Sherene Seikaly

Topics of Interest:
Economic Thought, Development, The Body, Liberalism

Countries/Regions of Interest:
Middle East, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon

List of Publications

Book:
Men of Capital: Economy and Scarcity in Palestine (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2015)

Articles and Chapters:
2014 “Bodies and Needs: Lesson from Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014); 784-786.

2013 with Max Ajl, “Of Europe: Zionism and the Jewish Other,” In Europe after Derrida: Crisis and Potentiality, ed. Bora Isyar and Agnes Czajka. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2012 “Return to the Present.” In Living Together, Jacques Derrida’s Communities of Peace and Violence, ed. Elisabeth Weber. New York: Fordham University Press.

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): 10-18.

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, eds. 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 2010): 263-267. Republished in Arab and Arab-American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging, eds. Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber, 292-301. (2011) Syracuse University Press.

Book Reviews: 
2012 Review of David De Vries, Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine (Berghan Books, 2010). In Social History 37:1  (February): 122-123.

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:
2014 “Palestine As Archive,” Stanford University Blog, Mada Masr and Jadaliyya (June)

2014 “Our Man Sisi,” Mada Masr and Jadaliyya (May)

2014 “Commemorating Janet Abu-Lughod” Jadaliyya (February)

2013 with Lina Attalah and Maysara Abdulhq  “Remembering Ali Shaath” Jadaliyya (December)

2013 “Gender and the People in Revolutionary Times,” Jadaliyya (June)

2013 with Adel Iskander, “Between Inaction and Complicity: The Shi‘a and the Brotherhood” (June)

2013 with Maya Mikdashi, “New Texts Out Now: Maya Mikdashi, What is Settler Colonialism? and Sherene Seikaly, Return to the Present,” Jadaliyya (May)

2013 “The Meaning of Revolution,” Jadaliyya (January)

2012 with Pascale Ghazaleh, Hesham Sallam, Adel Iskandar, Mouin Rabbani, “The Politics of Trains.” Jadaliyya (November)

2012 “Counting Calories and Making Lemonade in Gaza,” Egypt Independent (November)

2012 with Maya Mikdashi “Lets Talk About Sex,” Jadaliyya (April)

Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previously she was Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo. She is the editor of the Arab Studies Journal, and co-founder and editor of Jadaliyya e-zine. Seikaly's Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016) explores how Palestinian capitalists and British colonial officials used economy to shape territory, nationalism, the home, and the body. 

I am a historian of capitalism, consumption, and development in the modern Middle East. The most enduring concern of my scholarly research has been to explore how individuals, groups, and governments deploy both concepts and material practices to shape economy, the body, the self, and the other. My research on Palestinian businessmen; reformers of the domestic sphere; thinkers and scientists; and British colonial officers and institutions contributes to social, cultural, and intellectual history, political economy, cultural studies, and gender studies.