Reading List (2021)
Below is a listing of the readings that made up the 2021 institute reader. They are grouped by topic, and in the order they are being read and discussed by participants. Please note that in some cases the readings are designed to familiarize participants with the empirical history of modern Lebanon. In other cases, they are designed to provide participants with a sampling of the literature on a particular period, topic, or discipline. Participants are expected to complete the reading list prior to the start of the workshop since there is little time for lengthy reading during the workshop. This reader is designed to serve as a basis of discussion in the workshop seminar series and to supplement the information presented in the lecture series.
Please note that the reader for each year is based on the combined academic training and research interests of participants long with the topics and institutions covered by state-of-the-field lectures and site visits of a given year.
Ottoman Background
Mandate Period
Post-Independence Lebanon
Anthropology of Lebanon
Lebanese Literature
Political Economy
Diaspora
Urban Studies in Lebanon
Palestinians in Lebanon
Please note that the reader for each year is based on the combined academic training and research interests of participants long with the topics and institutions covered by state-of-the-field lectures and site visits of a given year.
Ottoman Background
- Stefan Winter, “Introduction” and “The Invention of Lebanon: Ottoman Governance in the Coastal Highlands, 1563-1683,” The Shiites of Lebanon Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1788 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
- Ussama Makdisi, “Reinventing Mount Lebanon,” The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (University of California, 2000).
- Jens Hanssen, “The Struggle for Self-Determination," Fin de Siecle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford University Press, 2005).
- Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, “The Late Nineteenth-century World and the Emergence of a Global Radical Culture," The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (University of California, 2010).
Mandate Period
- Elizabeth Thomson, “The Veil and the Dual Legal System,” Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (Columbia University Press, 2000).
- Max Weiss, “Introduction” and “Institutionalizing Personal Status,” In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon (Harvard University Press, 2010).
- Malek Abisaab, “Shiite Peasants and a New Nation in Colonial Lebanon: The Intifada of Bint Jubayl, 1936,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 29, no. 3 (2009).
- Malek Abissab, “Introduction,” Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (Syracuse University Press, 2010)
Post-Independence Lebanon
- Michael Hudson, “Presidential Power: The Attempt to Modernize,” The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (Random House, 1968).
- Zeina Maasro, "Dislocating the Nation: Mediterraneanscapes in Lebanon's Tourist Promotion," Cosmopolitan Radicalism: The Visual Politics of Beirut's Global Sixties (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
- Elizabeth Picard, "The Political Economy of Civil War in Lebanon," in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, ed. Steven Heydemann (University of California Press, 2000).
- Reinoud Lenders, "The Political Settlement of the Second Republic," Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Post-War Lebanon (Cornell University Press, 2012).
Anthropology of Lebanon
- Lila Abu-Lughod, “Zones of Theory in the Anthropology of the Arab World,” Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989).
- Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar, “Anthropologies of Arab-Majoirty Societies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012).
- Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar, “The Post-Cold War Politics of Middle East Anthropology: Insights from a Transitional Generation Confronting The War on Terror,” in Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the New Millennium, edited by Sherene Hafez and Susan Slyomovics (Indiana University Press, 2013).
Lebanese Literature
- Elias Khoury, "The Unfolding of Arabic Fiction and Modern Memory," The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association (Spring 1990).
- Michelle Hartman, "Introduction," Native Tongue, Stranger Talk: The Arabic and French Literary Landscapes of Lebanon (Syracuse University Press, 2014).
- Syrine Hout, “Introduction," Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction: Home Matters in the Diaspora (EUP, 2012).
Political Economy
- Akram Khater, "Factory Girls," Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (University of California, 2000).
- Elizabeth Thompson, "The Climax and Crisis of the Colonial Welfare State in Syria and Lebanon during World War II," in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, ed. Steven Heydemann (University of California Press, 2000).
- Najib Hourani, "Capitalists in Conflict: The Lebanese Civil War Reconsidered," Middle East Critique (2015).
- Hicham Safieddine, "Suits and Shadows" in Banking on the State: The Financial Foundations of Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2020).
Diaspora
- Akram Khater, "Emigration" and “Mahjar,” Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (University of California, 2000).
- Sarah Gualtieri, “Claiming Whiteness,” Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (University of California Press, 2009).
- Andrew Arsan, “Introduction,” Interlopers of Empire: The Lebanese Diaspora in Colonial French West Africa (Oxford University Press, 2014).
- Stacy Fahrenthold, “Introduction” and “Mashriq and Mahjar,” Between the Ottomans and the Entente : The first World War in the Syrian and Lebanese diaspora, 1908-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Urban Studies in Lebanon
- Mona Fawwaz, “Notes on Beirut’s Historiography: Towards a People’s History of the City,” in Des Banlieues a la ville, edited by Elisabeth Longuenesse and Cecilia Pieri (Pressess de L-Ifpo).
- Lara Deeb and Mona Harb, "Contesting Urban Modernity: Moral Leisure in South Beirut," European Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 6 (2013), 725–744.
Palestinians in Lebanon
- Rosemary Sayigh, “The Palestinian Revolution,” Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London: Zed Press, 1979).
- Hana Suleiman, "Lebanese-Palestinian Relations: A Political, Human Rights and Security Perspective" (2017).
- Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock, "On the Problem of Over-Researched Communities: The Case of the Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon," Sociology (2012).