Lila Abu-Lughod

Lila Abu-Lughod is a Palestinian-American professor of Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies at Columbia University in New York City. She is the daughter of prominent academics Janet and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod.

Abu-Lughod earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. She is known for her research on Bedouin from the Awlad 'Ali tribe in Egypt. Previously, Abu-Lughod taught at Williams College, Princeton University and New York University.

She was named a 2007 Carnegie Scholar to research the topic: "Do Muslim Women Have Rights? The Ethics and Politics of Muslim Women's Rights in an International Field."

Abu-Lughod came to public attention for defending the burka as a "portable seclusion" from the prying eyes of men and the sequestration of women on the grounds that western criticism of the enforced and separate "world of women" is an imposition on Muslim societies driven by a "sense of Western superiority." She feels thaat Western attention given to the rights of women in Islam distracts attention from the more important and "messier historical or cultural narratives" that focus on "colonial projects" and the "colonial enterprise." Adding that "We might do better to think how to make the world a more just place rather than trying to ‘save' women in other cultures."

Political activities

The New Criterion listed Abu-Lughod as one of the faculty “radicals” at Columbia “who would prefer to censure a critic of a dictator than censure a dictator himself.”

Abu-Lughod advocates divesting university funds from Israel.

Publications

• Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory with Ahmad H. Sa'di, (Columbia University Press 2007) ISBN 978-0231135788
• Local Contexts of Islamism in Popular Media (Amsterdam University Press 2007) ISBN 978-9053568248
• Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (University of Chicago Press 2004) ISBN 978-0226001975
• Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (Editor) (University of California Press 2002) ISBN 978-0520232310
• Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (University of California Press 2000) ISBN 978-0520224735
• Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Editor) (Princeton University Press 1998) ISBN 978-0691057927
• Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories (University of California Press 1993) ISBN 978-0520083042

Article

• Lila Abu Lughod: My Father's Return to Palestine Winter-Spring 2001, Issue 11-12 Jerusalem Quarterly (Accessed 28 Jan. 2008)

Outside links

• Profile of Lila Abu-Lughod at the Institute for Middle East Understanding
• Columbia University Department of Anthropology Faculty