Between Islamophobia and Homophobia: Gender, Sexuality, and Liberal Engagements with Islam

Massad is a Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He has a particular interest in theories of identity and culture – including theories of nationalism, sexuality, race and religion. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1998. His latest book is Islam in Liberalism, University of Chicago Press, 2015. He is also the author of Desiring Arabs (2007), which was awarded the Lionel Trilling Book Award;The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinian Question (2006); and Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (2001). His book Daymumat al-Mas’alah al-Filastiniyyah was published by Dar Al-Adab in 2009, and La persistance de la question palestinienne was published by La Fabrique in 2009. The Arabic translation of Desiring Arabs was published in 2013 by Dar Al-Shuruq Press in Cairo under the title Ishtiha’ Al-‘Arab.

His articles have appeared in many journals, including Public Culture, Interventions, Social Text, Middle East Journal, Psychoanalysis and History, Critique, Umbr(a), and the Journal of Palestine Studies, and he writes frequently for Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Jazeera English. He teaches courses on modern Arab culture, psychoanalysis in relation to civilization and identity, gender and sexuality in the Arab world, and Palestinian-Israeli politics and society, with seminars on Nationalism in the Middle East as Idea and Practice, and also on Orientalism and Islam.

Organized by Aria Daniel Nakissa, Assistant Professor of Islamic studies. Sponsored by The Jewish Islamic & Near Eastern Languages & Cultures Department, The Religious Studies Program, The Center for the Humanities, The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, and The Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department.