Through a Chip in My Window: My Grandmother’s Gendered Experiences of the Lebanese Civil War

• In Event: Peace, War, and Social Conflict Panel Session: Gender, Militaries, and Conflict

Abstract

Reflecting on the chip in my childhood bedroom window dating back to the Lebanese Civil War (1975 - 1990), this project explores the enduring "whistling" echoes of that war. Inspired by Stephane Gerson’s work in Scholars and Their Kin (2025), encouraging academics to use family histories as a credible research tool in fields varying from history to sociology and gender dynamics, I center my grandmother Teta Nawal’s retelling of her experiences of the Lebanese Civil War with the aim to explore broader sociological topics, particularly that of gender dynamics during war settings in Lebanon. Particularly, this analysis examines Teta Nawal’s experiences through the lens of Suad Joseph’s theory of patriarchal connectivity, which posits that Lebanese identity is defined by familial extension rather than individual agency with the patriarch representing the whole family’s status and priorities (1997).
From here stem three distinct phases of her experiences during the war. First, she was learning what a war meant and relied on her husband’s protection. Then, she became a more avid participant in maintaining her family and community’s survival, as her family moved with four others into the neighborhood shelter to protect themselves from the constant bombings while resources became scarce. Third, she had to grapple with the growth of her children into young adults, one of which joined the war and another migrated because of it.
Ultimately, the analysis of these accounts demonstrates that while Teta Nawal’s actions sometimes challenged traditional gender norms, they remained rooted in the survival of the family unit, adding support to Joseph’s patriarchal connectivity. Additionally, by documenting and reflecting on these remnants of conflict, I believe that the younger generation must engage with family histories to repair the structural chips in Lebanese society in order to transform and evolve it beyond the restrictive traditional gender dynamics.

Author

• Marc Tohme, New York University