The 2018-19 Gender and Sexuality Seminar Series discusses key debates and new approaches to the theory and study of women, gender and sexuality in the Middle East and Islamic World, and the implications of those on the theory and study of women, gender and sexuality in the Global South. 

This talk will feature Sa'ed Adel Atshan, Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. He previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He earned a joint Ph.D. in anthropology and middle eastern studies and an MA in social anthropology from Harvard University, and a Master in Public Policy (MPP) degree from the Harvard Kennedy School. He received his BA from Swarthmore in 2006. His research interests are at the intersection of peace and conflict studies, the anthropology of policy, critical development studies and gender and sexuality studies. He has two forthcoming books with Stanford University Press: Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, and Paradoxes of Humanitarianism: The Social Life of Aid in the Palestinian Territories.

Atshan has been awarded multiple fellowships, including from the Open Society Foundations, National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson National Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. He is also the recipient of a Soros Fellowship and a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace. He has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, the UN High Commission on Refugees, Human Rights Watch, Seeds of Peace, the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, and the Government of Dubai. He is also a Palestinian, Quaker, and LGBTQ human rights activist.

Please register for the talk by filling out this form. 

The seminar is co-sponsored by the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (WGS), the Science, Religion and Culture Program (SRC), the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, and the Journal of Middle East Women Studies (JMEWS). This year’s seminar inaugurates the residence of JMEWS at Harvard, which extends from May 2018 to May 2022. Questions? wgssymposia@fas.harvard.edu