Faculty

Areas of Expertise

Professor Deeb’s research interests include the politics of knowledge production; gender and sexuality; religion, especially Islam; transnational feminism; and the Middle East, especially Lebanon. Her current book project uses social responses to intersectarian and interreligious relationships and marriages in Lebanon to better understand social sectarianism and sect as a form of social difference.

Selected Research and Publications

Books

• Deeb, Lara. Manuscript in Progress. “‘What Will They Say? Love Across Difference in Lebanon.”
• Deeb, Lara and Jessica Winegar. 2015. Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East. Stanford University Press
• Deeb, Lara and Mona Harb. 2013. Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Morality and Geography in Shi'i South Beirut. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• 2006: An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'i Lebanon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Selected Articles and Chapters

• Deeb, Lara. 2020. “Beyond sectarianism: Intermarriage and social difference in Lebanon.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52(2), 215-228.
• Deeb, Lara and Jessica Winegar. 2017. “Middle East Politics: The Case of Anthropology.” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 37(1):103-112.
• Deeb, Lara. 2015. “Thinking piety and the everyday together: A response to Fadil and Fernando.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2): 93–9.
• Deeb, Lara and Jessica Winegar. 2013. "The Politics of Middle East Anthropology from the End of the Cold War through the War on Terror: Insights from a Transitional Generation." InAnthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: The State of the Art, eds. Sherine Hafez and Susan Slyomovics. Indiana University Press.
• Deeb, Lara and Jessica Winegar. 2012. "Anthropologies of Arab-Majority Societies." Annual Review of Anthropology 41:537-58.
• Deeb, Lara and Dina al-Kassim. 2011. "Introduction" to Special Issue: Middle East Sexualities. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 7(3):1-5.
• Harb, Mona and Lara Deeb. 2011. "Culture and History and Landscape: Hizbullah's Efforts to Shape the Islamic Milieu in Lebanon." Arab Studies Journal XIX(2):10-41.
• Deeb, Lara. 2010. "Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah and Lebanese Shi'i Youth." Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies III(4): 405-426.
• Deeb, Lara. 2009. "Piety Politics and the Role of a Transnational Feminist Analysis." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (supplement 1).
• Deeb, Lara. 2009. "Emulating and/or Embodying the Ideal: The Gendering of Temporal Frameworks and Islamic Role Models in Shi'i Lebanon." American Ethnologist 36(2): 242-257.
• Deeb, Lara. 2008. "Exhibiting the 'Just-Lived Past': Hizbullah's Nationalist Narratives in Transnational Political Context." Contemporary Studies in Society and History 50(2): 369-399.
• Deeb, Lara. 2008. "Hizbullah and its Civilian Constituencies in Lebanon." In The War on Lebanon: A Reader, ed. Nubar Hovsepian, 58-74. Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishers.

Awards and Honors

• American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Collaborative Research Fellowship for project: ""Constructing and Negotiating the Islamic Milieu: New Moralities and Spatialities in Shi'i Lebanon,"" with Mona Harb (American University of Beirut) (2009-2011)
• Wenner-Gren International Collaborative Research Grant for project: ""Faith and Fun: Pious Entertainment in Shi'i South Beirut,"" with Mona Harb of the American University of Beirut (2008-2009)
• Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award for Social Sciences, Middle East Studies Association (2004)
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (2003-2004 and 2006-2007)

Biography

Professor Deeb is a first-generation U.S. citizen and an Arab-American scholar, educator, and activist.

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology
• Core 2: Walls, Borders, Fences
• Anthropology of the Middle East
• Contemporary Issues in Gender and Islam
• Kinship, Family, Sexuality
• Seminar in Sexuality and Religion
• History of Anthropological Theory
• Palestine Through Ethnography and Film
• Senior Seminar in Anthropology and Ethnographic Writing

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