Su Hyeon Cho

Supervisors: Professor Walter Armbrust and Professor Laurent Mignon

I am a doctoral candidate in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Antony’s. The working title of my thesis is ‘Saints and States in a Plastic Bowl: Tales of a Sacred Porridge in Unlikely State’.

My ethnographic field research visits the post-earthquake space in Hatay, a province in Turkey’s southern Mediterranean region. This border region has long been marked by ambiguity, largely because it was incorporated into the Turkey’s borders only after the death of Mustafa Kemal in 1939. 

The historical trajectory of the region has influenced its demographic compositions and local historiography in distinct ways. The feasts of harisa among Hatay’s Arabic-speaking Alawite and Greek Orthodox communities, as well as Armenians of the Musa Dagh, epitomise the complex interplay of crises and the aftermaths boiled down in rites. These crises include the 1915 Armenian genocide, the 1939 annexation, the 1980 coup, the rise of neoliberalism, and contemporary minority politics.

In the wake of the devastating earthquakes in February 2023, cooking harisa has assumed an even deeper significance, symbolising unity and rejuvenation of communities. My project aims to highlight the resilience of these communities and the profound importance of food and ritual, which transcends national borders and religion and ethnicity classification.

I am currently based in Turkey for fieldwork as a doctoral scholar at the Orient Institut Istanbul (OIIST), splitting my time between Istanbul and Hatay. 

I am curating an edited volume with colleagues under the working title “Foodways to the Divine“. 

Related articles:

Cho, Su Hyeon. (2019) ‘The Evvel Temmuz Festival: Cooking and Consuming Identity’. Heritage Turkey 9 (December): 10–11. https://doi.org/10.18866/biaa2019.06.

Cho, Su Hyeon. 2023. “Recipes for Sacred Porridge in Post-Earthquake Turkey.” The Recipes Project. October 24, 2023. https://doi.org/10.58079/tddt.

Cho, Su Hyeon and Daniel Thorpe. 2024. “Celebrating Evvel Temmuz in Post-Earthquake Hatay.” Bianet. July 19, 2024. https://bianet.org/yazi/celebrating-evvel-temmuz-in-post-earthquake-in-hatay-297630.