Jonathan Wyrtzen

Jonathan Wyrtzen's picture
Associate Professor of Sociology, History and International Affairs

Jonathan Wyrtzen’s teaching and research engages a set of related thematic areas that include empire and colonialism, state formation and non-state forms of political organization, ethnicity and nationalism, and religion and socio-political action.  His work focuses on society and politics in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly with regards to interactions catalyzed by the expansion of European empires into this region. His first book, Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Cornell University Press, 2015) examines how European colonial intervention in Morocco (1912–1956) established a new type of political field in which notions about and relationships among politics and identity formation were fundamentally transformed. His next project, tentatively titled Reimagining Political Space, focuses on a set of synchronic revolts in Morocco, Libya, Syria, Anatolia, and the Arabian Peninsula in the mid-1920s to comparatively examine the contingencies, counter-movements, and negotiations involved in the forging and negotiation of new political topographies in the Middle East and North Africa aftermath of World War I.