Beshara Doumani is director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. Previously, he was based at the University of California, Berkeley. Doumani received his PhD from Georgetown University, and was first tenured at the University of Pennsylvania. He writes on current events in the Middle East, on the ethics of knowledge production, and on the relationship between culture and politics. He is editor of Academic Freedom After September 11, and recently led a team that produced a strategic plan for the establishment of a Palestinian museum. His publications include: Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Editor. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003, “A Tribute Long Overdue: Rosemary Sayigh and Palestinian Studies.” Journal of Palestine Studies, Winter 2009, and “Children Looking” In Issam Nassar and Rasha Salti, Eds.

Beshara Doumani’s book Rediscovering Palestine Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, paints an intimate and vivid portrait of Palestinian society on the eve of modernity and shows, among other findings, how peasants defined their identity and formulated their notions of justice and political authority. Doumani’s study challenges nationalist constructions of history and provides a context for understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is also the first comprehensive work on the Nablus region, Palestine’s trade, manufacturing, and agricultural heartland, and a bastion of local autonomy.

For further reading about Palestinian historiography, see:
Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History