Melanie S Tanielian

University of Michigan, History, Faculty Member

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I am an associate professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I joined the faculty at Ann Arbor after living most my life in Northern California. I received my PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley, where I studied under the guidance of Prof. Beshara Doumani. My research and teaching interests include the social and cultural history of WWI in the Middle East, the emergence of religious philanthropic societies and their work in times of conflict, the history of German missionaries, social Protestantism and modern humanitarianism, disease, medicine, and hospitals, the history Childhood and Youth.My research has been supported by the Allan Sharlin Memorial Grant for Dissertation Research, the DAAD Graduate Fellowship, and the Sultan Fellowship from the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Papers by Melanie S Tanielian

The Silent Slow Killer of Famine: Humanitarian Management and Permanent Security

Journal of genocide research, Feb 5, 2024

Defying the Humanitarian Gaze: Visual Representation of Genocide Survivors in the Eastern Mediterranean

Ottoman Women During World War I: Everyday Experiences, Politics, and Conflict. Elif Mahir Metinsoy, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Pp. 290. $99.99 cloth. ISBN: 9781107198906

International Journal of Middle East Studies, Aug 1, 2020

steal in order to eat better. Others figured out heroic ways to travel long distances to find fam... more steal in order to eat better. Others figured out heroic ways to travel long distances to find family members. They held on to life despite the surrounding trauma. Maksudyan backs up her argument with rich survival narratives, but does not engage deeply with the politics of memory. A growing critical mass of books on children and youth in the Middle East (Beth Baron, Heidi Morrison, Benjamin Fortna, Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim) opens the door for engagement with issues that crisscross the field of children’s studies. Maksudyan’s book is a great launching point, for example, to problematize the concept and experience of children’s agency in the context of the Middle East. The popularity of uncovering children’s agency must not belie important questions such as: What authority do historians have to accord or refuse agency to the subjects of their work? What role do racial, gender, and class politics play in limiting or privileging different forms of agency? What exists between and across the binary categories of powerful vs. powerless (adult vs. child)? What is at stake when adults try to “liberate” children? How do we define agency in different times and places? Maksudyan’s book also provides exciting new material to put in dialogue with Nadera ShalhoubKevorkian’s new concept of “unchilding,” or “a violent racial regime of control that actively maintains the machinery of dismemberment always and everywhere” (Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Incarcerated Childhoods and the Politics of Unchilding [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019], 22). Whether it be Armenian children in early-20th-century Ottoman lands or Palestinian children in contemporary Israel and the Occupied Territories, young people’s relationship to power structures is a rich area of research. Maksudyan’s book pushes the boundaries of historiography by viewing World War I through the eyes of children and youth. Additionally, she focuses on orphans, some of the most vulnerable groups in this period. It will be a great day when distinguished scholars such as Maksudyan do not have to dedicate a portion of the book’s introduction to justifying the inclusion of young people in historical research.

Member at Large Bio

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin, Jun 4, 2015

Walking the streets of Beirut for the first time in 2004, I knew that the city would have to beco... more Walking the streets of Beirut for the first time in 2004, I knew that the city would have to become my second home. I, at that moment, decided to focus my future studies on Lebanon. I was particularly interested in social and cultural history of World War I, a reminder of which stood at the center of Beirut. The statue of the martyrs in the Burj (also referred to as Martyrs' Square) riddled with bullet holes from the recent civil war sparked my interest. I spent the next few years in Beirut tracking down fragments of archives to get at the stories of civilian homefront life that had been silenced in the state-sponsored national discourse of heroic resistance against Ottoman tyrannical rule and male martyrdom. My research resulted in my dissertation The War of Famine: Every Day Life in Beirut and Mount Lebanon (1914-1918). The dissertation has since turned into a book manuscript that explores daily life at the Lebanese homefront through the lens of famine, family, disease and medicine, as well as local, state, and international war relief. Since the completion of my PhD in Middle Eastern history at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, I have been teaching as an assistant professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. My research and teaching interests include the social and cultural history of WWI in the Middle East, the emergence of religious philanthropic societies and their work in times of conflict, the history of German missionaries, social Protestantism and modern humanitarianism, disease, medicine, and hospitals, the history Childhood and Youth.

Melanie S Tanielian

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