A Map of Coptic Nashville: An Oral History Project
About the Project
In the summer of 2021, Elmahaba received an Opportunity Grant of $2,500 from Humanities Tennessee to launch this project. With that grant, we hired a photographer and mapper, and paid for a subscription of Omeka for the next three years to house our map.
We started simply with the idea to map 30 Coptic spaces in Nashville and the surrounding area. Keria, our photographer, ended up photographing over 40 spaces excluding the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches, and Mirette mapped those locations with descriptions. Both Nashville life-long residents from the Coptic community, Keria and Mirette detailed a history of our people in Nashville.
In December 2021, we received a year-long grant from Humanities Tennessee through SHARP to continue this work and maintain this oral history project for 2022–not only in maintaining and adding to the Omeka, but also in training young Coptic individuals in Nashville to take up oral history through small stipends for interns.
Meet the Team
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Keria Nashed
PHOTOGRAPHER
Check out Keria’s Photography on her Instagram. Keria is a third year undergraduate at Western Kentucky University studying politics and photography.
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Mirette Henin
MAPPER
Mirette is a journalist graduate from Middle Tennessee State University. As a life-long Nashville resident, she contributed in connecting this project to several older photos, histories and sites and advised on mapping strategies to accurately illustrate the depth of Nashville’s Coptic histories.
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Miray Philbos
ADVISOR and FACILITATOR
Miray is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota, where she researches transnational Coptic activism, politics, and memory. Miray advised on this project to ensure a non-Nashville-centered audience would also benefit from this knowledge and history. You can read more about Miray here.
This project was made possible through the generous donation and guidance of the Humanities Tennessee to capture the life and legacy of Coptic Nashvillians. We are grateful to have received the funding during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and to also add to the story the toll of the pandemic in Coptic spaces. We also want to thank all the businesses and peoples who allowed the photography and mapping of their spaces for this project.
Visit our YouTube channel’s “Nashville” playlist to hear interviews from community members in 2022.
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On migration as a woman, working class struggle, and friendship. Watch the whole interview in Arabic here.
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An audio interview back in 2019 at Vanderbilt University. Hear this interview via SoundCloud in English.
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An audio interview in 2020 at Vanderbilt University. Hear it via Soundcloud in English.
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On Coptic migration history to the South, to Nashville and its intersections with other communities of color. Recorded on April 2, 2022. Funded by the generous support of Humanities TN. Watch here.
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Recorded on Sunday, July 3rd, 2022 at Vanderbilt Art Department, this community dialogue is between Professor Qais Assaili, Mr. Mohammed Abdeen, and Mr. Samir Almoteie. There is a poetry reading in Arabic. HERE IS THE LINK.
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In conversation are Bassam Habib, Keria Nashed, and Lydia Yousief to discuss art-making in diaspora, healing, and expression. This event was held at Vanderbilt Art Department on Sunday, July 17th, 2022. Here is the link.
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Elmahaba Center’s Ashraf Fam sits down with Mr. Mesheel Zacharia, and are later joined by Mr. Samer Almoetey. All three are from Shobra, a working class district in Cairo, Egypt with a rich history of protest, transformation, and community, while also sharing underlining features with Nashville. We spoke with Mr. Mesheel via Facebook Live on Sunday, October 16th 9:30 pm Cairo, 2:30 pm CST. Here is the link to the uploaded YouTube interview (Arabic).
