The key purpose of this research has been to study and understand how young people with Syriac ethnicity experience their identity, when living in two different cultures. The Syriac minority is something of a special case when it concerns establishing the identity of an individual, since syriac´s do not have an official country. To be able to do this research an interview has been done with four young students with syriac ethnicity. The four of them is attending their final year at “gymnasiet” in Sweden which is equivalent to USA’s senior year in high school. The multicultural school is today a fact and many immigrants attending the Swedish schools today feels misplaced when they meet the Swedish culture through fellow students and society. A clash between cultures occurs and most of the students, with non-Swedish ethnicity, live some kind of dual life. One side of this twin identity represents the ethnic identity which dominates at home and around relatives. The other side is displayed in circumstances outside of their home, which is at school and in the Swedish society in general. This research shows the general opinion, among syriac high school students, concerning the individual identity and in which way they handle their own identity development when living within two different cultures. One of my main questions to investigate is to find out if young students, with syriac ethnicity, develops a weak root in their ethnic identity by living outside of the syriac community. One of my conclusions is that a student with syriac ethnicity, whom is educated in an intercultural school is rather encouraged in seeking his/her roots. Since the multicultural environment awakens a curiosity in students to seek their own ethnic identity.

The 1933 genocidal attacks on Assyrians in the Simele region defined the birth of the nascent Iraqi nation and identity. Iraq has ever been in the spotlight of ethnic and cultural strife, especially concerning Sunni-Shia animosity, and more recently in dealing with the Kurdish people and Iraqi Kurdistan. In most cases, however, the Assyrians are completely neglected from scholarship concerning Iraq and its peoples. This work reinserts the Assyrian people into the fabric of Iraq and discusses the violent and non-violent suppression of Assyrian identity and culture through genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Three fundamental factors emerge from this reinsertion with respect to Iraq and genocide. First, this approach introduces an often-neglected element in Iraqi studies: the inclusion of minorities, or micro-minorities, within the existing discourse on Iraqi studies. Second, it contributes to genocide studies by examining the impact of the non-physical, or cultural, aspect of genocide. Further, it discusses the importance of the Assyrian case in Iraq for understanding Iraqi history, and serves as a case in point of scaling suffering and for understanding how and why a hierarchy of genocide exists.

The 1933 genocidal attacks on Assyrians in the Simele region defined the birth of the nascent Iraqi nation and identity. Iraq has ever been in the spotlight of ethnic and cultural strife, especially concerning Sunni-Shia animosity, and more recently in dealing with the Kurdish people and Iraqi Kurdistan. In most cases, however, the Assyrians are completely neglected from scholarship concerning Iraq and its peoples. This work reinserts the Assyrian people into the fabric of Iraq and discusses the violent and non-violent suppression of Assyrian identity and culture through genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Three fundamental factors emerge from this reinsertion with respect to Iraq and genocide. First, this approach introduces an often-neglected element in Iraqi studies: the inclusion of minorities, or micro-minorities, within the existing discourse on Iraqi studies. Second, it contributes to genocide studies by examining the impact of the non-physical, or cultural, aspect of genocide. Further, it discusses the importance of the Assyrian case in Iraq for understanding Iraqi history, and serves as a case in point of scaling suffering and for understanding how and why a hierarchy of genocide exists.

European modernist architectural design and urban planning for suburbs have often been theorized as dystopic creation myths. These narratives focus on the unfulfilled promises of activist designers to deliver equality, overscaled and generic neighborhoods, and contemporary social exclusion. Södertälje offers another view. This dissertation combines history, ethnography, and formal analysis to examine how architects, urban planners, and immigrant residents conflict and collaborate in the production of the city. The Swedish town of Södertälje serves as a lens through which to view these processes: it is both a nexus of high modernist spatial and social planning and the ostensible capital of the diasporic Syriac Christians, who now comprise approximately 26% of the local population. Postwar Swedish designers sought to reduce class differences through home standardization and a blurred public-private divide; this happened just as the country received numerous refugees, including Syriacs, who had left difficult conditions in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon and quickly concentrated in Södertälje. There, they became active designers of a new urban landscape, first claiming welfare state public spaces but then slightly altering their uses. This suggests that “generic” modernist urbanism was more successful at accommodating difference than has typically been argued. More recently, Syriacs have built a state-of-the-art soccer stadium and colossal churches that – while sited in industrial zones in Södertälje – function as monuments and pilgrimage sites for the diaspora. In new, Syriac-dominated neighborhoods of custom-designed, single-family houses, Syriac participation has exceeded the “voice” that planners typically allocate to immigrants; their architectural displays of difference and affluent forms of segregation generate anxieties for planners trained in the welfare state’s traditions, which have long linked spatial uniformity to social equality. In aggregate, the Syriacs’ discrete projects have changed the way that the city functions, both in space and in the practices of the town’s expert designers, a development that I label “urban design from below.” This justifies a call for new orientations toward modernism, segregation, and participation in space making and suggests future trends for other European peripheries, where immigrants are also using and reconstructing postwar housing projects.

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y., 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65).

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1974. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-148).

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y., 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65).

Theses Duke University, N.C. / Bibliogr.: p. 183-195.

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y., 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65).

M.A. / This study investigates the connection between the biblical references to the Gospels in Actae Thoma, or the Apocryphal Acts of Judas Thomas, and the text of the Vetus Syria. The main objective is to verify whether the author of Actae Thoma was dependent on the Vetus Syria which was one of the largest and oldest Syriac text families containing the separate Gospels. An independent study in this regard has not yet been undertaken. Both Klijn and Burkitt touched on the biblical references in Actae Thoma but they did not attempt to investigate the references as the sole object of their research. The present study attempts to investigate all the biblical references in order to verify whether the author of Actae Thoma was indeed dependent on the Vetus Syria. The function of these references within the new context of Actae Thoma is also investigated. The value of the study lies in its contribution to our understanding of the Syriac textual history and of the function of these references. It seems that they were used to propagate the ideals of asceticism, to enhance the figure of the Apostle and bring the reader under the impression that he finds himself in a Biblical milieu. A basis for further study is also provided.