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Flagg Miller
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Associate Professor, Religious Studies B.A. (cum laude), Dartmouth College, 1991 Office: 916 Sproul Hall |
Research Areas
Dr. Miller's research focuses on the roles of language ideology and poetry in contemporary Muslim reform in the Middle East and especially Yemen. His interdisciplinary work on religion draws from linguistic and cultural anthropology, history, media theory, poetics, philosophy, and cultural studies. He has lived and studied in the Middle East and North Africa for over four years, including Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.
Current Projects
I am currently working on a book project that focuses on an audiocassette collection formerly owned by Osama Bin Laden. Currently held at Yale University, the audiocassette collection represents the most important archive for understanding Bin Laden’s intellectual formation. My book will explore the contents of the collection and its implications for our understandings of Bin Laden’s militant movement, but will also situate these insights in relation to a broader consideration of the role of Arabic language studies for contemporary Muslim reformers.
After the fall of the Taliban in December of 2001, Cable News Networks acquired the audiotape collection of Bin Laden, from his personal compound in Qandahar, where he lived from 1997-2001. The collection contains over 1500 recordings of over two hundred leading Islamist preachers from around the world. In the summer of 2007, I was invited by Yale to annotate the collection, and have been to sole researcher on the collection to date. An article on the ways speakers in the collection differ over their understanding of the term al-qa`ida (“the base”) has appeared in the Journal of Language and Communication in October, 2008. Divergent approaches to the qa`ida suggest that the term functions a base for many forms of spatial, temporal, social, and ethical orientation. Much of the critical leverage of the concept, I argue, stems from speakers' sense of Arabic as a template of ethical attunement that cues language users to founding Muslim lifeways and leaders in and beyond the Arabian Peninsula. My article is devoted to identifying how moderate jurisprudents in the collection employ such an ethics differently than militants, including Bin Laden himself. The article focuses, more broadly, on contributions that area studies scholars have made to sociolinguistics, and suggests that Western studies of Arabic could benefit from approaching language through Muslim religion and culture.
To date, scholars and journalists have debated about influences on Bin Laden’s thought by relying on statements made by Bin Laden largely after 2001, and also on second-hand accounts by those who personally met him. Some argue that Bin Laden’s radical orientations stem from contemporary Egyptian Islamists, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, while others argue that Bin Laden’s background experiences with Saudi Wahhabism are more important. Still others argue that Bin Laden’s primary intellectual formation needs to be situated in political currents outside the Middle East, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Africa (where Bin Laden lived between 1990-1996), and Southeast Asia. The cassettes in this collection suggest that while these narratives all contain some element of truth, Bin Laden was principally informed by a more disparate range of intellectuals than has heretofore been acknowledged.
Material in the collection offers invaluable resources for understanding the political and intellectual project that has come to be known as “al-Qa`ida.” The majority of the cassettes feature Saudi intellectuals and clerics, many representing the Wahhabi establishment, but many others its’ critics. Other speakers are Peninsular Arabs (especially Yemen, Kuwait, and Qatar), Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, Palestinians, and Algerians, among others. Of twenty-three cassettes featuring Bin Laden, I estimate that twelve recordings are unique, and contain material previously unpublished in any language. Western scholarship and journalists have focused largely on Bin Laden’s public statements made after September 11th, and on rare occasions have revisited earlier statements made by Bin Laden in 1994 through his London-based Advice and Reform Committee. The cassettes in the collection, by contrast, offer several rare recordings from the late 1980s that shed light Bin Laden’s early concerns with fighting the Soviets, and focus on moving personal narratives of martyrdom that are later curtailed in the service of a more public, rational persona. Overall, speakers in the collection employ a wide range of verbal genres, foremost among them sermons and political speeches. Much of the extraordinary value of this collection lies in the more intimate, frequently extemporaneous nature of recorded speech events, including conversations between well-known militants and their audiences, celebrations after militant operations, and poetry.
I have several book projects that explore this material. One book, tentatively entitled The Armament of Verse: Osama Bin Laden's 1996 Declaration of War Reconsidered, focuses on Bin Laden's 1996 speech from Tora Bora. This work focuses on the way Bin Laden maneuvers between seven prominent genres of Muslim political discourse in the Arab world. Delivered at a formative juncture of Bin Laden’s career, his speech mobilized young audiences by deploying key themes in Muslim homily, while also venturing in new, more secular directions. Through re-translation and analysis of the Declaration, I show how Bin Laden skillfully negotiates each genre as he crafts his message for listeners. I argue that Bin Laden’s final recourse to poetry in the last third of his speech reveals both the power, and the limits, of his formula for global jihad. The effects of the speech are explored through chapters on the history of Bin Laden’s militant initiatives both before and after the speech, and on his use of media to achieve his aims. A second, longer book will situate Bin Laden’s cassette collection amidst debates occurring in and beyond Qandahar over the nature of Islamic activism and ethical reasoning. I will focus, in particular, on the role of Arabic in helping participants build consensus about Muslim knowledge and historical memory as they imagine new forms of global sociality and dystopia.
Book
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The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen (Harvard University Middle Eastern Monographs series, 2007). (Read the Conclusion). |
Reviews of my book:
The Middle East Journal, 62(3): 530-1. (2008)
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50: 1052-4. (2008)
Other Recent Publications
"Al-Qa`ida as a 'Pragmatic Base': Contributions of Area Studies to Sociolinguistics," Language and Communication, 28(4): 386-408. (2008)
"Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry," in Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak. Ed. Marc Falkoff. The University of Iowa Press, 2007. Pp.7-16.
