Interview with Professor Nadje Al-Ali: A Transnational Look at Gender, Human Rights, and Race

I interviewed Professor Al-Ali , a professor of International Studies as well as Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University. Professor Al-Ali looks at gender, human rights, religion, identity, politics, ethnicity, race, and social movements, amongst other areas. Her bio reads:

“Nadje Al-Ali is Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, with a focus on Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include “What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq” (2009, University of California Press, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); “Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives” (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt); “Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present” (2007, Zed Books) and “Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East” (Cambridge University Press 2000. Her co-edited book with Deborah al-Najjar entitled “We are Iraqis: Aesthetics & Politics in a Time of War” (2013, Syracuse University Press) won the 2014 Arab-American book prize for non-fiction. Professor Al-Ali is on the advisory board of Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, and has been involved in several feminist organizations and campaigns transnationally.” (bio and photo from Brown University Directory)

Could you talk about how you personally got involved in the fields of anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, and gender? What interests you about these topics and/or their intersectionalities?

A lot of it has to do with my background. I grew up in Germany with a German mother and an Iraqi father. Throughout my childhood, I visited my family in Baghdad, Iraq. From an early age, I was aware of different cultures and how they interact.

I knew I had to behave slightly differently in Iraq than in Germany. There were also expectations around my behavior when we had relatives or friends from Iraq or other Arab countries at home in Germany. Growing up in Germany, I tried to be accepted and fit in. Multiculturalism wasn’t prominent in Germany at the time, so I tried to compensate by being “more German than the German.” My favorite subject was German literature, and I was a figure skater. I wanted to study German literature.

Separately, I had a Palestinian American pen pal in Tucson, Arizona, and I decided to take a gap year after high school. I planned to study German literature in Bonn but chose to work on my English and visit my pen pal in Tucson. When I got there, I found a large Middle East Studies department and thought I should learn more about that part of my background. I knew little Arabic, so I decided to study Middle East Studies for a year instead of just English, which was already strong because of school.

After one semester of Middle East Studies and living in Tucson, surrounded by students from all over the world, I realized I no longer wanted to study German literature in Bonn. I was lucky to receive a scholarship, which allowed me to stay, and I earned a BA in Middle East Studies in Tucson. I also studied Modern Standard Arabic, and one of my professors, who was Egyptian, suggested I spend a year in Cairo to improve my Arabic. My plan was to spend one year in Egypt, then attend graduate school in the U.S., but I ended up staying for five years. I completed an MA in anthropology and sociology at the American University in Cairo. During that time, I became embarrassed about my German, Western background and tried to overcompensate by embracing Arab culture. Most of my friends were Egyptian or from the region, and my best friend was Palestinian. They took me to a women’s rights organization, where I attended events and seminars, sparking my interest.

My studies in anthropology and sociology also contributed. I took several courses on women and gender studies, especially in relation to the Middle East. Living in Cairo exposed me to inequalities, both in terms of gender and class. While inequalities existed in Germany, I hadn’t been as aware of them. Reflecting back, I can see them now, but at that time in my life, my early 20s, I was more focused on what I was experiencing in Egypt. The combination of my studies, life experiences, and involvement with an Egyptian feminist organization deepened my interest in gender issues and activism. I eventually decided to pursue a PhD on the Egyptian women’s movement. I went to SOAS in London, where I completed a PhD in anthropology on the Egyptian women’s movement.

Later, I felt I should use my expertise and privilege to focus on Iraq, given everything happening there. Iraq had been under dictatorship for 35 years, followed by sanctions from 1990 to 2003, the most comprehensive sanctions ever imposed on a country, disproportionately affecting women and children. Then, in 2003, there was the invasion. I began working academically and politically as a feminist activist on the impact of dictatorship, sanctions, war, and invasion on women and gender issues in Iraq.

What were your motivations for starting to write “Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives?”

That grew out of the work that I’ve done on Iraq. I did quite a bit with a colleague of mine, Nicola Pratt, with whom I co-edited this book. The specific motivation was personal because I have family in Iraq, so I was very interested on a personal level. Academically, there wasn’t that much research on Iraq. Politically, I thought it was important to highlight the gendered implications of war and conflict.

By the time we started this edited book, I had already done quite a bit of work on Iraq specifically. There are lots of conflict areas in the Middle East; we thought it would be interesting to compare and look at both the Palestinian situation and the Iraqi situation. We wanted to look at it both in terms of how war, conflict, and violence have impacted women and gender issues more broadly, but also how feminism or feminist activists have played a role in trying to address issues around violence — not only gender-based violence but also authoritarianism, and so on. We also thought we could look at the way that both the Iraqi diaspora and the Palestinian diaspora play a role in all of this. So my colleague Nicola Pratt and I organized, several panels and workshops where we invited people. And then out of that, we ended up editing the book.

