Education
Ph.D. Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
MPhil. in Anthropology, Columbia University
M.A. in Arab Studies, Georgetown University
B.A. in Communication Arts, Lebanese American University
Research Interest
Introduction to Middle East Studies, Minorities in the Middle East, Comparative Settler Colonialism, Feminist Methodologies, and the Social Justice Capstone.
Biographical Notes
Maya Mikdashi is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her work focuses on state and archival power, sexual and political difference, and law, religion, and secularism. Her first book, Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism and the State in Lebanon (SUP, 2022), won the 2023 Gregory Bateson Book Prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology at the AAA, the Fatima Mernissi Book Award and AMEWS Book Prize at MESA, the LGBTQ Caucus book award at the ISA, and received honorable mention in the Michelle Rosaldo Book Prize given by the Association for Feminist Anthropology at the AAA. Maya sits on the editorial collectives of the Journal of Palestine Studies and Social Text, and is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya. Maya’s work has been translated into and published in Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Portuguese.
