About

Beshara Doumani is the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University, holding the first endowed chair of its kind. He previously served as the Joukowsky Family Distinguished Professor of Modern Middle East History from 2012 to 2020 and was the President of Birzeit University in Palestine from 2021 to 2023. Doumani is the founding director of Brown's Center for Middle East Studies (2012-2018) and the founder of New Directions for Palestinian Studies, an initiative of the center. His research focuses on the social, economic, and legal history of marginalized groups, places, and periods in the early modern and modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on the social life of Palestinians, family, and community histories. He writes extensively on topics such as academic freedom and the Palestinian condition, contributing to the understanding of local histories through sources like Ottoman court records and family papers. Doumani has authored significant works including Rediscovering Palestine and Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean, and he is actively involved in editing and publishing in Palestinian Studies. His scholarly work aims to challenge dominant narratives by highlighting regional differences and ordinary people's roles in shaping the modern Middle East.

Research topics

• Computer Science

Selected publications

• Introduction

  Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East · 2023-12-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This special section of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, “Claiming Property, Claiming Palestine,” explores the paradoxes of Palestinians make ownership claims to agricultural land and urban real estate. Contributors foreground Palestinian thought and action, and demonstrate how Palestinian claim-making practices temporally exceed the colonial condition and trouble dominant assumptions about ownership, property, and sovereignty. Through granular cases studies rooted in the particularities of time and space, they show how claim-making allows for a critique of the settler colonial and Indigenous frameworks in Palestinian studies and points to generative avenues for comparative history and theory-making between Palestine and the global South.

  PublisherDOI

• A Tribute to Halim Barakat

  Journal of Palestine Studies · 2023-10-02

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 6.2 Barakat, The Arab World, xi.3 Halim Barakat, Lebanon in Strife: Student Preludes to the Civil War (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), xii.4 “A Tribute to Dr. Halim Barakat,” Jerusalem Fund, April 10, 2017, https://thejerusalemfund.org/2017/04/tribute-dr-halim-barakat/.5 Halim Barakat, Ta’ir al-hawm (Casablanca: Dar Toubkal li al-Nashir, 1988). The English translation of the epigram is from the translated version of the novel: Halim Barakat, The Crane, trans. Bassam Frangieh and Roger Allen (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008).Additional informationNotes on contributorsBeshara DoumaniBeshara Doumani is the Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University and the former president of Birzeit University in Palestine.

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• Frontmatter

  University of California Press eBooks · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science

  The New Directions in Palestinian Studies series publishes books that put Palestinians at the center of research projects and that make an

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• Frontmatter

  University of California Press eBooks · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
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• Acknowledgments

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science

  This book would not have seen the light of day if it were not for my Iraqi interlocutors and friends in London.Their generosity, hospitality, and openness over the last fourteen years have made this book possible.I arrived at a time in London (in 2006) when the Iraqi community was suspicious of new faces for fear that they were Saddam Hussein's loyalists.However, they graciously accepted me and shared with me personal stories about their lives in Iraq and in exile, and they were patient with me when I returned again and again to do follow-up interviews.Over the years, they showed me warmth and care, cooked my favorite Iraqi dishes for me, and confided in me much that did not make it into the book.During seven years of visa complications, when I could not leave the United States, they kept in touch with me and sent me updates about their lives.When I was able to travel to London again, they were excited to see me.Growing up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's regime, I never had friends I could trust, since people were afraid that what they said would be reported back to the authorities.

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• The Everyday and the Shadow Years

  Jerusalem Quarterly · 2019-09-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Materiality and Ghostliness

  Jerusalem Quarterly · 2019-12-20

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  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 1948 and Its Shadows

  Journal of Palestine Studies · 2018-11-01 · 2 citations

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  Seventy years after the Nakba, what does it mean to commemorate 1948? This introduction to three articles drawn from the 2018 New Directions in Palestinian Studies workshop at Brown University, “The Shadow Years: Material Histories of Everyday Life,” examines the emergence of 1948 as the primary focus of Palestinian commemorative practices and guiding star of future political possibilities, as well as the promise and limitations of the settler-colonial framework. It argues that widening our lens to include the material histories of everyday life in the context of a generational struggle for survival, contextualizes moments of great trauma and violence within the larger dynamics of Palestinians society, and recasts the time/space architecture of narratives about Palestine and the Palestinians.

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• Fatima's Determination

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2017-06-07

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  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

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• Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2017-06-07 · 55 citations

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  In writings about Islam, women and modernity in the Middle East, family and religion are frequently invoked but rarely historicized. Based on a wide range of local sources spanning two centuries (1660–1860), Beshara B. Doumani argues that there is no such thing as the Muslim or Arab family type that is so central to Orientalist, nationalist, and Islamist narratives. Rather, one finds dramatic regional differences, even within the same cultural zone, in the ways that family was understood, organized, and reproduced. In his comparative examination of the property devolution strategies and gender regimes in the context of local political economies, Doumani offers a groundbreaking examination of the stories and priorities of ordinary people and how they shaped the making of the modern Middle East.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rema Hammami

  Columbia University

  73 shared

• Sherene Seikaly

  72 shared

• Nadia Abu El‐Haj

  72 shared

• Salīm Tamārī

  38 shared

• Issam Nassar

  37 shared

• Issam Palestine

  Columbia University

  36 shared

• S. G. Nassar

  Columbia University

  36 shared

• Stephen Sheehi

  William & Mary

  36 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Pennsylvania

• M.A.

  University of California, Berkeley

• B.A.

  University of California, Berkeley

Awards & honors

• Sawyer Seminar award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation