Research

Tentatively titled Ordinary Copts: Ecumenism, Activism, and Belonging in North American Cities, 1954-1992, this is a study of the departure, journey, settlement, and institutionalization of Coptic Orthodox Christians in an era of post-colonial nativism in Egypt and rising pluralism in Canada and the United States. The largest Christian minority in the Middle East, Copts are central to how we understand modern Egypt in global perspective. As Egypt contended with anxieties occasioned by modernity and urbanization and grappled with issues surrounding independence, identity, and Islamic revival, a wave of antipathy toward any group considered ‘foreign’ or ‘other’ spread through society prompting many to emigrate. Copts who settled in central Canada and the northeastern United States went on to promote a Christian universalism. To contest racialization as Middle Eastern immigrants, they insisted on their Christian heritage to show commonality with the dominant culture of their receiving society.

“Critical events and the formation of a Coptic diaspora in North America between Al-Khanka and Al-Zāwiya Al-Hamrā,” in Dalia Abdelhady and Ramy Aly eds., Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas (2022).

“Competing Notions of Integration in Canada’s First Coptic Orthodox Parishes, 1960s – 1980s,” The Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 13 (2021).

“Heteroglossia: Interpretation and the Experiences of Coptic Immigrants from Egypt in North America, 1955 – 1975,” Histoire sociale / Social History 53.109 (2020).

“Navigating Sacred Spaces: Coptic Immigrants in 1960s Toronto,” Left History 21.1 (2017).

Beyond Accommodation: Everyday Narratives of Muslim Canadians by Jennifer Selby, Amélie Barras, and Lori G. Beaman (review)

Barber, Marilyn and Murray Watson–Invisible Immigrants: The English in Canada since 1945. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015. Pp. 288. (review)

A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec by Sean Mills (review)