Dr. Suad Joseph

University of California, Davis

Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Anthropology Department, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616

Office 220 Young (530) 752-1593, 509 Mrak (530) 752-7312,  Fax (530) 752-8885

E-mail: sjoseph@ucdavis.edu

Education

1962-66 State University of New York at Cortland. B.A. Social Science. Magna cum Laude.

1966-67 University of Pittsburgh. Anthropology. One year graduate work.

1967-75 Columbia University Anthropology. Ph.D. 1975. Thesis title: The Politicization of Religious Sects in Borj Hammoud, Lebanon.

Dr. Suad Joseph CV

Most of Dr. Joseph's anthropological field research has focused on her native Lebanon. Her early work investigated the politicization of religious sects in Lebanon leading up to the civil war in 1975--questions of ethnicity and state, local community organization and development. That work led her to consider the impact of women's visiting networks on local and national politics, and the relationships between local communities, community organizations and the state. Joseph developed a long-term research program on the interface of gender, family and state in the Middle East, with a focus on Lebanon, with comparative work in Iraq. Central to this research program has been her work theorizing 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. The project includes analysis of citizenship, family and transnationalism as these families have migrated to the US and Canada over the course of the study.  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 a six-university 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 8 books, and published over 100 articles in journals and books.  She has been a faculty at the University of California, Davis since 1976 where she is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies, and Faculty Assitant to the Chancellor.  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.