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Beverly A. Tsacoyianis

Beverly A. Tsacoyianis

Associate Professor

Phone
901.678.2520
Email
btscynis@memphis.edu
Fax
901.678.2720
Office
119 Mitchell
Office Hours
Email for Hours

Education

Ph.D., History, Washington University in St. Louis, 2014

Fields of interest

Modern Middle East; Islamic History; 20th-century global and comparative history; history of science and medicine, Israel and Palestine, gender and sexuality studies

Courses taught

Modern Middle East; Ottoman Empire; Intro to Islamic Civilization; The Politics of Health in the Modern Middle East; Understanding the Arab Spring and Uprisings in the Middle East; the Arab-Israeli Conflict; World Since 1945; Studies in Global History: Science, Empire, and Responses; Islamic History to 1405; Science and Technology in World History since 1500

Representative Publications

Disturbing Spirits: Mental Health, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon (Notre Dame Press, 2021)

Book review, The Empire of Depression: A New History, History: Reviews of New Books, 49:4, 107-109, (2021)

Book review, Mental Health and Palestinian Citizens in Israel, Journal of Palestine Studies, (2021)

“From Patient to Survivor: Mental Health and Disability Studies,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 51 (1) (Feb. 2019): 124-126

Book Review: Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500-1800. Arab Studies Journal XXIV (1) (2016): 310-314.

Recent conference presentations

"From Patient to Survivor: Enriching Palestinian and Israeli Psychiatric History through Disability Studies Approaches." "Disability Studies in the Middle East: New Approaches, New Possibilities" Panel. Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 53rd annual meeting, New Orleans, November 16, 2019.

“‘Violence that would consume it whole and eventually damage the collective mental health of its people’: Lebanese and Syrian narratives of trauma, war, and treatment, 1900-2018.” “Politics of Mental Health and Psychiatry in the Emerging State” Panel. Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 52nd Annual Meeting, San Antonio, November 15-18, 2018

"Arabo-Islamic Approaches to the Use of Herbs, Potions, and Fragrances for Physical and Spiritual Healing and Magic," Dixon Gallery & Gardens Munch and Learn Series, Memphis, June 7, 2017

"Women of Color in the Academy workshop participant, Stanford University, March 9-11, 2017

"The Trouble with Spirits: Mental Illness and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon," Middle Eastern Disability History workshop, University of Maryland Department of History, College Park, MD, November 12, 2015

"Mental Illness and the Plural Medical Marketplace in Syria, 1922-1956," "Public Health, Wellness, and the Emerging Nation-State" Panel, Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 45th annual meeting, Washington D.C., December 1-4, 2011

Administration and Service

Graduate Awards Committee
Teaching and Mentoring Committee
Primary Faculty Advisor, Muslim Students Association (2013 – 2018)
Mentoring Committee member, Women Historians of the Middle East (WHOME), a MESA affiliate
Primary Faculty Advisor, Phi Alpha Theta (History Honors Society), since 2020,
Primary Faculty Advisor of the Student History Society since 2021.

Current projects

Working on an edited volume about disability in the Middle East, a monograph on trauma, mental illness, and treatment in Israel and Palestine since the 1940s through an analysis of hospital records as well as ethnographic data, oral history research, historical fiction, and journalistic non-fiction, and a project on healing in Morocco.