As part of AiW’s continuing dedication to promoting rigorous intellectual and academic work on the issues of gender equality and women’s rights, the Institute launched its annual Dr. Suad Joseph Distinguished Lecture Series. The aim of the series is twofold, first, to bring speakers that highlight important topics or themes in the field of gender and women’s studies globally, with the aim to contextualize this to the Arab Region and second, to provide graduate students from across the Lebanese American University and specifically, from the MA in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies the opportunity to liaise directly with such high-level academics and researchers.
Dr. Suad Joseph is a Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Davis. She founded and is a former president of the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology precursor to the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, the Arab Families Working Group, the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium and the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis. She co-founded the Arab American Studies Association, the Association for Middle East Anthropology, the Women and Gender Studies Program, UC Davis and was the president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures and has edited and co-edited 9 books, including, most recently Arab Family Studies: Critical Reviews (2018 Syracuse UP). She also published over 100 articles. Her awards include the University of California, Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Research (the largest such award in the USA) and life time achievement awards from the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. Her research focuses on Arab families, gender, citizenship and the state, child socialization and cultural constructions of selfhood, and community formation in the Middle East. She has numerous research grants, including grants for training early career scholars in proposal writing and research design. Dr. Joseph completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1975 and joined the faculty at University of California, Davis in 1976.