乐鱼 体育

Professional Affiliation

Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Expert Bio

My scholarly work has been about the complicated consequences of conflict.  My first book, Palestinian Village Histories, focuses on memory and history among Palestinians made refugees in the course of the 1948 War and the creation of Israel. I collected and examined over 120 village books published by Palestinians about their villages that were destroyed, which I combined with interviews and ethnographic research in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Israel. Through a close examination of the village books and other commemorative activities, my research explores how history is written and contested, as well as the roles that Palestinian conceptions of their past play in contemporary life.

More recently, as an American scholar of the Middle East, and a cultural anthropologist, I became intrigued by the US military鈥檚 turn after 2003 to incorporate culture into its repertory of war fighting skills. As an anthropologist, my focus is less on policy and more on people, and I seek to understand what the cultural turn means to the men and women on the ground. Extensive interviews with US Soldiers and Marines provided me with insights into how they perceive their experiences in war and what they are taught about Arabs, Iraqis, and Afghans. My many months spent living and working with Iraqis living in Jordan and Syria has allowed me a window into Iraqis varied perceptions of Americans, both soldiers and civilians. My task will be to combine these perspectives with the extensive material that has been produced on strategic policy, COIN discourse, cultural training, and academic research into cogent and relevant analytical work about the 21st century war experience.

My interest in culture was manifested early in a BA in Art History that was complemented by two years of study at the American University in Cairo鈥檚 program in Islamic art and architecture. I have continued this interest through an MA in Modern Arabic literature and more currently via one of my student鈥檚 projects, the Palestine Poster Project Archive. Moving beyond war, my goal is to write a book on the Palestinian poster art tradition. I have also been part of a research/policy project on urban refugees in Cairo, Amman, and Damascus, through Georgetown University鈥檚 Institute for the Study of International Migration and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

Education

B.A., University of California, Davis, Art History, 1990, Magna cum laude;  M.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Modern Arabic Literature, 1993; Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies, 2002 

乐鱼 体育 Project

鈥淐ultural Knowledge and U.S. Military Strategy鈥�

Project Summary

My project addresses how 鈥渃ulture鈥� has been adopted into the war fighting and counterinsurgency strategy of the US military and its contractors in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I investigate the ways that culture has been defined and the legacies that the new policies and strategies draw from, as well as the pedagogical methods that are designed to teach culture to US military troops. My focus is on three central elements: the material that has been produced to train the US military servicemen and women about culture and the culture of others, the experiences of US troops with cultural training in the arena of war, and the experiences of Iraqis and Afghans with the US troops in the realm of 鈥渃ulture.鈥� As the US military continues to develop strategies for invasion, occupation, stabilization, and rebuilding that take into consideration culture as a key variable in the fight, this project explores the possibilities for both positive and negative interactions that are created at the intersections of culture and military power.

Major Publications

• Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced. Stanford University Press. November 2010, 312pp.
• 鈥淚raqi Culture and the US Military: Understanding Training, Experiences, and Attitudes鈥� with Dahlia Elzein and Dena Takruri. Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency. Edited by John Kelley, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, Jeremy Walton (University of Chicago Press: 2010), pp.   297-310.
• "Culture as a Weapon System" in Middle East Report (MERIP). No 255, July 2010.
•  -- Translated into German in Wissenschaft & Frieden. Issue 2011-1: Moderne Kriegsf眉hrung
• 鈥淧alestinian Village Memorial Books as Collective Autobiographies (In Arabic) in Al-Tarkih al-Ijtima'i li-bilad al-Sham--Qira'a fil-Siyar wal-Siyar al-Dhatiyya [Social History of the Levant: Studies of Biographies and Autobiographies]. (Beirut and Ramallah: Institute for Jerusalem Studies, 2007).
• 鈥淢apping the Past, Recreating the Homeland鈥� in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, edited by Lila Abu Lughod and Ahmad Sa鈥檇i. (NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 54-76.
• 鈥淟anguage and Loss, Or How to Bark like a Dog and Other Lessons from al-Jahiz鈥� in Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies. Spring 2004, pp. 97-112.