Contributors
- Contributors
Hina Azam is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses on Islamic law, exegesis, and theology, as well as a course on comparative religions of the Middle East. Her current research interests are in the areas of women, gender, and sexuality in Islam. She is currently writing a monograph on sexual violation in Islamic jurisprudence, a topic she has explored in short publications as well. She has also written a critique of the classical juristic ban on women’s testimony in criminal cases. This article is part of a larger interest in the presentation of eroticism in contemporary Islamic advice manuals and the impact of such texts on the thinking and practices of Muslims in the United States.
Nadine Sinno is Assistant Professor of Arabic literature and language in the Middle East Institute at Georgia State University. Her research and teaching interests include modern Arabic literature and language, literary translation, postcolonial studies, and transnational feminism. Her publications include a translation of Nazik Saba Yared’s novel Canceled Memories (Syracuse University Press, 2009). Her work has also appeared in the edited volume Feminism and War: Confronting U.S. Imperialism (Zed Books, 2008) and in Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America; her essay on prisons and mental asylums in contemporary Arab women’s fiction appeared in 2011 in the Journal of Arabic Literature.
Rita Stephan is visiting researcher at the Center Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and a Foreign Affairs Officer at the [End Page 140] United States Department of State. Before joining the State Department, she was an analyst at the United States Census Bureau, a lecturer of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, a research associate at the Lebanese Emigration Research Center at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, and a research fellow at American University of Beirut. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin with a Portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her dissertation topic, The Family and the Making of Women’s Rights Activism in Lebanon, earned her a P.E.O. Scholar Award and an American Association of University Women’s Dissertation Fellowship. Her publication topics include Lebanese women’s movement, social movements, activism, social networks, gender and sexuality, and Arab Americans.
Faedah M. Totah is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin. Her recent publications include “Suq Hamidiyeh and the Definition of a Public Space” (2012) and “Return to Origin: Negotiating the Modern and Unmodern in the Old City of Damascus” (City & Society, 2009). She is currently completing a manuscript on the historic preservation of the Old City of Damascus. [End Page 141]
