Editorial Committee Members

Sinan Antoon

Sinan Antoon is an Iraq-born poet, novelist and filmmaker. He left Iraq in 1991 and holds degrees from Baghdad and Georgetown and is a PhD candidate in Arabic literature at Harvard and currently teaching at the Gallatin School of New York University. He has published poems and essays in both Arabic and English in The Nation, Middle East Report, al-Ahram Weekly and many others. He co-directed and co-produced the film "About Baghdad" documenting the lives of Iraqis after the 2003 invasion. Antoon returned to Iraq in July 2003 to shoot the film. Antoon's poetry was anthologized in Iraqi Poetry Today. He is a contributing editor to the London-based journal Banipal.

"Of Bridges and Birds," Al-Ahram Weekly, 17 – 23 April 2003

"Democracy and Necrology," Al-Ahram Weekly, 27 January - 2 February 2005

Seven Poems by Sinan Antoon, 2003

Shiva Balaghi

Shiva Balaghi is a historian of the modern Middle East, with special interests in the interrelated histories of colonialism, nationalism, gender and visual culture. She is a Cogut International Humanities Fellow at Brown University, where she teaches history. She is completing a book on the cultural history of Iran from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. She is the vice-president of the American Institute of Iranian Studies and a co-editor of Middle East Desk. Her publications include Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East (co-edited, 1994), Picturing Iran: Art, Society, and Revolution (co-edited, 2002), and Saddam Hussein: A Biography (2005). She has published numerous articles on Iranian intellectual history and visual culture, and her writing has been translated into Chinese, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. She has taught history and women's studies at the University of Michigan, the University of Vermont and New York University.

Asli Bali

Asli Bali is Acting Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, she served as the Irving S. Ribicoff Fellow in Law at the Yale Law School. Her research focuses on public international law, comparative legal systems of the Middle East and civil and immigrants' rights in the United States. In addition, as an attorney in private practice, she has worked on a variety of civil and human rights issues both in US courts and in the international context, including as an advocate before the World Tribunal on Iraq in 2004 on the subject of possible war crimes. She earned her J.D. from the Yale Law School; she also holds an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University and is currently completing her PhD in the department of politics at Princeton University.

"The US and Iranian Nuclear Impasse," Middle East Report 241, Winter 2006

Bali and Richard Falk, "International Law at the Vanishing Point," Middle East Report 241, Winter 2006

Moustafa Bayoumi

Moustafa Bayoumi is an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is coeditor of The Edward Said Reader (Vintage, 2000) and has also published essays in Transition, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Souls, Arab Studies Quarterly, Interventions, Amerasia, The Village Voice, the London Review of Books and others. As a regular columnist for the Progressive Media Project, he has written op-eds that have appeared in dozens of newspapers, both nationally and internationally. His research interests include the history and practice of African-American Islam, Muslim migrations and French politics, American studies and the politics of the Middle East, and the intersections between postcolonial, ethnic and area studies. Currently he is working on a project about Arab-Americans in Brooklyn, New York.

"Our Work is of This World," Amerasia Journal, 2005

"Diary," London Review of Books, May 5, 2005

"Fingerprinting program unfair, alienating," Progressive Media Project, January 8, 2004

"East of the Sun (West of the Moon): The Harmonic History of Islam Among Asian and African Americans," a lecture by Prof. Moustafa Bayoumi, 5-16-02

Louise Cainkar

Louise Cainkar is a sociologist and teaches courses in social justice in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her research focuses on Arabs and Muslims in diaspora, especially in the United States. Her recent book is Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience after 9/11, based on three years of ethnographic research and more than one hundred in-depth interviews and oral histories with Arab Muslims in metropolitan Chicago (2009, Russell Sage Foundation). Cainkar’s other recent publications have appeared in City and Society, The Journal of American Ethnic History, Amerasia Journal, Journal of Sociological Practice, Contexts, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, and the Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies. In 2003, Cainkar was recognized as a Carnegie Corporation Scholar for her work exploring Islamic revival among Arab Americans. Cainkar is on the steering committee of Marquette’s Center for Peacemaking.

