Prof. Suad Joseph

Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies and Founding Director, Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, University of California Davis

Suad Joseph, born in Lebanon, completed her PhD in Anthropology at Columbia University. She has investigated the policitization of religious sects in Lebanon and the connections between religion, ethnicity and state. That work led her to study the impact of women and family on religion and state and their impacts on subjectivity in the Middle East and their diaspora. Current projects include the representation of Muslims in US print news media.

She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Brill 2003-2007) and EWIC Online (2009 -). She is Editor of Intimate Selving in Arab Families: Gender, Self and Identity (Syracuse 1999) and of Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse 2000) and co-editor of Women and Power in the Middle East (U. Pennsylvia 2001). She founded the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology (which became the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association); the Association for Middle East Women's Studies; the Arab Families Working Group; and a consortium of five universities in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine with University of California Davis, where she is Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies and the founding director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program. She is President of the Middle East Studies Association of North American 2010-11.