2021 US Fellows

Kotinsly’s current research agenda focuses on tracing the Iraqi Shi‘i opposition movement’s utilization of Karbala symbols while in exile between 1980 and 2003. Specifically, he hopes to shed light on how organizations such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Iraqi Da‘wa Party, and the Islamic Action Organization utilized popular Shi‘i symbols to acquire a constituency within Iraq and to express their respective visions for a post-Saddam Iraqi society. Beyond this research project’s more immediate contributions to the scholarly discourse regarding the Iraqi Shi‘i opposition movement, his findings will ultimately facilitate my dissertation’s broader aim of delineating the nature of social bonds, ethics, and class and gender divisions within Iraqi Shi‘i society. To this end, Kotinsly will employ a historical comparative analysis to place these opposition groups’ Karbala discourses in conversation with those of the Iraqi state and various social actors between 1980 and 2003.

Iraqi Yezidis lived for centuries in relative isolation with periods of oppression and violence due to their religious beliefs, claims to land, and resistance to occupying powers. Following a genocide in 2014, many members of this ancient monotheistic faith fled Iraq to Germany, where their lives are impacted by multiple internal and external tensions: Iraqi/Kurdish and German politics, discourses about refugees, and changes to traditional Yezidi understandings of gender and generational roles, religious practices, and authority. The objectives of this research are to understand how Yezidi everyday practices respond to the challenges of (a) emerging internal fractures; (b) media representation that frames Yezidis as both especially deserving of legal status and fundamentally exotic; and (c) contradictory pressures from German and Iraqi/Kurdish entities for Yezidis to both assimilate and remain separate. To address these objectives, Stuewe will conduct a systematic review of German and Yezidi popular media, participant observation, and interviews.