Honors College Announcements

Dr. Joseph is a leading figure in the field of anthropology and women’s studies of the Middle East and North Africa. Joseph’s focus has primarily been on her native Lebanon and its diaspora, but she has also conducted research in Iraq and among Arabs in the US and Canada. Joseph has theorized culturally situated notions of "self", "rights", "citizenship" in the context of different political regimes and in the context of the pressures and processes of globalization. She is carrying out a long-term research project following a cohort of children in a Lebanese village, observing, as they grow, how they learn their notions of rights, responsibilities, nationality, citizenship; how these notions come to be gendered; and how the notions are transferred from family arenas into political/public arenas. She leads a project analyzing the representation of Arabs, Muslims, Arab American, and Muslim Americans in major American print news media. Prof. Joseph is the founder of the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology (which evolved into the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association), founder of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS) and the Arab Families Research Group. She founded and directs the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium, including the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo, the Lebanese American University, Birzeit University, American University of Sharjah, and UC Davis. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 2010-2011. She is co-founder and founding president of the Arab American Studies Association and co-founder of the Association for Middle East Anthropology. She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She has edited or co-edited 10 books and published over 100 articles in journals and books. She is founding Director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis and was awarded the UC Davis Prize – the largest undergraduate teaching and research prize in the United States.

 

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