Can you please discuss your work on the advisory board of kohl: a journal of body and gender research?

In recent years, I was approached by the founder of kohl. She is a queer feminist activist who grew up in Beirut and now lives in Paris due to the difficult situation in Lebanon. She and a group of other queer feminist activists wanted to create an online platform that challenges the idea that knowledge about gender and sexuality in the Middle East is only produced in the West. They wanted to show that Middle Eastern feminists produce knowledge about gender and sexuality themselves, challenging Orientalist tropes. It was also a response to and a challenge to male-dominated LGBT activism. In some places in the Middle East, like Lebanon, you have LGBT organizations pushing for rights and visibility. Lebanon, for example, used to hold a pride parade, but that’s no longer possible due to a shift toward conservatism.

These organizations, especially the main one, were male-dominated and not intersectional. kohl, as an example of queer feminism, took an intersectional approach. They focused on gender and sexuality, but also on how these intersect with other power relations and injustices like migration, refugees, and domestic labor. In Beirut, for instance, female domestic labor is a major issue, with many workers from Sri Lanka or African countries treated poorly and given few rights. Queer feminists started to work in solidarity with female domestic worker activists. Over the years, kohl developed from an online journal, available in Arabic and English, to a larger project that involves organizing workshops, events, and supporting young researchers and activists while generating and publishing knowledge.

What are your goals for how you hope to see your research develop, specifically within the next few months or during the remainder of the year?

I am actually quite lucky, because this next academic year, I’m on sabbatical. This is after I’ve been at the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown for four years. That took up lot of my time. Especially this last year because of the political situation, it was very time consuming, challenging, and stressful.

So this year, I’m on sabbatical and I’m working on two projects. One is a jointly authored book with Nicola Pratt, with whom I’ve published before. We are trying to write a book that is focusing on gender and sexuality in the Middle East. It’s also going to be based on our respective research and activism. We want to provide undergraduate students or anyone interested in the region a really good overview of some of the main debates, and also how we see them. It’s an attempt at a decolonial queer feminist lens on gender and sexuality in the Middle East, in which we argue that the knowledge produced by activists in the region must be taken seriously. We’ve started working on the book, and I just need to focus and work on my next chapter, which will be on gender, war, and violence.

The other project is new, and for that, I’m conducting research with another colleague from Columbia University in New York. For the past two years, we’ve been interviewing artists from the Middle East, mainly living in the States but also in the diaspora, primarily women. The project, titled Gender, Art, and Body Politics in the Middle East and its Diaspora, explores how female and queer artists use their work to challenge gender norms and heteronormativity, and how their art offers different ideas around gender and sexuality.

I had planned to go to Beirut in October or November, but due to the current situation, it’s too dangerous, so I’ve postponed it to April or May. However, I plan to go to Berlin from mid-October to mid-November because it’s a major hub for Middle Eastern diaspora artists. I also hope to go to Baghdad and Beirut for research in the spring semester.

What advice do you have for those interested in fields similar to your areas of interest? Do you have blogs, podcasts, or books that you recommend students explore?

There are many good resources. Kohl is a great way to get into queer feminist debates in the region. It’s freely accessible online and available in both English and Arabic.

There’s also the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS), which has a website. Although the name suggests it’s only about women’s studies, it actually covers gender and sexuality studies as well. They also publish the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, which is very good.

At Brown, the Center for Middle East Studies has an archive of online conversations. While I was director, many of the events focused on gender and sexuality in the Middle East, as that’s my area of expertise. The archive from the past four years is quite interesting. Before joining Brown, I directed the Center for Gender Studies at SOAS, which focuses on gender studies in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It’s a great resource in terms of the website and events. Some events are in person at SOAS, but others are online.

I think if you’re interested in women’s rights, gender equality, or sexuality issues, it’s good to be involved with some activist organizations or initiatives. Women’s and gender studies, as well as issues around race and anti-Black racism in academia, grew out of political struggles. It’s important that these fields remain linked to activism and not become depoliticized.

Academic work is much more grounded when connected to real political struggles. That doesn’t mean all academic work needs to be political, but in feminist or queer scholarship, especially in relation to the Middle East, which is so contested, it’s important to at least be aware of, if not collaborate with, activists.