Sonic Icons

An anthropologist by training, Sarah Bakker Kellogg teaches courses on religion, gender, and ethnography at San Francisco State University. As an interdisciplinary and publicly engaged scholar, she bridges North American, European, and Middle Eastern conversations about racism, religious difference, gender, and global migration politics. She has presented and published work on secularism and aesthetics, racism and racialization, and the transnational politics of minority recognition in flagship social science journals like American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology.

Note on Transliteration vii Prelude: Death entered in ix 1 Incarnations of the Word 1 2 Liturgical Memory 47 3 The Voice in the Icon 82 Interlude: We grew up in their fear 118 4 Daughters of the Covenant 127 5 The Theology of Ethnicity 161 6 Blood in My Veins 193 Postlude: Life pours out 226 Acknowledgments 233 Glossary 239 Notes 243 Bibliography 255 Index 281

In this erudite and reflective ethnography, Sarah Bakker Kellogg adroitly captures the vocal kinship and gendered discipleship of Syriac Christians uprooted from the Middle East but determined to preserve their ancient religious traditions. With both empathy and precision, she shows us how the living echoes of theological disputation in their liturgical singing guide their explorations of a resolutely secularist European environment--an environment where, as they discover, irritation with the unfamiliar easily morphs into casual racism.---Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University Sonic Icons offers a most welcome addition to earlier historical and anthropological studies of Syriac Orthodox communities. Sarah Bakker Kellogg takes her starting point in the often overlooked choir practices of young women which embody all the crucial elements of the moral communal formation that is at the heart of this migrant community. While discussing the complex interactions of sonic iconicity, patriarchy and kinship, she addresses urgent issues of secularism, race and religion in ways that should resonate far beyond the study of the Syriac Orthodox community in the Netherlands.---Heleen Murre-van den Berg, professor of Global Christianity at Radboud University in Nijmegen, and author of Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500-1850) Sarah Bakker Kellogg masterfully blends rich storytelling with insightful anthropological investigation in her exploration of the Syriac Orthodox community in the Netherlands. Through vivid portraits and personal narratives, especially those of young women, Bakker Kellogg offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of individuals navigating identity and belonging. Her compelling narrative invites readers into a deeply emotional journey, making it hard to turn the pages without shedding a tear or two.---George A. Kiraz, Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study, and Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute An icon is an object that stands for another object on the basis of resemblance. It's also an image, rendered in pigment, painted in song, that weaves the past into the present. Every icon is the outcome of a series of replications beginning with the moment of incarnation, when the divine took human form. Sarah Bakker Kellogg draws together these meanings, and more, in this remarkable study of how Syriac Orthodox women reproduce a community, a religious tradition, and a connection to a sacred past, through song, service, and a commitment to a unique way of life. This is a book that refuses to take short cuts when it comes to making sense of the migrant experience in Europe. In Bakker Kellogg's hands, religion and ethnicity are not identities to be taken for granted, but the product of interpretive work, undertaken by people buffeted by the weather systems of imperialism, colonialism, and secular modernity. Covering everything from the impoverishing logic of European racism to the politics of anti-Chalcedonian sects, Sonic Icons is deeply empirical, deeply reflexive, and unfailingly original. A challenging and rewarding book.---Danilyn Rutherford, author of Living in Stone Age: Reflections on the Origins of a Colonial Fantasy