Music & Modernity in Contemporary Syria & Nostalgia Across the Mediterranean | Jonathan Shannon
In this conversation, we talked to Professor Jonathan Shannon, Cultural Anthropologist & Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities at NYUAD. Shannon is the author of books on Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, and Music and Nostalgia Across the Mediterranean.
Jonathan Shannon earned a BA in English Literature from Stanford University, with a year at Saint Catherine’s College, Oxford. He completed his PhD in cultural anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate School under the mentorship of Vincent Crapanzano, Talal Asad, and Jane Schneider. His dissertation on music in Syria, funded by research grants from SSRC and Fulbright-Hays, won the 2001 Malcolm Kerr Award for Best Dissertation in the Social Sciences from the Middle East Studies Association. Shannon's research, scholarship, and teaching focus primarily on the Arab world and the Mediterranean, with special attention to the cultural politics of musical performance, collective memory, and transnational migration in the Middle East and North Africa and across the Mediterranean. Shannon is currently conducting research on the role of music in the lived experiences of displaced Syrians in Turkey and across Europe. With grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the PSC-CUNY, he spent the last several summers in Istanbul, Athens, Milan, and Berlin exploring the lives of Syrian musicians in these important destinations for displaced Syrians. He has published some preliminary findings and is preparing a third scholarly monograph, tentatively entitled Sounding Home: Syrian Migrant Musicians from Syria to Scandinavia.
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The afikra Podcast
The afikra Podcast is our flagship series featuring experts from academia, art, media, urban planning, and beyond, who are helping document and shape the histories and cultures of the Arab world through their work.
