Rebecca L. Stein, Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Please note: Rebecca has left the "Duke Middle East Studies Center" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

My research studies linkages between cultural and political processes in Israel in relation to its military occupation and the history of Palestinian dispossession. I am the author of Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2021) on the politics of military occupation in the age of the global smartphone camera; Digital Militarism: Israel's Occupation in the Social Media Age (with Adi Kuntsman), on the militarization of social media in Israel; Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism (Duke University Press, 2008) which considers the relationship between tourism, mobility politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the co-editor of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2005) with Ted Swedenburg and The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 with Joel Beinin (Stanford University Press, 2006). 

My most recent work has been a multi-book project about the ways that new communication technologies are meditating the everyday Israeli relationship to its military occupation -- including changing practices and logics of military 'counterinsurgency',  the everyday terms of soldiering, the Israeli civilian relationship to Palestinians under occupation, and the human rights work and anti-occupation activism. My first book within this project --Digital Militarism: Israel's Occupation in the Social Media Age (with Adi Kuntsman) -- studied the place of social media within this equation. My forthcoming book -- Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2021) considers the roles of digital photographic technologies and camera investments, with a focus on the multiple communities and institutions, across political divides, who have integrated networked image-making into their political toolbox: Palestinian and Israeli human rights workers and activists, Palestinian civilians living under occupation, the Israeli military, and the Jewish settler population.  All believed that the technological innovations of the digital age would deliver their images – and therein, their political message -- with greater fidelity (closer, faster, truer).  Most would be let down.  Screen Shots focuses on episodes of glitch and lapse in photographic practices, on curatorial and circulatory failures, arguing that the analytics of failure shines a new light on the changing terms of military occupation in the digital age, while pushing back against the recalcitrant techo-optimism that still frames much scholarship in this area. This project has been supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Palestinian American Research Council, and the Trent Foundation.

Portions of this scholarship have appeared in Current Anthropology, Critical Inquiry, Anthropological Quarterly, Middle East Report, and the London Review of Books. My work on Israeli cultural politics has appeared in such journals as Public Culture, Social Text, The International Journal of Middle East Studies,Theory and Event, Journal of Palestine Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 

Contact Info:

Office Location:	205 Friedl Building, 1316 Campus Drive Duke Box 900, Durham, NC 27710
Office Phone:	(919) 684-4663
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://rebeccalstein.com/

Teaching (Spring 2024):

• CULANTH 301.01, THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS Synopsis

  Friedl Bdg 204, TuTh 01:25 PM-02:40 PM

• CULANTH 405S.01, MEDIA AND CONFLICT Synopsis

  Friedl Bdg 240, Th 10:05 AM-12:35 PM

  (also cross-listed as AMES 405S.01, ICS 416S.01, PUBPOL 405S.01, VMS 405S.01)

• CULANTH 89S.01, FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR (TOP) Synopsis

  Friedl Bdg 204, TuTh 01:25 PM-02:40 PM

  (also cross-listed as ICS 89S.01, JAM 89S.01, VMS 89S.01)

Office Hours:

Thursdays, 3:00 - 4:00 and by appointment

Education:

Ph.D.	Stanford University	1999
M.A.	Stanford University	1995
B.A.	Amherst College	1991

Specialties:

Middle East
Mass Culture
Post Colonialism
Globalization
Sexuality
Culture Theory

Research Interests:

Rebecca L. Stein's (PhD Stanford U 1999) research examines the relationship between Israeli cultural politics and transnational political processes in the Middle East, in the context of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Her recent writing has explored the ways that Israeli popular culture is consumed in articulation with the transnational circuits of capital, labor, and culture that have attended the geopolitical reconfiguration of the region during the last decade. Trained in both cultural anthropology and cultural theory, her work is situated at the intersection of anthropology, post-structural theory, and political economy. Stein's teaching in the areas of Israel and Palestine history and culture, colonialism and nationalism, popular culture and consumption, gender and queer studies.

Areas of Interest:

Middle East

Keywords:

Digital media • Middle East • Orientalism • Palestine • Travel • Zionism

Current Ph.D. Students  

• Anna Dowell  
• Jeremy Siegman  
• Nina Arutyunyan  
• Guy Shalev  
• Yakein Abdelmagid  
• Stephanie Friede  
• Patrick Galbraith  
• Callie Maidhoff  
• Cagri Yoltar  
• Erin Parish  
• Anne-Marie Angelo  
• Laurel Bradley  
• Brenna Casey  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Stein, R; Kuntsman, A, Digital militarism : Israel's Occupation in the Social Media Age (2015), Stanford University Press [available here]
2. R.L. Stein, Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism (2008), Duke University Press
3. Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (eds.), Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (2005), Duke University Press
4. Joel Beinin and Rebecca L. Stein (editors), The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (2006), Stanford University Press
5. R.L. Stein, Dispossession Reconsidered: Israel, Nakba, Things (in French), Ethnologie Francaise -- Special issue, "Israel au Quotidien" (2015)
6. Stein, RL; Kuntsman, A, Selfie Militarism, London Review of Books (2014) [available here]
7. Stein, RL, Viral Occupation Cameras and Networked Human Rights in the West Bank, Middle East Report (2013) [mero032013]
8. Stein, RL, Inside Israel's Twitter War Room: History of a Social Media Arsenal, Middle East Report (2012) [mero112412]
9. Stein, RL, An All-Consuming Occupation, Middle East Report (2012) [mero062612]
10. Stein, RL, Impossible Witness: Israeli Visuality, Palestinian Testimony, and the Gaza War, Journal for Cultural Research (special issue on Arab Cultural Studies), vol. 16 no. 2-3 (2012), pp. 135-153, Informa UK Limited [repository], [doi]  [abs]
11. Stein, RL, State Tube: Anthropological reflections on social media and the Israeli State, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 85 no. 3 (September, 2012), pp. 893-916, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIV INST ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH, ISSN 0003-5491 [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
12. Kuntsman, A; Stein, RL, Digital Suspicion, Politics, and the Middle East, Critical Inquiry (online feature on Arab Spring) (2011) [available here]
13. Kuntsman, A; Stein, RL, Another War Zone: New Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East Report (2010) [another-war-zone]
14. Stein, RL, Israeli Routes Through Nakba Landscapes: An Ethnographic Meditation, Jerusalem Quarterly, vol. 43 (2010) [Israeli_Routes_Through_Nakba_Landscapes_An_Ethnographic_Meditation]
15. Stein, RL, EXPLOSIVE, Glq: a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 16 no. 4 (October, 2010), pp. 517-536, Duke University Press, ISSN 1064-2684 [repository], [doi]  [abs]
16. Stein, RL, TRAVELLING ZION Hiking and Settler-Nationalism in pre-1948 Palestine, Interventions International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 11 no. 3 (Fall, 2009), pp. 334-351, Informa UK Limited, ISSN 1369-801X [Gateway.cgi], [doi]