"The Impact of 9/11 Attacks and Their Aftermath on Muslims and Arabs in the United States," in John Tirman, ed., The Maze of Fear: Security & Migration After September 11th (New York: The New Press, Spring, 2004)

"Strategies for What Matters Most: Assessing the Need, Addressing the Problem: Working with Disadvantaged Muslim Immigrant Families and Communities," a report for the Annie E. Casey Foundation

Rochelle Davis

Rochelle Davis is assistant professor of Arab culture and society at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan in 2002. Her past research has explored Arab and Arab American identity and Palestinian social and cultural life prior to 1948. Her most recent work deals with village memorial books published by Palestinian refugees about their villages that were destroyed in 1948. A book manuscript on the subject is currently in progress.

Lara Deeb

Lara Deeb is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of women’s studies and anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She is also an Academy Scholar at Harvard University’s Academy for International and Area Studies for 2006-07. She is the author of An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (2006), "Hizballah, A Primer," Middle East Report Online, July 31, 2006 as well as of a number of articles on the transformation of Shi‘i religious ritual, Islamic women’s participation in the public sphere and Hizballah in Lebanon. Her current projects include an analysis of the intersection of public religiosities and understandings of temporality, a new project on "interfaith intimacies" in relation to transnational discourses about sexuality and religion, and an ongoing collaborative field research project on the Islamic cultural sphere in Lebanon.

"Hizballah: A Primer," Middle East Report Online (July 31, 2006

Lisa Hajjar

Lisa Hajjar teaches in the Law and Society Program at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author of Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005). Hajjar chairs the editorial committee of Middle East Report and is a member of the board of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). Her main areas of expertise include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, international human rights and humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions), and the relationship between law and conflict in the contemporary Middle East. Her research areas include torture, nationality, ethnicity, race and gender, human rights movements and activism, and sociology of law.

"From Nuremberg to Guantanamo: International Law and American Power Politics," Middle East Report (Winter 2003)

"Torture and the Future," Middle East Report Online (May 2004)

Bassam Haddad
Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal, a peer-reviewed research publication and is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, "About Baghdad" and director of a film series on "Arabs and Terrorism." He is currently working on his book on Syria's political economy, provisionally titled "The Political Economy of Regime Security: State-Business Networks in Syria." Bassam recently directed a new film series on Arab/Muslim immigrants in Europe, titled The "Other" Threat.

Bayann Hamid

Bayann Hamid is the media coordinator for MERIP. She holds a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Bayann has traveled and worked in various countries of the Middle East. Bayann has previously worked for AMIDEAST, Damascus, the Bethlehem Peace Center in the West Bank and Association Najdeh in Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. Between 2005 and 2007, she worked at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

Waleed Hazbun

Waleed Hazbun is assistant professor of political science at The Johns Hopkins University where he teaches international relations and Middle East politics. He is the author of Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World (Minnesota, 2008), a book that explores the politics of globalization and geopolitical change in the Middle East through the lens of tourism. He has written and lectured widely about the history and political economy of tourism in the region. He is currently working on a second book project that demonstrates the importance of social forces and political ideologies in reshaping the dynamics of regional and international politics in the Middle East. It also explores the politics of knowledge and the understanding of ‘modernity’ and their influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

“Beyond the Bush Doctrine,” Middle East Report 249 (Winter 2008)

“Reading Culture, Identity and Space in US Foreign policy,” Middle East Report 236 (Fall 2005)

Toby Jones

Toby Jones is assistant professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in Middle East history from Stanford University. In 2008-2009 he was a fellow at Princeton’s Environmental Institute where he worked on the Oil, Energy and Middle East project. His main research interests focus on the history of oil, state-building, politics, Shia-Sunni relations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf. Jones teaches courses on the history of the modern Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran and Iraq in the 20th century and the history of oil. He also worked as the Persian Gulf Analyst for the International Crisis Group from 2004-2006 where he wrote about reform and sectarianism in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Jones’ forthcoming book on oil in Saudi Arabia will be published by Harvard University Press in fall 2010.

