Maha Nassar

Maha Nassar is an Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona, where she specializes in Arab cultural and intellectual history with a focus on Palestinians. Her book, which received a 2018 Palestine Book Award, is titled Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017). It examines the ways in which Palestinian writers and intellectuals in Israel positioned themselves within an Arab and third world social, cultural and intellectual milieu during the period of decolonization, thus extending their intellectual horizons far beyond the confines of the nation-state. Her current projects further explore Palestinian subject formation transnationally. One involves an analysis of the discursive framings utilized during the 1950s regarding “Arab women in Israel,” while another explores how Palestinian writers understood and engaged with black American experiences in the 20th century. Her next book project is a social, transnational history of the Palestinian people that examines the role of Palestinian women in grassroots mobilizations.