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Leila Fawaz

Issam M. Fares Professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies

Education

BA and MA, American University of Beirut
AM and PhD in History, Harvard University

Professional Activities

Awarded a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College at Oxford University in the fall of 2006, to work on her new research project on the social history of the Levant in the late Ottoman period. Overseer, Harvard University, 2006-; Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Member, Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), 2005- Member, Comité Scientifique of the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, Université de Provence, 2005-; Member, Editorial Board, American Historical Review; European Science Foundation, Strasbourg, France, Member, Steering Committee for the Program on Individual and Society in the Mediterranean Muslim World, 1994-1999; Member, Planning Committee, 1993, Publications Committee, 1996-1999; Member, Professional Division, American Historical Association; Delegate, American Council of Learned Societies; Past President, Middle East Studies Association of North America; Past President, American University of Beirut Alumni Association of North America; Past Editor-in-Chief, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1989-1994; Visiting Professor, Université de Provence (spring 1994); past recipient of Lillian Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising, Tufts University.

Biography

Leila Fawaz is the Issam M. Fares Professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies and Director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and holds a joint appointment at Tufts as Professor of History and as Professor of Diplomacy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Born in the Sudan and raised in Lebanon, Professor Fawaz received a B.A. and M.A. in History from the American University of Beirut and the A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She joined the Tufts faculty in 1979 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1994. She served as Chair of the History Department from 1994-1996, and as Dean for Humanities and Arts from 1996 to 2001.

Professor Fawaz is a social historian of the Middle East. Her most recent publication is (co-editor), Modernity and Culture: from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (Columbia University Press, 2002). Her other publications include two books, An Occasion for War: Mount Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (I.B. Tauris, 1994 and University of California Press, 1995), Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth Century Beirut (Harvard University Press, 1983); a conference publication, State and Society in Lebanon (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1991); an international directory (co-compiler), International Director of Middle East Specialists (Cambridge University Press, 1993), as well as articles and reviews.

Professor Fawaz is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Steering Committee of the European Science Foundation project on “Individual and Society in the Muslim Mediterranean World.” She is a delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies and, at various times, she has served on committees of the Social Science Research Council and of the American Historical Association. She is the past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and past president of the American University of Beirut Alumni Association of North America. She was Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) between 1989 and 1994; she also has served on the editorial boards of the IJMES, the Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies, and The Beirut Review. She is editor for Columbia University Press’s “History and Society of the Modern Middle East” series, and she presently serves on the editorial board of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and of the Eurasian Studies Journal.

Professor Fawaz has been awarded fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, and she has received the Lillian Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising at Tufts University. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Université de Provence and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Politiques et Sociales. In 2000, she received the International Institute of Boston’s New Citizen Award, which is given to immigrants who have made significant contributions within their respective communities.

Professor Fawaz is married to Karim Fawaz, a gastroenterologist on the faculty of the New England Medical Center in Boston.

Programs & Centers

• Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies
• Program for Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization

Courses

Fall 2009

• DHP D263 - The Arabs and their Neighbors

Research Interests

Social and political history of the modern Middle East; late Ottoman Arab history; wars and civil wars; relations of city and state, culture and society from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean circa 1890-1920.

Faculty Research Profile - “Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine: these are the countries that are my strength. And, culturally, the region is amazing. There has been a recent revival of intellectual and cultural history in the area, and we need more of that.”

Selected Publications

• Modernity and Culture From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (co-ed., 2002);
• An Occasion for War: Ethnic Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (1994);
• Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (1983);
• State and Society in Lebanon (ed.)(1991).