"The Clerics, the Sahwa and the Saudi State," Strategic Insights, Volume IV, Issue 3, March 2005

"The Iraq Effect in Saudi Arabia," Middle East Report, 237, Winter 2005

"Seeking a Social Contract in Saudi Arabia," Middle East Report, 228, Fall 2003

"Violence and the Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia," Middle East Report Online, November 13, 2003.

Arang Keshavarzian

Arang Keshavarzian is associate professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University where he teaches courses on politics, political economy, and Iranian history. His book, Bazaar and State in Iran: the Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (2007), was based on his dissertation research and engages with the literature on networks and political institutions in order to trace the structure of the Tehran Bazaar under the Pahlavi monarchy and Islamic Republic. His current research interests revolve around the political economy of free trade zones in the Persian Gulf, in particular in Dubai and southern Iran. His research on the Persian Gulf examines the processes of imperialism and globalization from the perspective of local circuits of trade and regional strategic conditions.

"Iran's Conservatives Face the Electorate," Middle East Report Online (February 1, 2001)

"On the Eve of Iran's Presidential Elections: Report from Tehran," Middle East Report Online (June 7, 2001)

Keshavarzian and Mohammad Maljoo, "Paradox and Possibility in Iran's Presidential Election," Middle East Report Online (June 17, 2005)

"The UAE's Space Race: Sheikhs and Starchitects Envision the Future," Middle East Report (Fall 2008)

Zia Mian

Zia Mian is a physicist and director of the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security. His work focuses on nuclear weapons and nuclear power issues, especially in South Asia. Mian's work is published in technical journals and magazines, as well as newspapers in a number of countries. He is co-editor of Out of the Nuclear Shadow (2002). Earlier books include Pakistan's Atomic Bomb and the Search for Security (1995) and Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan's Crises of State and Society (1997).

Pete Moore
Pete Moore is associate professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University. He is author of Doing Business in the Middle East: Politics and Economic Crisis in Kuwait and Jordan (2004) as well as numerous articles on state-business relations in the Middle East. His areas of research are economic development in the Middle East, trade liberalization and sub-state conflict. His current project focuses on the political economy of civil war in Iraq.

Norma Claire Moruzzi

Norma Claire Moruzzi is an associate professor of political science, history and gender and women’s studies and Director of the International Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received a Ph.D. in political science from The Johns Hopkins University in 1990. Her research interests focus on the intersections of gender, religion and national identity, particularly for Jewish and Muslim women. Her book Speaking through the Mask: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Social Identity (Cornell University Press, 2000) won the 2002 Gradiva Award, and she has published articles on Iranian women, youth and cinema; politicized veiling in France and Algeria; contemporary feminist approaches to female circumcision; and nineteenth century intersections of religious revivalism and imperial policy. Her current project is a book analyzing transformations in Iranian women’s lives since the 1979 Revolution, tentatively titled Tied Up in Tehran: Women, Social Change, and the Politics of Daily Life. Since 1998 she has been regularly conducting field work in Iran, as well as participating in and conducting workshops for women’s groups and contributing to local journals.

“Tied Up in Tehran: A Metaphor,” Middle East Report 250 (Spring 2009)

“Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: Young Iranian Women Today,” Middle East Report 241 (Winter 2006)

"Women's Space/Cinema Space: Representations of Public and Private in Iranian Films," Middle East Report 212 (Fall 1999)

Julie Peteet

Julie Peteet is chair and professor of anthropology at the University of Louisville. Her research in Palestine and Lebanon has focused on displacement, refugees, violence, space, place and identity, and colonial spatial strategies. She is the author of Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (2005) and Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (1991). Her articles have appeared in Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Signs, Cultural Survival, Social Analysis and Middle East Report, among other journals.

