Beshara Doumani

Contact

Office: 2212 Dwinelle Hall
Hours: On Leave during the 2007-2008 academic year. Currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University.
Phone: (510) 642-3147
Email: bdoumani@berkeley.edu

Education

Ph.D., Georgetown University, 1990
M.A., Georgetown University, 1980
B.A., Kenyon College, 1977

Research Interests

My abiding interest from the very beginning has been in recovering the history of social groups, places, and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the Modern Middle East. My specialty is the social and cultural history of peasants, merchants, artisans, and women who live in the provincial regions of the Arab East during the late Ottoman period (18th and 19th centuries). I try to paint a live portrait of everyday life through studying family history, the political economy of urban-rural relations, and connections between gender and property. Most of my work relies heavily on locally-produced archives such as family papers, material culture and, most of all, legal records of the Islamic courts (sijill). I am currently working on three projects that appear to have little to do with each other, but they all revolve around the ethics and politics of writing people into history:

1. Academic Freedom in the United States
2. Modern social History of the Palestinians
3. Family history in the Eastern Mediterranean with a focus on relationships between property, gender, and Islamic Law (based on a comparative study of Tripoli, Lebanon and Nablus, Palestine, 1660-1860)

Selected Publications

Please note: selected publications are available to download. Those that can be downloaded are indicated with a PDF icon. In order to view these articles you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can also click on links to connect to online information.

Books

Academic Freedom After September 11. Editor. New York: Zone Books, 2006.

• Table of Contents

Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Editor. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003.

I’adat iktishaf Filastin: ahali Jabal Nablus fi al-ahd al-Uthmani. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1998. (Translation of Rediscovering Palestine, with additonal materials).

• Table of Contents and Introduction

Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900. Berkeley, UC Press, 1995.

Selected Articles

"A Passing Storm or a Structural Shift? Challenges to Academic Freedom in the United States after September 11." In Willem B. Drees and Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, Eds. The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2008. 219-241.

Guest Editor, special issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly: Social Biographies and Family Histories. No. 30 (Spring 2007).

"My Grandmother and Other Stories: Histories of the Palestinians as Social Biographies," Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 30 (Spring 2007). 3-9.

"Palestine Versus the Palestinians? The Iron Laws and Ironies of a People Denied," Journal of Palestine Studies 36, no. 4 (Summer 2007), pp. 49-64.

"Le contrat salam et les relations ville-campagne dans la Palestine ottomane." Annales HSS, juillet-aout 2006, No. 4. 901-924.

Co-guest editor with George Bisharat. "Open Forum: Strategizing Palestine." Journal of Palestine Studies, 35:3 (Spring 2006). 37-82.

"Between Coercion and Privatization: Academic Freedom in the Twenty-First Century." In Beshara Doumani, Editor. Academic Freedom After September 11. (New York: Zone Books, January 2006). 11-57.

"Academic Freedom Post-9/11." ISIM Review 15 (Spring 2005), 22-24.

"Nablus taht al-ihtilal: mashahid min al-hayat al-yawmiyya." ("Nablus Under Occupation: Scenes from Daily Life.") Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filistiniyyah, No. 62 (Spring 2005). 153-163.

"Scenes From Daily Life: The View from Nablus." Journal of Palestine Studies, 34:1 (Fall, 2004). 1-14.

"Adjudicating Family: The Islamic Court and Disputes Between Kin in Greater Syria, 1700-1860." In Beshara Doumani, Editor. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. 173-200.

"Introduction." In Beshara Doumani, Editor. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. 1-19.

"Endowing Family: Waqf, Property and Gender in Tripoli and Nablus, 1800-1860."Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40:1 (1998), 3-41.

"The Political Economy of Peace in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Since 1992." Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, October, 1997.

"The Political-Economy of People-Counting: Jabal Nablus, Circa, 1850," International Journal of Middle East Studies, 26:1 (February, 1994), pp. 1-17.

"Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History," Journal of Palestine Studies, 21:2 (Winter, 1992), pp. 5-28.

"Al-ta'rikh wa i`adat al-ta'rikh li Filastin al-uthmaniyya wa al-intidabiyya." (Rethinking Palestinian Ottoman and Mandate History). Afaq Filistiniyya, No. 6 (Summer, 1991), 5-32.

"Family and Politics in Salfit," in Intifada: the Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, edited by Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin, (South End Press: Boston, 1989), pp. 143-154.

"Palestinian Islamic Court Records: a Source for Socioeconomic History," MESA Bulletin, 19:2 (December, 1985), pp. 155-172.

Teaching

Lecture courses: surveys of Middle East History (History 12, 109C)

Undergraduate Seminars: Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli Conflict; Political Economy of Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, Gender and Class in the modern Middle East; History 101: Social History of the Middle East and North Africa.

Graduate Seminars: Topics in the Social and Cultural History fo the Middle East; Family and Modernity in Europe and the Middle East.

Professional Organizations

Middle East Studies Association

American Association of University Professors

MADA (Arab Center for Applied Research)

Service to the Profession

Council Member, 2007-2010: American Historical Association: Pacific Coast Branch.

Editorial Board, 1999-Present: International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Editorial Board, 2002-Present: Journal of Palestine Studies.

Editorial Board Member, 2004-Present: Palestinian Review of Society and History.

Contributing Editor: MERIP Reports