Rebecca L. Stein, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Women's Studies

Rebecca L. Stein
Contact Info:
Office Location:  201C Sciences Building
Office Phone:  (919) 684-4663, (919) 684-8544
Email Address: send me a message

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
    (also cross-listed as LIT 142S.01, VMS 188S.01)
Education:

PhDStanford University1999
MAStanford University1995
BA (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa)Amherst College1991
Specialties:

Middle East
Mass Culture
Post Colonialism
Globalization
Sexuality
Culture Theory
Research Interests:

Current projects: Digital Occupations

My research studies linkages between cultural and political processes in Israel in the context of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories (1967-present), the interlinked legacies of Israeli state formation and Palestinian dispossession, and the geopolitics of the broader Middle East. I am the author of 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 coeditor 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). I am currently working on Digital Occupations -- a book project that studies linkages between new media and militarism in Israel, with a focus on how social media is changing the contours of military occupation. I am interested in the ways that social media is being used by the Israeli state for both international PR and counterinsurgency within the occupation context, and how, in turn, these digital tools are remaking the terrain of human rights work and anti-occupation activism within Israel. Portions of this work have recently been published in Middle East Report, the London Review of Books blog, Critical Inquiry (online forum on the 'Arab Spring'), and is forthcoming from Anthropological Quarterly. This research is supported by grants from the Wenner Gren foundation, the Palestinian American Research Council, and the Trent Foundation. My work on Israeli cultural politics has appeared in such journals as The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Social Text, Public Culture, Theory and Event, Journal of Palestine Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

Areas of Interest:

Middle East; Israel; Palestine

Keywords:

Popular Culture; Digital Culture; Postcoloniality

Current Ph.D. Students  

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