The Joseph and Libby Bonfield Memorial Lecture in Middle Eastern Studies

Based on a comparative study of property devolution practices in the Eastern Mediterranean over a two-century period, Doumani argues that there is no such thing as the Muslim or Arab family types that are foundational to public discourses about Islam, women, and modernity. Rather, he finds dramatic and consistent regional differences in the ways that family life was understood, organized, and reproduced in pre-colonial times. These findings raise fundamental questions about how best to understand the making of the modern Middle East.

Beshara Doumani is the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies, the first endowed chair of its kind. From 2012-2020 he was the Joukowsky Family Distinguished Professor of Modern Middle East History. He served as President of Birzeit University in Palestine from 2021-2023. He is the founding director (2012-2018) of Brown's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), and founder of New Directions for Palestinian Studies, a CMES initiative since 2012. 

You can read more about Beshara Doumani here.

This lecture is free and open to the public.

Streaming live on Zoom (registration is required): register here