"Of Songs and Signs: Audiocassette Poetry, Moral Character, and the Culture of Circulation in Yemen," American Ethnologist, 32(1): 82-99. (2005)
“Metaphors of Commerce: Trans-valuing Tribalism in Yemeni Audiocassette Poetry,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34(1): 29-57. (2002)
"Public Words and Body Politics: Reflections on the Strategies of Women Poets in Rural Yemen," Journal of Women's History, 14(1): 94-122. (2002)
(Co-author Ulrike Freitag). "Three Poems on British Involvement in Yemen, from the Yemeni Press 1937," The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History. Eds. C. Amin, B. Fortna, E. Frierson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp.492-500.
Entries for “Yemen,” “Aden,” and “Sanaa” in Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, vol.2: Locations. Continuum Press, United Kingdom, 2005.
Review of Charles Hirschkind’s The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics, in Contemporary Islam.
Review of Jillian Schwedler’s Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen, in International Journal of Middle East Studies. (Forthcoming in 2008).
Review of Niloofar Haeri’s Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt, in Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 17(2): 305-7. (2007)
Review of Paul Dresch’s A History of Modern Yemen, in Yemen Update, Spring issue. (2003)
Review of Martha Mundy's Domestic Government: Kinship, Community, and Polity in North Yemen, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 29(2): 182-5. (1998)
Recent Media InterviewsThe New York Times, June 7, 2009
The New York Times, Sept. 11, 2008.
The Los Angeles Times, Sept. 11, 2008.
The London Sunday Times, Sept. 21, 2008.
BBC World Service, September 23-24, 2008.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, October 21, 2008 (focuses on my work on Bin Laden's poetry).
National Public Radio’s “Here and Now” Program, September 29, 2008.
The Sacramento Bee, Sept. 11, 2008.
For several audio-recordings of Bin Laden’s statements and translations: U.C. Davis News and Information, “Spotlight,” Sept. 10, 2008
Selected List of Grants and Fellowships
- Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2010-11.
- Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington D.C., 2009-10.
- National Humanities Center Fellowship, 2007-08 (declined)
- Institute for Research in the Humanities Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall, 2006.
- University of Wisconsin Global Studies Faculty Research Grant, 2006.
- American Institute for Yemeni Studies grants in 2005-06, 1997, 1995-96.
- The Franke Institute for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2001-02.
- Social Science Research Council - International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1998-99.
- Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, 1998.
- Fulbright Fixed-Sum Grant, 1991-92.
Invited Talks
“Al-Qa`ida Off Record: Toward a Description of Bin Laden's Audiocassette Archive,” Modern Orient Center (ZMO), Berlin, Germany, September 18-19, 2008.
“Guantanamo Poetry: Contested Translations and the Problem of Origins,” Post-American Poetics Symposium, The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, April 17-19, 2008.
“The Moral Resonance of Arab Media,” Workshop on censorship, speech, and media in the Middle East, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, April 20-21, 2007.
The Pragmatic Precept" (al-Qaeda): On the Contribution of Ethnolinguistics to Arabic Language Ideologies,” Language and Globalization workshop, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Boston, MA, September 7-9, 2006.
“Challenges of Muslim Counter-American Activism in Egypt”: Workshop on Americanism and Anti-Americanism (panel discussant), The University of Iowa, Iowa City, April 22, 2006.
“al-Qaeda's First Summit: An Analysis of Osama Bin Laden's Oratory”: Anthropology Department, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, September 23, 2005.
“Osama Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War Reassessed”: Invited Lecture, The International Institute, Center for Middle East Studies, and Anthropology Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, March 17, 2005.
“Transcending Invention in Islam: Circulation, Textual Authority, and the Politics of Audiocassettes in Yemen”: Religious Witness: Mediating the Intimate, the Everyday and the World, New York University, NY, May 2004.
“Pop Goes the Audience: Islamist Song, Music, and Politics in Yemen”: Song and Politics in the Arab World Lecture Series, The University of Washington, Seattle, WA, May 2003.
“The ‘Pasha’s’ Broken Verse: An Historical Poetics of Alienation in the Arabic Qasidah”: The Kelly Writer’s House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, January 2003.
“Spectral Character: Authorship and the Marking of Circulation in Yemeni Audiocassette Poetry”: Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, October 2002.
“The Spectral Character of Commerce: Circulation and the Problem of Authorship in Yemeni Audiocassette Poetry”: Main Hall Forum, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, February 2002.
"Metaphors of Commerce: Trans-valuing Tribalism in Yemen Audiocassette Poetry": Conference on Middle Eastern Popular Culture, Magdalen College, Oxford University, England, November 2000.
"'Yafi`a Has Only One Name': Shared Histories and Cultural Linkages between Yafi`a and Hadramawt": Peter-the-Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia, November 1996.
Courses Taught
- RST 1F Religion Today (Winter 2009)
- RST 1E Fundamentalism
(Davis Honors Challenge Project, 2008 - for Freshmen) - RST 80 Religion and Language (2011-12)
- RST 160 History of Islamic Thought (Spring 2008)
- RST 161 Modern Islam
- RST 163 The Social Life of Islam
- RST 201 Language of Heresy (Spring 2009)
- CRT 200B Performance and Politics
- Culture and Media
- Cultural Anthropology and Human Diversity
- Cultural Anthropology: Theory and Ethnography
- Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa
- Text and Context