Rebecca L. Stein
Associate Professor

Office Location: 201C Science Building
Office Phone: 919-684-4663
Email Address: rlstein@duke.edu

Specialties:
Middle East
Mass Culture
Post Colonialism
Globalization
Sexuality
Culture Theory

Education:
PhD, Stanford University, 1999
MA, Stanford University, 1995
BA (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), Amherst College, 1991

Current projects: Repossessions: The Social Life of Palestinian Things in Contemporary Israel

Research Description: My research studies Israeli cultural politics in the context of the Israeli occupation, the history of Israeli state formation, and the legacy of Palestinian dispossession which it entailed. I am the coeditor of two recent volumes:  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 (Stanford University Press, 2006) with Joel Beinin and the author of Itineraries in Conflict: The Political Life of Tourism in Israel and the Middle East which considers the relationship between tourism and nation-making in Israel during the Oslo Process of the 1990s (Duke University Press, forthcoming). I am currently working on a new project entitled Repossessions: The Social Life of Palestinian Things in Contemporary Israel that examines the history and circulation of Palestinian objects in Jewish-Israeli daily lives – both objects acquired during the course of the Palestinian dispossession and those purchased by Israelis in the wake of state-formation. I am interested in what daily objects and acts of repossession might tell us about Israeli identity and nation-making. My work on Israeli cultural politics has appeared in such journals as Social Text, Public Culture, Theory and Event, Journal of Palestine Studies, and Middle East Report.

Areas of Interest:
Middle East
Israeli cultural studies
Postcolonial studies

Teaching (Spring 2012):

• CULANTH 190.01, Theoretical foundations Synopsis

  Friedl bdg 126, TuTh 01:15 PM-02:30 PM

• CULANTH 191GS.01, Cultures of new media Synopsis

  Carr 242, Tu 03:05 PM-05:35 PM

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. R.L. Stein, Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism (2008), Duke University Press [ViewProduct.php] .
2. Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (eds.), Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (2005), Duke University Press [ViewProduct.php] .
3. Joel Beinin and Rebecca L. Stein (editors), The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (2006), Stanford University Press .
4. R.L. Stein, Impossible Witness: Israeli Visuality, Palestinian Testimony, and the Gaza War, Journal for Cultural Research (special issue on Arab Cultural Studies) (forthcoming, 2012) .
5. R.L. Stein, StateTube: Anthropological Reflections on Social Media and the Israeli State, Anthropological Quarterly (forthcoming, 2012) .
6. Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein, Digital Suspicion, Politics, and the Middle East, Critical Inquiry (online feature on Arab Spring) (2011) [PDF].
7. Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein, Another War Zone: New Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East Report (September, 2010) [another-war-zone] .
8. R.L. Stein, Israeli Routes Through Nakba Landscapes: An Ethnographic Meditation, Jerusalem Quarterly (2010, No. 43) [PDF].
9. R.L. Stein, Explosive: Scenes from Israel's Queer Occupation, GLQ: Gay Lesbian Quarterly, vol. 16 no. 4 (2010) [PDF].
10. R.L. Stein, Traveling Zion: Hiking and Settler-Nationalism in pre-1948 Palestine, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 11 no. 3 (Fall, 2009), pp. 334 - 351 [PDF].
11. R.L. Stein, Souvenirs of Conquest: Israeli Occupations as Tourist Events, International Journal of Middle East Studies (November, 2008) [PDF].

Bio/Profile

     

Current Ph.D. Students  

• Cagri Yoltar  
• Erin Parish  
• Anne-Marie Angelo  
• Laurel Bradley