Thursday, October 30th at 5:00PM: CMU's Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics Department presents a Book Talk: “Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire"
Thursday, October 30, 5:00-6:30pm
Posner Hall, Room 340
Journeying with migrants between Egypt and the United States, this talk examines how American religious imaginaries of global Christian persecution have remapped Coptic collective memory of martyrdom. Dr. Lukasik argues that the commingling of American conservatives and Copts has shaped a new kind of Christian kinship in blood, operating through a double movement between glorification and racialization.
Copies of Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire (NYU Press, 2025) will be available for purchase at this event.
Dr. Candace Lukasik is Assistant Professor of Religion and Faculty Affiliate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University. She has held positions at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Her research explores religion and the transnational politics of migration and violence in the Middle East, specifically Egypt and Iraq, and its US diasporas. She is the author of Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire (NYU Press, 2025).