Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East

This talk, based on a forthcoming book, examines the complex pressures that shape how U.S. scholars research and teach about the Middle East. Using ethnographic and archival research on Middle East anthropology as a lens onto the broader politics of U.S. academe, it reveals the persistent consequences of ongoing racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian prejudice within the academy.

 
Jessica Winegar is an associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University.  Her areas of expertise include: material and visual culture, nationalism, religion, social class, youth, and gender.

Professor Winegar is the author of numerous articles on arts and culture in the Middle East, with a number of recent writings on Egypt’s uprising.  She is also the author of the book Creative Reckonings:  The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2006). This book won the Albert Hourani Book Award for best book in Middle East studies and the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the African Studies Association.  She is also a co-author, with Lara Deeb, of a forthcoming book entitled Anthropology’s Politics: Discipline and Region through the Lens of the Middle East (Stanford).

Cost : Free and open to the public.

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA Anthropology Department Culture, Power and Social Change (CPSC) group