Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 11, 2008|Volume 36, Number 25

Michael Gasper named a Carnegie Scholar for his examination of the civil war in Lebanon

Michael Gasper, assistant professor of history, has been named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Gasper is one of 20 scholars selected for their commitment to enriching the public dialogue on Islam. The Carnegie Corporation provides funding, with two-year grants of up to $100,000, and intellectual support to well-established and promising young thinkers, analysts and writers. The 2008 awardees are the fourth consecutive annual class to focus on Islam, bringing to 91 the number of Carnegie Scholars devoted to the topic since the program began in 2000.

Carnegie President Vartan Gregorian said of the 2008 scholars: “We are cultivating a diverse scholarly community spanning a range of disciplines with the expectation that their voices will help Americans develop a more complex understanding of Muslim societies here and throughout the world — revealing Islam’s rich diversity. Only through vibrant dialogue, guided by bold and nuanced scholarship, can we move public thinking into new territory.”

Gasper’s project, “Re-Thinking Secularism and Sectarianism in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990),” will examine the intersections of religion, politics, identity and national history in modern Lebanese society. By developing an understanding of the complex motivations of the militias that fought the civil war, Gasper will critique the notion of sectarianism as the predominant narrative explaining Lebanon’s history. The research is considered especially timely and important because it will contribute to policymakers’ comprehension of what has been referred to as the “Lebanonization” of Iraq — the idea that Iraq will devolve into the same kind of kind of strife that marked Lebanon during its civil war.

Gasper is the author of the forthcoming book “The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants & Islam in Egypt” (Stanford University Press), which the publisher predicts will have “a major impact on thinking and teaching … about modern Egypt [and] also about the modern, ex-colonial world in general.”

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