Dr. Jeremy F. Walton (Research Group Leader • Forschungsgruppenleiter), 2016-2022
Curriculum Vitae
Jeremy F. Walton is a cultural anthropologist whose research resides at the intersection of memory studies, urban studies, and new materialism. From 2016 until 2022 he leaded the Max Planck Research Group, “Empires of Memory: The Cultural Politics of Historicity in Former Habsburg and Ottoman Cities,” at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Dr. Walton received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2009. His first book, Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2017), is an ethnography of Muslim NGOs, state institutions, and secularism in contemporary Turkey. Prior to his current position, he held research and teaching fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies of Southeastern Europe at the University of Rijeka, the CETREN Transregional Research Network at Georg August University of Göttingen, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and New York University’s Religious Studies Program. He has published his research in a wide selection of scholarly journals, including American Ethnologist, Sociology of Islam, The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, Die Welt des Islams, and History and Anthropology. He is also the Co-Editor of several volumes, including Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Art and Politics in the Modern Period (University of Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019). “Empires of Memory,” which he designed, is an interdisciplinary, multi-sited project on post-imperial memory in post-Habsburg and post-Ottoman realms.
Research projects
Publications
Books
2017. Muslim civil society and the politics of religious freedom in Turkey. New York: Oxford University Press. Link
Edited Volumes
2020. Sharpening the Haze: Visual Essays on Imperial History and Memory. Co-edited with Giulia Carabelli, Miloš Jovanović, and Annika Kirbis. Ubiquity Press. https://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/books/10.5334/bcd/
2019. Art and Politics in the Modern Period. Co-edited with Dragan Damjanović, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić, and Željka Miklošević. Published by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Zagreb.
Journal Articles
2021. “Silhouettes and Submersions: Istanbul’s Past from Above and Below.” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 8(1): 11-22. DOI:10.2979/jottturstuass.8.1.03
2021. “Polished Memories, Liquid Histories: A Meditation on Istanbul’s Sveti Stefan Church.” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 8(1): 69-90. DOI:10.2979/jottturstuass.8.1.06
2020. “The Ban’s mana: post-imperial affect and public memory in Zagreb.” Cultural Studies 2020. DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2020.1780285
2019. (with Doolan, K., & Cepić, D.) Charity’s dilemmas: an ethnography of gift-giving and social class in Croatia. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 8(1): 11-24. Link
2019. “Introduction: Religious Plurality, Interreligious Pluralism, and Spatialities of Religious Difference.” Coauthored with Neena Mahadev. Religion and Society: Advances in Research, 10: 81-91. DOI: 10.3167/arrs.2019.100107
2019. Introduction: Textured historicity and the ambivalence of imperial legacies. History and Anthropology, 1-13. Link
2019. “On Institutional Pluralization and the Political Genealogies of Post-Yugoslav Islam. Coauthored with Piro Rexhepi. Religion and Society: Advances in Research, 10: 151-167. DOI: 10.3167/arrs.2019.100111
2019. Sanitizing Szigetvár: On the post-imperial fashioning of nationalist memory. History and Anthropology, 1-14. Link
2016. Architectures of interreligious tolerance: The infrastructural politics of place and space in Croatia and Turkey. New Diversities, 17(2): 103-117. Link
2016. Geographies of revival and erasure: Neo-Ottoman sites of memory in Istanbul, Thessaloniki, and Budapest. Die Welt des Islams, 56(3-4): 511-533. Link
Chapters in Edited Volumes
2021. “Graphic Designs: On Constellational Writing, or a Benjaminian Response to Ingold’s Critique of Ethnography.” In Anthropology and Ethnography are Not Equivalent: Reorienting Anthropology for the Future. Irfan Ahmad, ed. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 53-70.
2020. “Already Dead? Of Tombstones, Empire, and Photography.” Chapter in Sharpening the Haze: Visual Essays on Imperial History and Memory. Co-edited with Giulia Carabelli, Miloš Jovanović, and Annika Kirbis. Ubiquity Press.
2020. “Of Images and Empires.” Coauthored with Giulia Carabelli, Miloš Jovanović, and Annika Kirbis. Introduction to Sharpening the Haze: Visual Essays on Imperial History and Memory. Co-edited with Giulia Carabelli, Miloš Jovanović, and Annika Kirbis. Ubiquity Press.
2019. “Intersections of Art and Politics.” Coauthored with Dragan Damjanović, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić and Željka Miklošević. Introduction to Art and Politics in the Modern Period. Co-edited with Dragan Damjanović, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić, and Željka Miklošević. Published by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Zagreb.
2019. “Metrosophy: Rereading Walter Benjamin in Light of Religion After Religion.” Chapter 6 in All Religion is Inter-Religion. Engaging the Work of Steven M. Wasserstrom. Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri and Paul Robertson, eds. Bloomsbury Academic.
Miscellaneous Essays
2021. “Pavelić’s Ghost.” Sidecar 3 June. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/pavelics-ghost
2020. “To Steward Unruly Imperial Pasts.” TRAFO: Blog for Transregional Research. 4 March. https://trafo.hypotheses.org/230982020. “Space, place.” A contribution to the special project, “A Universe of Terms”. The Immanent Frame, 28 February. https://tif.ssrc.org/2020/02/28/space-place-walton/
2019. “The Civil Society Effect Revisited: On the Politics of Liberal Philanthropy Today.” Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought, 2(2): 101-107.
Book Reviews
2021. Review of Patricia Morris, Fetishism, Psychoanalysis, Anthropology. Published in Logos. A Journal of Modern Society & Culture. http://logosjournal.com/2021/patricia-morris-fetishism-psychoanalysis-anthropology-london-authors-collective-press-2020/
2021. Review of Charles Sabatos, Frontier Orientalism and the Turkish Image in Central European Literature. Published in Southeastern Europe, 45 (2021): 265-267
2021. Review of J. Andrew Bush, Between Muslims: Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan. Published in Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 8(1): 490-492.
2020. Review of Angie Heo’s The political lives of saints. Christian-Muslim mediation in Egypt. Published in Social Anthropology, 28(1, February): 197-198.
2020. Review of Girard, Polo & Scalbert-Yücel (eds.), Turkish cultural policies in a global world. Published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 26: 434-435.
Media appearance
2019. “New Books Network: Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey.” Interview with Kristian Petersen, New Books Network. https://newbooksnetwork.com/jeremy-f-walton-muslim-civil-society-and-the-politics-ofreligious-freedom-in-turkey-oxford-up-2017/Other
2017. On the recent past, fraught present, and tenuous future of Turkish Muslim civil society. SSRC Blog: The Immanent Frame. Link