"defense, defiance, resistance." memory, identity, and the preservation of sacred landscapes in the aftermath of the yezidi genocide Marc Marín Webb

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Marín Webb, Marc, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Middle Eastern studies.

Cultural anthropology.

Religious history.

0555.

0729.

0326.

0320.

Local Subjects:

Middle Eastern studies.

Cultural anthropology.

Religious history.

0555.

0729.

0326.

0320.

Genre:

Academic theses

Physical Description:

1 online resource (601 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This dissertation explores the role of heritage preservation in the aftermath of violent conflict. On August 3, 2014, the Islamic State (IS) launched a large-scale campaign against the Yezidis (Êzîdîs), an ethnoreligious minority indigenous to Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran. IS's crimes against Yezidis involved mass killings, sexual violence, torture, and enslavement, amounting to genocide, multiple crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, captured, forced to convert, or killed, and thousands of women and children were subjected to sexual violence, forced impregnation, and reeducation. Between 2014 and 2015, IS also destroyed seventy Yezidi sacred sites in the Nineveh Governorate in Iraq. This dissertation examines Yezidi sacred landscape preservation practices before and after the Genocide to reflect on how they produce recent and historical narratives. Rather than contributing to debates on Yezidi origins and identity, it focuses on the mechanisms through which the preservation of sacred sites serves to interpret, sustain, or efface a past relevant to contemporary and future generations. Blending approaches from Yezidi studies, heritage scholarship, and ethnographic fieldwork-including architectural surveys, qualitative interviews, participant observation, and archival materials-it argues that the preservation of Yezidi sacred landscapes privileges process, embodied practice, religious merit, and material transformation over static, object-oriented understandings of heritage. It thus contributes to and critically evaluates scholarship on Yezidi orthopraxy, oral traditions, and sacred practices, while engaging key debates in heritage studies, including value, authenticity, integrity, and transnational heritage diplomacy from an emic perspective. This research contributes to broader discussions about the place and ethics of post-conflict heritage practice by recentering the focus on contemporary debates over identity, memory, institutional neglect, and reconciliation. It reveals how sacred landscape preservation both influences and is influenced by ongoing social, political, and economic contexts, whereby civil society materializes narratives of resistance and defiance in response to, and in tension with, official discourses of the Genocide. It advances a site-specific, temporally sensitive framework for comparison beyond Yezidi scholarship, broadening debates about how historically marginalized communities can mobilize heritage production to claim agency, recognition, accountability, and justice in the aftermath of violence

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-12, Section: A.

Advisors: Zettler, Richard L. Committee members: Meskell, Lynn; Sharkey, Heather J.; Shams Esmaeili, Fatemeh

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798247983347

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license