U.S. and Non-U.S. Scholars

Fulbright New Century Scholars Program
Overview • Previous NCS Programs • NCS Scholar List • NCS Brochure • 2004-2005

Rabab Abdulhadi

Director, Center for Arab American Studies/Associate Professor of Sociology

University of Michigan-Dearborn, United States

Research: From Self-Determination to Self Rule (and Back to Occupation): What Prospects for Palestinian Women?

Currently an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University, Rabab Abdulhadi will start her new job as the Director of the Center for Arab American Studies (and Associate Professor of Sociology) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in September 2004.

She has taught at 6 transnational sites of higher education including Yale University and Hunter College-CUNY in the United States as well as Bir Zeit University, Palestine, and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She is the recipient of the 2000-2001 Teaching Excellence Award, American University in Cairo; the 1998-1999 Prize Teaching Fellowship, Yale University;

Rabab Abdulhadi received her B.A. (summa cum Laude) in 1994 from Hunter College, City University of New York (Special Honors Curriculum, Sociology and Women's Studies ); and her M.A. (1995), M.Phil. (1998), and Ph.D. (2000) from Yale University.

She is the recipient of several honors and awards including the Sterling Fellowship (1994) from Yale University. At Hunter College, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa (1995) and received the Elise Underhill Eaton Award in Women's Studies (1994); the Suzanne Keller Award in Sociology (1994); the Sidney Wolff Memorial Scholarship for Graduating Seniors (1994); Frances Morehouse Alpha Chi Alpha Award in Social Sciences (1994); and the Melani Scholarship Fund for Academic Achievement and Community Service--CUNY Faculty Women's Coalition (1994).

As an activist scholar, she has co-founded and led major Palestinian community organizations such as the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Union of Palestinian Women's Association in North America. She has also played a major role in anti-racist mobilization such as the Howard Beach Justice Campaign; Arab American support for the Jesse Jackson's presidential bid in 1984 and 1988; and the anti-Apartheid campaign in 1985. She has been the first and only Arab to ever be elected to the board of the New York Civil Liberties Union. More recently, she was elected to the board of the Brecht Forum.

Her publications include scholarly articles and over 70 newspaper and magazine articles in Arabic and English written during her tenure as a journalist based at UN Headquarters in New York (1984-1991) including the first exclusive interview on feminism with Palestinian spokeswoman, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi (MS. Magazine, 1992).

Selected Publications :

Cultures of Resistance and the "Post Colonial" State :Altering the Question of Palestine (Under editorial revision-projected date of publication Winter 2006).

Revising the Master Narrative? Nation, Resistance and Feminism in Palestine. (Under editorial revision-projected date of publication Fall 2005)

From Self-Determination to Self Rule (and Back to Occupation):What Prospects for Palestinian Women?

The emergence of Palestinian self-rule enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the reoccupation by Israeli military of most of these areas raise questions regarding the study of the ways in which dynamics of national movement mobilization shape the extent of public space openness to women's claims and activism (by extension to other social groups, such as refugees, individuals disabled during national mobilization, human rights advocates, and the political opposition). In my comparative study of the shifting definition of Palestinian identification, I argue that social groups, mobilized into the national movement as presumably "equal participants," are excluded from decision-making positions and processes during political negotiations and transitional periods especially when the context of postcoloniality is contested, ambiguous, and reversible. Such exclusion has increasingly been the case after the formation of the quasi-state structure known as the Palestinian Authority. This process, however, is not uni-directional; social groups do devise ways for their inclusion in the polity, although their strategies may be (and most likely are) distinctly different from those adopted during the phase of national liberation. The definition of citizenship rights and the conceptualizing of collective identities becomes a most salient arena of struggle as social groups challenge the definition of the boundaries of public space in which their interests are advocated. These contestations influence and shape both the form and the content of political negotiations; the very character of the political system of the state in question; and the future prospects of war-torn communities. The Israeli reoccupation of most of the West Bank and Gaza and the almost abrogation of the Oslo Accords, then, poses anew questions concerning the validity of applying a "postcolonial" analysis to the Palestinian case.

My project's relevance to NCS research theme lies in its potential to offer a conceptual framework to analyze women's relationship to, and involvement in, "national" movements, on one hand, and the extent to which models of post-conflict reconstruction actually enable or disable women's (and other marginalized groups') activism for empowerment and social justice.

My international field visit to the Middle East has two-fold objective: I will conduct the interviews needed to update the research and complete the revisions of my manuscript for publication. I will also build on my affiliation with key research sites in the region to follow up on the suggestion that came out of the successful workshop we have just concluded in Cairo. More specifically, I will work closely with scholars in Beirut, Cairo, and Jerusalem to develop pedagogical tools required for initiating women and gender studies majors. These programs would inevitably contribute to the emergence of action-oriented strategies that lie at the heart of women's movements for social justice and peace.