Elizabeth F. Thompson

Associate Professor (1995)

Office Hours: Mon. 12-1 and Wed. 11-12 and by appointment

Office: 253 Nau Hall

Phone: (434) 924-6423

Email: eft3k (at) virginia.edu

Fields & Specialties

Education

B.A. Harvard 1981
M.I.A. Columbia 1989
Ph.D. Columbia 1995

Publications, Awards, and Activities

Books

Justice Interrupted:  The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 2013)

Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, New York, Columbia University Press, 2000.

Articles & Book Chapters

"Scarlett O'Hara in Damascus: Hollywood, Colonial Politics, and Arab Spectatorship during World War II," in Globalizing American Studies, ed. B. Edwards (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

"Justice Interrupted: Historical Perspectives on Promoting Democracy in the Middle East," United States Institute of Peace Special Report No. 225 (June 2009).

"Politics by Other Screens: Movie Censorship in the Late French Empire,"  Arab Media & Society (Winter 2009) http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=699.

“Soldiers, Patriarchs, and Bureaucrats: Paternal Republicanism in French Syria and Lebanon,” in Representing Masculinity: Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture, Stephan Dudink, et. al. eds. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007) 213-33.

“The Gendered Edge of Islam,” in Neguin Yavari, et. al. eds., Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004) 304-21.

"Public and Private in Middle Eastern Women's History," Journal of Women's History 15:1 (Spring 2003) 52-69.

"Neither Conspiracy nor Hypocrisy: The Jesuits and the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon ," in E. Tejirian and R. Simons, eds., Altruism and Imperialism: Western Cultural and Religious Missions in the Middle East ( New York : The Middle East Institute, Columbia University , 2002) 66-87.

"Sex and Cinema in Damascus: The Gendered Politics of Public Space in a Colonial City," in H.C. Korsholm Nielsen and J. Skovgaard-Petersen, eds., Middle Eastern Cities 1900-1950: Public Places and Public Spheres in Transformation. Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus I. Copenhagen: Aarbus University Press, 2001, pp. 89-111.

"The Climax and Crisis of the Colonial Welfare State in Syria and Lebanon during the Second World War" in Steven Heydemann, ed., War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

"Gender, War and the Birth of States: Syria and Lebanon in World War II," in Nicole Ann Dombrowski, ed. Women and War in the 20th Century. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.

"Ottoman Political Reform in the Provinces: The Damascus Advisory Council in 1844-45." International Journal of Middle East Studies 25 (August 1993) pp 457-75.

Awards

National Endowment for the Humanities, co-dicrector of Summer Seminar for University Professors, World War I in the Middle East, 2012

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Senior Fellowship, 2008-09.

United States Institute of Peace, Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship, 2007-08.

Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2005 Scholar Award.

Library of Congress, Kluge Center, Mellon Fellowship in International Studies, 2002-2003.

Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, First Book Prize for Colonial Citizens, 2000.

American Historical Association, Joan Kelly Memorial Book Prize for Colonial Citizens, 2000.

American Council of Learned Societies, SSRC/NEH International Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1999-2000.

Republic of France, Chateaubriand fellowship, 1995.

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Dissertation Award, 1994.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Honorary Newcombe Fellow, 1994.

Social Science Research Council, Dissertation Fellowship, 1992-93 and Ibn Khaldun Essay Prize, 1991.

Current Research

I am involved in several projects that approach issues of citizenship, state formation, and foreign intervention in the 20th-century Middle East. My forthcoming book, Justice Interrupted, places the Arab Spring, Islamism and violence in Middle Eastern politics in their appropriate historical context through a chronology of case studies of the region's major social movements.  A second book in progress, Cinema and the Politics of Late Colonialism,examines cinema as an alternative political arena in the Middle East and North Africa between 1920 and 1960.  It is also a vehicle to explore ways in which we might link cultural analysis with social analysis to explain the articulation of regimes of power and citizenship in the postcolonial world.  Finally, I am involved in several projects marking the centennial of the First World War, through the National Endowment for the Humanities and a digital encyclopedia, 1914-1918 Online.  Through these collaborative efforts I am developing an agenda for research on the war's impact on the society, culture, and politics of Anatolia and Arab lands of the former Ottoman Empire.