Stealing Time, Middle East Report 248 (Fall 2008)

Unsettling the Categories of Displacement, Middle East Report 244 (Fall 2007)

Shira Robinson

Shira Robinson is assistant professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She works on the social and cultural history of the Modern Middle East, with an emphasis on colonialism, citizenship, nationalism and cultures of militarism after World War I. She is currently revising her manuscript, Liberal Dispossession: Palestinian Citizenship under Military Rule, 1948-1967, which examines the Israeli state's imposition of military rule on the Palestinian Arabs who remained within its borders after 1948. Her publications include "Local Struggle, National Struggle: Palestinian Responses to the Kafr Qasim Massacre and its Aftermath, 1956-1966," which appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in August 2003. Her research interests include the Modern Middle East, the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle Eastern Jews, the Cultures of Empire and Comparative Settler-Colonialism.

My Hairdresser is a Sniper, Middle East Report 223 (Summer 2002)

Ted Swedenburg

Ted Swedenburg is professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (1995, 2003 2nd ed), co-editor with Rebecca Stein of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture (2005) and co-editor with Smadar Lavie of Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Identity (1996). His current research concerns Middle Eastern and Islamic popular musics.

"Snipers and the Panic Over Five Percent Islamic Hip-Hop," Middle East Report Online (November 10, 2002)

"Arab 'World Music' in the US," NITLE Arab World project, originally published in Middle East Report 219 (Summer 2001)

"Sa‘ida Sultan/Danna International: Transgender Pop and the Polysemiotics of Sex, Nation and Ethnicity on the Israeli-Egyptian Border," in Walter Armbrust, ed., Mass Mediations, New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000)

Nada Shabout

Nada Shabout is an associate professor of art history and director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Studies Institute (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas. She also serves as founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA). Her teaching and writing interests include Arab and Islamic visual culture, theory and history, imperialism, Orientalism and globalization. She is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (University of Florida Press, 2007) and co-editor of New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century (Thames & Hudson, 2009). She co-curated Modernism and Iraq at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2009 and curated the traveling exhibition, Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, 2005-2009. She has published numerous articles on modern and contemporary Iraqi art and the relationship of identity and visual representations in Iraq. Since 2003, she has been working on the recovery, documentation and digitization of modern Iraqi heritage, particularly the collection previously held at the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art, which will soon be available on The Open Modern Art Collection of Iraq website, supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities-Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants.

“Are Images Global?”  Tate Papers (Autumn 2009) and Nafas Art Magazine (August 2009).

"Time and Space in the Work of Shakir Hassan Al Said: A Journey towards the One-dimension." Nafas Art Magazine, May 2008.

"Cultural Destruction and its Implications," ArteEast (July 2006).

Chris Toensing

Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report and director of the Middle East Research and Information Project. Toensing has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Progressive and other US newspapers and magazines, and has appeared hundreds of times on radio and TV programs to discuss Middle East politics. He holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. An Arabic speaker, Toensing also lived in Egypt for three years.

Chris Toensing's page at AlterNet.org

"Israel, the US and 'Targeted Killings,'"Middle East Report Online (February 17, 2003)

"The Iraqi Governing Council's Sectarian Hue," Middle East Report Online (August 20, 2003)

"Holding Syria Accountable, Though Selectively," Daily Star (September 2003)

"Never Too Soon to Say Goodbye to Hi," Middle East Report Online (September 2003)

"To Deny Iran Atomic Weapons, Create a Nuclear-Free Region." Daily Star (December 16, 2003)

"Lost in Our Own Little World," Los Angeles Times (April 18, 2004)

"Postcards From the Abyss," The Nation (November 28, 2005)

George R. Trumbull IV

George R. Trumbull IV received his Ph.D. in 2005 from Yale University. His research and teaching focus on the history of North and Islamic Africa, colonialism and its aftermaths, narrative history and environmental studies. Having taught at Yale, Tulane, and New York Universities, he now teaches courses on Islamic and African history in a global context, Black and Islamic European Studies and economic history as an Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College. Professor Trumbull's book, An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge, and Islam (Algeria, 1871-1914), will appear in 2009 as part of Cambridge University Press' "Critical Perspectives on Empire" series. Articles have appeared in the special issue of French Historical Studies on France and Islam and in the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. He has recently begun a new book entitled An Ocean of Sand: A Cultural History of Water in the Sahara.