Transnational interactions between Iraqi Assyrians and Assyrians in neighboring countries and the diaspora are therefore another important phenomenon examined in this dissertation. Finally, the role of Assyrian women in these movements, and their portrayal by intellectuals, will be evaluated using a gendered perspective.Item The Deterioration of Civil Society and Opposition Politics in the Police State of Saddam Husayn(2011) Norris, Evan; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this paper is to walk a narrow line between two historiographical conceptualizations of modern Iraq, a deterministic model that imagines Saddam Husayn as historically inevitable and an individualist model that blames everything wrong with modern Iraq on Husayn. In many ways, the two pictures of Husayn presented by modern scholarship represent a larger debate between structure and agency, in other words, were opposition parties and civil society organizations long-standing victims of institutional weaknesses in modern Iraq, or did Husayn target, and eliminate, these group with never-before-seen viciousness and tenacity. My argument, and my contribution to scholarship on modern Iraq, is that Husayn emerged from a broken political system built on patrimonialism, not pluralism, and thus was one in a long line of political despots, but that the ideology and violence of his particular political system was new and especially dangerous to political, and Party, opposition. Chapter One follows the advent of Ba`thism in modern Iraq, its initial relationship with the ruling authorities, and, finally, the ways in which the Iraqi state was transformed, under Saddam Husayn, into a police state. Yet the transformation from republican Iraq, with all its institutional weaknesses and democratic imbalances, to the Ba`thist interpretation of republican Iraq is not only a story of the emergence of a police state based on the threat and use of violence. What exactly Ba`thism and politics meant to those in power and those outside of power is equally important. Therefore, Chapter One is not simply a history of the Ba`th regime, but also, in the words of Kanan Makiya, an "enquiry into its meaning." Chapter Two recapitulates and analyzes clerical and popular religious opposition to the state in modern Iraq, but focuses mainly on the Shi`i party al-Da`wa, an organization and movement that became, after the fall of communism and the rise of secular, pan-Arab Ba`thism, the most potent organization capable of defending Islamic values and Shi`i civil rights in Iraq. Chapter Three follows the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), which was not merely an extension of Soviet communism, but a popular party of Iraqi nationalism. Like al-Da`wa, the ICP was one of the more influential, and more-often targeted, counter-hegemonic organizations in post-war Iraq. Its relationship with Ba`thism was particularly paradoxical and, eventually, particularly violent.