In geography, "Landscape and Memory" studies focus on the politicized relationship between place and history, referring to this as the "politics of memory." These studies frequently over-privilege two specific foci: nationalism and formal institutions, a focus which excludes the ways that history is contested through place in cases where formal institutions like the state are comparatively "weak." Drawing on Practice Theory, this project attempts show how actors attempt to structure history and the social world in the absence or shadow of institutions like the state through acts of narrative place-making. Focusing on the "Hariri Mosque" in Beirut, Lebanon, I argue that political elites from the Hariri family and Future Movement have used this mosque to tell a story about Lebanon that reproduces sectarianism as the primary category of division by which social life is understood in Lebanon.

This dissertation explores the role of transnational dynamics in civil war. The conflict in Syria has been described as experiencing one of the most brutal civil wars in recent memory. At the same time, it bears the hallmarks of a deeply “internationalized” conflict, raising questions about the role of transnational forces in shaping its structural dynamics. Focusing on Syria’s conflict, I examine how different actors draw on transnational networks to shape the geographies of “wartime governance.” Wartime governance has been acknowledged by many scholars to be an important process of civil wars, and yet it is frequently conceptualized as a “subnational” or “local” process. For Syria’s opposition, I investigate how it both produces decidedly transnational spaces in Syria’s Northwest, while also illuminating the role of a particular network of actors in doing so. For the global jihadi network Daesh (known also as the Islamic State), I illustrate the contrast between its rhetoric of transnational jihad and its practices of governance, which is considerable. Ultimately, the dissertation suggests that tracing these transnational processes not only draws together literatures on the “local” and “transnational” dimensions of civil wars, but reveals the precarious political contexts which individuals must navigate in wartime.