James Reilly
4 Bancroft Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 1C1
Campus: St. George
I was a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Toronto from 1987 to 2022. In teaching, articles and publications I worked to connect the past with the present, and to examine how memories, events and structures of the past inform and affect the present day. My interests encompass the experiences of elites and commoners, of men and women, and of people from varied faiths and walks of life. My research language is Arabic, so most of my courses dealt with the Arab Middle East. Earlier in my publishing career I focused on social and economic history, and afterward on historiography as well. I studied in Washington DC and Beirut, and I conducted PhD and postdoctoral research in Damascus. My special interest is the Ottoman-era history of Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, and their peoples’ experiences of early modernity.
Education
- PhD, Georgetown University
Research Interests
- Historiography
- Syria
- Lebanon
- Ottoman Empire
- Arab World
Publications
- Spatial and Social Boundaries in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Hama (American University of Beirut Press : 2023)
- Kurds and the State in Modern Syria (Peter Lang : 2021)
- Shayzar, an Ottoman Fortress-Settlement in Syria (Brill, Leiden : 2020)
- Ottomans in Syria: “Turkish Colonialism”, or Something Else? (Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, Leipzig : 2020)
- Fragile Nation, Shattered Land: The Modern History of Syria. (I. B. Tauris, London : 2019)
- Ottoman Tripoli in Recent Lebanese Historical Memory. (American University of Beirut Press, Beirut : 2017)
- The Ottoman Cities of Lebanon: Historical Legacy and Identity in the Modern Middle East. (I. B. Tauris, London : 2016)
- Town and Steppe in Ottoman Syria: Hostility, Exploitation and Cooperation in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. (De Gruyter : 2015)
- The Universal and the Particular: A View from Ottoman Homs ca. 1700. (İSAM, İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi : 2014)
- The ‘Aẓms of Hama: Patricians in an Ottoman Town. (Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Darmstadt : 2013)
- Ottoman Saida and Problems of a Lebanese ‘National’ Narrative. (Brill, Leiden : 2012)
- Ottoman Beirut: Crisis, History, and Sectarian Memory. (Duke University Press, Durham, US : 2011)
- A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. (Peter Lang, Bern and London : 2002)