Stein, Rebecca L. 1969-

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Stein, Rebecca L. 1969-

PERSONAL:

Born June 30, 1969. Education: Amherst College, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1991; Stanford University, M.A., 1995, Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Cultural Anthropology and Women's Studies Department, Duke University, 210 E. Duke Bldg., Box 90760, Durham, NC 27708.

CAREER:

Academician. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, lecturer, 1999-2000; University of California, Berkeley, lecturer, 2000-01; Amherst College, Bowenstein Visiting Professor in Law and Jurisprudence, 2001-02; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, assistant professor, 2002-03; Duke University, Durham, NC, assistant professor of cultural anthropology and women's studies, 2003—. Social Science Research Council fellow, 1995-96; Newhouse fellow, Stanford University, 1998, 1999; Lowenstein fellow, Amherst College, 2001-02; Trent Foundation and Palestinian-American Research Council fellow, 2006-07.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association (executive committee; Division of Anthropological Approaches to Literature chair, 2005-06), Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Ted Swedenburg) Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2005.

(With Joel Beinin) The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2006.

Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2008.

Contributor to numerous journals and periodicals, including Theory and Event, Public Culture, Middle East Report, Social Text, International Journal of Middle East Studies, American Anthropologist, Stanford Humanities Review, Anthropology News, Rebelión, Challenge, and Journal of Palestine Studies. Editorial assistant (1994-95), book review editor (2001-03), and editorial committee member (2001-06) for Middle East Report. Contributing editor to Challenge and editorial assistant for Tikkun.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rebecca L. Stein is a professor of cultural anthropology and women's studies. Her research interests include nationalism, post-colonialism, sexuality, cultural theory, and globalization, with a primary regional focus of the Middle East. Stein is a contributor to a number of academic journals and has worked primarily in academia since completing a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999.

In 2005 Stein edited Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture with Ted Swedenburg. The book examines the role that popular culture plays in the conflict between Palestine and Israel but also takes a historical approach, dating as far back as the Ottoman period of the region. Anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, American studies scholars, and literary scholars each add perspective from their unique academic fields as contributors of the book's essays. The book makes its primary focus the region's cinema, music, comics, newspapers, and Internet usage.

Natasha Hall, writing in the Middle East Journal, pointed out the "interdisciplinary" approach of the contributors to the volume. Hall also noticed that the book paid close "attention" to both the producers of popular culture and to its consumers in addition to the actual forms of popular culture in the region. Hall remarked that Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture "rethinks the conventional parameters" for popular culture studies. Sarah Rogers, in the Art Journal, commented on the contribution the book makes to the scholarly study in the field of popular culture by saying that "the collection of essays in Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture offers an important model of representation: popular culture implicitly engaged with political struggle rather than merely reflective of it." Rogers added that the multinational and multidisciplinary makeup of the contributors helped in "crossing spatial and temporal geographies," adding that these scholars place "the dynamics by which cultural production and consumption intervene in Western understandings of Palestine-Israel." Rogers concluded: "Read together, these interdisciplinary essays challenge traditional paradigms of hybridity which often presume the coming together of two distinct identities at the expense of internal and external differences. The authors theorize how globalization simultaneously loosens and solidifies nationalism. Yet more than that, they seek to explain what this dual effect tells us about the politics of cultural production and consumption. Historically rich, the case studies contribute much to scholarship on Israel-Palestine and the broader field of Middle East studies." Rogers added: "Theoretically insightful, the authors propose innovative models for conceptualizing representation. As a result, Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture is of the utmost value to anyone who traffics in representation."

In 2006 Stein wrote The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 with Joel Beinin. The book takes another look at the conflict between Israel and Palestine by examining key questions on problems that plague the region. The book examines the prospect for peace, issues over the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian parliament, the role Israel's welfare system has on the conflict, gender issues, refugees, militarism, and potential fighting after Israeli occupation ends.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art Journal, fall, 2006, Sarah Rogers, review of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, February, 2006, D. Peretz, review of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, p. 1087.

Middle East Journal, autumn, 2005, Natasha Hall, review of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, p. 702.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2006, review of The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005.