Clements, Henry Atticus

Yale University

Research Title: Documenting Community: The Süryani of the Ottoman Empire

Mr. Clements is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Yale University. His research focuses on the process of communal formation undertaken by the Syriac Christians of the Ottoman Empire. This communal formation took place simultaneous to 19th-century Ottoman attempts to transcend religious and ethnic difference by articulating a broadly “Ottoman” identity. In order to transcend “religion” and “ethnicity,” however, the Ottomans first had to identify what constituted these notions. His research explores how the Syriac consolidated a form of difference at exactly the moment when difference was meant to disappear.