An interview with Professor James Reilly

The Strand sat down with James Reilly, Professor of modern Middle East history in the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (NMC) department on the occasion of his retirement, to discuss his research experience in the Middle East, teaching at the University of Toronto, and his views on new developments in the field of Middle Eastern studies.

Professor James Reilly has been teaching modern Middle East history at UofT since 1987, but has been studying and interacting with the region and its people for even longer. Professor Reilly is part of a distinct generation of scholars that was able to conduct on-site research in the Middle East during a time of relative peace in the region prior to the 1980s. As a result of his lived experience in the Middle East, Professor Reilly has unique personal insights which lend to him being especially capable of giving life to oftentimes forgotten people and events. Tragically, the opportunity to do on-field research in many Middle Eastern countries is no longer as readily available as it used to be due to the unfavourable geopolitical environment in the region. For instance, nowadays the protracted and ongoing Syrian Civil War robbed many academics of their careers and resources to conduct their research and they even have become targets in the war. 

The Strand asked Professor Reilly about his time as a scholar living and doing academic research in the Levant in the 1970s and 80s, and how the concurring Lebanese Civil War impacted him. Furthermore, we asked him about reflections on teaching at UofT, the new trends he sees within Middle Eastern studies, impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on his teaching, and what new projects he will embark on during his retirement. 

The Strand: The Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) was in many ways like the Syrian Civil War—very long, bloody, and complex. You mentioned you first visited Lebanon as a third-year Georgetown University undergraduate student in the 1974-1975 academic year when the civil war just started. To what extent were you affected by it and how did it impact your academic work and outlook?

James Reilly: In the initial months of the war, it was on-again and off-again fighting in localised areas. I was never in physical danger but it raised many questions in my mind about what’s going on. And of course, I would get 100 different explanations depending on who I was talking to. So this made me very curious to try to understand and conceptualise the war when I went back to the US to finish my undergraduate degree. That’s why I went back to Lebanon to do my Master’s Degree at the American University of Beirut, because I was so curious to untangle this very tangled situation. During my Master’s degree years, the fighting did sometimes hit close to home and it left me with no illusions of modern warfare. It is hard to have any illusions of modern warfare when you see it up close, there is nothing glorious about it. It’s just people getting scared of big projectiles coming toward them, destroying buildings and killing lives. I never had any illusions about war’s ability to solve any problems ever since then. 

You also spent many years in Syria doing research in your field. It must be very disheartening to see a place where you lived and dedicated so much of your academic career get destroyed in the ongoing Civil War. How has this experience been for you? 

I was not able to do my PhD research in Lebanon because by then it was in the midst of an even more terrible stage of its war, so I went to Damascus, Syria where I did the archival research that produced my doctoral dissertation. I went back to Syria many times with my family after that to either just visit for fun and see friends, or conduct more research for my book, A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2002). We continued to return to Syria often in the 2000s, the last time we visited was in 2010. So it has been terrible to observe the destruction of Syria and the tragedy of Syrians whose lives have been destroyed by warfare since 2011. 

In your view as a veteran in Middle Eastern Studies, what are the latest questions and trends being investigated by new students in the field that did not exist when you first started your career? 

Gender and sexuality are very hot topics in Middle Eastern Studies. Basically, looking at the way that you write or consider a gendered history, that is not what we understood 20 or 30 years ago as feminist history; it is a different concept altogether. Now there is a focused look at gender as a fundamental building block, the way society is structured and the way language is formed and the way history is understood, that is something that’s generated a lot of literature recently. And then there is the whole question of what is ‘modernity.’ It is not simply a chronological thing that “Oh, now we’re in the modern period, or now we’re modern,” but there is a whole set of cultural and ideological questions around what is modernity. That’s why it is important to give opportunities for new blood to join university departments, because every generation of students has a different experience. It’s always a dynamic and fast-moving field. History is never dull and it never stands still. The more the merrier, the more voices the better. 

Did the COVID-19 Pandemic and the shift to online classes at UofT influence your decision to retire sooner?

One does slow down a bit as you get older and I had already decided two or three years ago that I’d retire at this time. Besides, I think it is time to open the door and bring in some new blood to invigorate the field, and to bring new perspectives and new questions forward. But the Pandemic has made it a more unexpected final three years. I mean, the fun part of teaching is having an audience and being in a room with people. A very important aspect of having classes with other people is the potential of developing a community. Students learn as much from each other as from their professors, so I’m very happy when I walk into a classroom and I hear the buzz that is already going on, or when students leave in groups after class, talking about whatever is going on in their lives. That community is really important for learning and you just can’t do that when you are staring at a screen. 

And what are you looking forward to during your retirement? Will you be still involved with the NMC department? 

Now I have a couple of little grandchildren who are delightful and I am looking forward to spending more time with them. I will continue to be involved. I still have PhD students that I am supervising so I will continue to be engaged with them and their work. Also, I might be on other student PhD committees, depending on the need. As the university returns to in-person activities, there ought to be guest lectures and events that will continue to be of interest to me. So I will be leaving the teaching ranks, but I will not be leaving UofT entirely!

Author’s note: For those more interested in the Syrian Civil War and Professor Reilly’s work in regard to it, they can refer to his 2019 book, Fragile Nation, Shattered Land: The Modern History of Syria.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.