Life
Lila Abu-Lughod is the daughter of the prominent Palestinian academic Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and of Janet L. Abu-Lughod, a leading American urban sociologist. She graduated from Carleton College in 1974, and obtained her PhD from Harvard University in 1984. Carleton College awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2006.
Abu-Lughod has taught at Williams College, Princeton University, and New York University. She first became known for her research on the Bedouin from the Awlad 'Ali tribe in Egypt. Her work is strongly ethnographic and has focused on three broad issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of gender and the question of women’s rights in the Middle East. Her first book, Veiled Sentiments, is about the politics of sentiment and cultural expression in a Bedouin community in Egypt. It is best known for its arguments about the complexity of culture. An article from the book received the Stirling Award for Contributions to Psychological Anthropology. Her second book, based on fieldwork in the same community is framed as a feminist ethnography. It uses individual's stories to make an argument for “writing against culture.” It received the Victor Turner Award. Her third ethnography, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt, is a media ethnography that contributes to the anthropological study of nations and nationalism. It explores the tensions between the social inequalities that bedevil nations and the cultural forms, like television soap operas, that try to address them.
In 2001, she delivered the Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester, considered by many to be the most important annual lecture series in the field of anthropology. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2007 to research the topic: "Do Muslim Women Have Rights? The Ethics and Politics of Muslim Women's Rights in an International Field." She was inspired to pursue this research after writing an article that has been much reprinted. It is titled "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" She has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright, and the Mellon Foundation, among others.
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