Collateral Damages: Tracing the Debts and Displacements of the Iraq War

As we near the 22nd anniversary of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, there has yet to be a meaningful public reckoning with the war. Collateral Damages brings Iraqi stories—which have been systematically excluded from dominant Western narratives of the war—to the fore. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a decade, this talk based on her forthcoming book traces Iraqis' experiences of the 2003 invasion and the violence and displacement that followed, from urban exile in Cairo to efforts to rebuild by pursuing third-country resettlement—often in the very country responsible for them becoming refugees. Iraqis' theorizations of war and displacement illuminate how prevailing histories and memories of both the Iraq War and the larger Global War on Terror can be understood as imperial unknowing—epistemological and relational practices by which imperial power produces conditions of ignorance, hubris, obfuscation, and a willful turning away. Iraqis' accounts draw attention to that which empire prefers to keep hidden and offer possibilities for knowing the social and political effects of war differently. In this talk, Dr. El-Shaarawi will focus on the health and social effects of imperial war and its aftermaths.
Nadia El-Shaarawi is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at Colby College. At Colby, she teaches courses on refugees and migration, humanitarianism, and global health. She is a cultural and medical anthropologist who specializes in transnational forced migration, humanitarianism, and mental health in the Middle East and North Africa and Europe. Prior to joining Colby, Nadia was the Global Migration Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, where her work included collaborative research on the health and social effects of displacement and resettlement. She received her PhD in Anthropology and her MPH in International Health from Case Western Reserve University.

Host or Publisher The Program in Global Health Studies