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Sherene Seikaly

Sherene Seikaly is an assistant professor of history and Middle East studies at The American University in Cairo and co-editor of the Arab Studies Journal. She holds a doctorate in history and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University in 2007, an MA from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and a BA from the University of California, San Diego. Before coming to AUC, Seikaly was the Qatar Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University (2007-2008) and a postdoctoral fellow in Middle Eastern studies in the Europe Program at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2008-2009). Seikaly is also a co-founder of Jadaliyya Ezine.

Situated at the intersections of studies on consumption, political economy, and colonialism, Seikaly's in-progress manuscript, Meatless Days: Consumption and Capitalism in Wartime Palestine, traces the formation of a Palestinian, Arab middle class before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, when Palestinian Arabs became either refugees or second-class citizens. The manuscript exposes middle class actors and critiques new discursive formations of the healthy economy, home, and body. Meatless Days reveals the importance of exploring the years before 1948, not as a waiting ground for a catastrophe, but as a dynamic period when various actors mobilized economic affairs to shape new spatial, national, and social realities.

Research Interests

Consumption, colonialism, economic thought, cultural production, colonial development, and social welfare

Recent Publications

Articles

  • 2012: “Return to the Present.” In Living Together, Jacques Derrida’s Communities of Peace and Violence, ed. Elisabeth Weber and Thomas Carlson. New York: Fordham University Press; forthcoming 2012.
  • 2010: “Arab Businessmen Challenge the 1940s Status Quo,” Mediterraneans 14 (Spring): 85-92.
  • 2010: “Sharjah Diaries,” Sharjah Biennial Book Two (UAE: Bidoun and Sharjah Biennial), (Summer); forthcoming
  • 2007: “If Not Now, When? Lessons Learned from GSOC’s 2005-2006 Strike” with Maggie Clinton, Miabi Chatterji, Natasha Lightfoot, and Naomi Schiller. In The University Against Itself: the NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace, ed. Andrew Ross, Monika Krause, and Mary Nolan, 149-161. Temple: Temple University Press.
  • 2007: “All That Is Chic: Geography and Desire.” In Sharif Waked, Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints, 160-64. Tel Aviv: Andalus Publishing.
  • 2005: “The Long Road Home.” In Gender, Nation, and Belonging: Arab and Arab-American Feminist Perspectives, Special Issue of MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies (May-June): 188-196. Excerpts translated into French as “Retour à Haïfa,” Mediterraneans 14 (Spring): 263-267.

Book Reviews

  • 2011: Review of David De Vries, Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine (Berghan Books, 2010). In Social History forthcoming.
  • 2008: Review of Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948, trans. Haim Watzman (University of California Press, 2008). In Middle East Report 248 (Fall): 47-48.
  • 2006: Review of Keith Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2006). In Arab Studies Journal 13:1 (Fall): 199-202.
  • 2005: Review of Ellen Fleischmann, The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920-1948 (University of California Press, 2003). In The Palestinian Review of Society and History 1:1 (January): 10-13.
  • 2004: Review of Rachel Leah Jones, 500 Dunams on the Moon (RLJ Productions and Momento!, 2003). In Journal of Palestine Studies 133 (Fall): 94.
  • 2004: Review of Elizabeth Boosahda, Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community (University of Texas Press, 2003).  In H-Gender MidEast (June).

Online Articles

Courses Taught

HIST/CREL 333: Zionism and Modern Judaism
HIST/ARIC 35: Society and State in the Middle East