Digital Commons Network^™

Surviving Isis:Life Stories Of Yezidi Women, Marian Mounir Rizkalla

Theses and Dissertations

My research centers on the experiences of five Yezidi female refugees in Kurdistan and how they survived the ISIS siege of their hometown- Sinjar. Yezidis, an ethno-religious community living in northern Iraq were the center of most news stories for the massacres they faced under ISIS and the sex-enslavement of thousands of them. This research attempts to show how a large-scale event like genocide impacts the life of the individual on the micro-level, but also how individual narratives are instrumental in constructing a collective identity, presenting Yezidis as a historically persecuted group. By examining sectarian relations in Iraq before and …