The Department of Anthropology Lecture Series begins this semester with a talk by Dr. Candace Lukasik, Mississippi State University and visiting Research Assistant Professor at UB. This is a public talk and all are invited to attend.

“Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Transnational Politics of Persecution”

Shuttling back and forth across sites of transnational migration between Egypt and the United States, this talk examines how American religious imaginaries of global Christian persecution have remapped Coptic collective memory of martyrdom. It argues that the commingling of American conservative and Coptic theopolitical subjectivities and practices has shaped a new kind of Christian kinship in blood—operating through a double movement between glorification and racialization.

Dr. Candace Lukasik is an Assistant Professor of Religion and affiliated with Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University. She is currently an AAUW Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellow. Her first book, Martyrs and Migrants: Blood and the Politics of Persecution is forthcoming with NYU Press and part of the North American Religions series.