Resources

The Moving Stories project will draw on a wide range of resources in its research, including church and community archives, museums, national and local libraries. In all these locations, our research team are looking for previously undiscovered or unexplained manuscripts that tell a story of generational change, mass migration and profound re-examination of traditional norms and practices.

Already this year, Moving Stories researchers have been investigating and working with documents from a fascinating array of places:

• Iraq National Library and Archive, Baghdad
• Arab American National Museum, Dearborn MI
• Republic of Turkey Presidency Ottoman Archives
• Faris and Yamna Naff Arab American Collection Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution
• Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin
• Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia

As well as the academic monographs and other outputs featured on our Publications page and the shorter items on our Research Updates page, the team is working to produce a new Sourcebook in Belief and Belonging in the Global Middle East (see separate Sourcebook tab).

This ambitious project involves a forensic search for primary sources and archival documents written by or about Ottoman subjects from around 1860 to 1930 that provide insights into the way they reimagined their positions in the world in the wake of the transformative changes of the late nineteenth century. In doing so, the project seeks to engage with a wide variety of topics, ranging from their maritime journeys abroad, their use of documentation, the assimilation of new arrivals into American society, their establishment as distinct religious or national blocs and their reflections on events “back home" in their countries of origin.

We are looking for relevant primary sources across several languages including Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Greek, Syriac, English, French, Spanish and Italian - and we are grateful for any help in locating the personal archives of  first- or second-generation Americans that deserve to reach a wider readership.