Zachary Lockman

Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and History

Bio

The main focus of my research and teaching has been the socioeconomic, cultural and political history of the modern Middle East, particularly the Mashriq. Under the influence of the “new social history” and “history from below” movements of the 1960s and 1970s, I did my doctoral dissertation on the emergence and evolution of a working class and labor movement in Egypt from the late nineteenth century until the Second World War; it was published in 1987 in a book co-authored with Joel Beinin. Since then I have sporadically continued to work on Egypt, with a special interest in society, culture and politics in the 1882-1919 period. I have also done a great deal of research and writing on Palestine, manifested (among other things) in a 1989 edited volume on the Intifada and a 1996 book on relations between Arab and Jewish workers and labor movements in Palestine between 1906 and 1948, and various articles, papers and talks. I’ve also published an introduction to the history and politics of Orientalism and Middle East studies, with particular attention to the study of the Middle East in the United States since 1945 and its intersections with U.S. policy in that region. My latest book is a history of area studies and Middle East studies in the United States, based on extensive research in the archives of foundations, academic organizations and universities.

Along the way I have served as president of the Middle East Studies Association and a member of its Committee on Academic Freedom; as a member of the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies; and as an editor (and currently a contributing editor) of Middle East Report.

Education

Harvard University, Ph. D., 1983

Areas of Research/Interest

Modern Middle Eastern history

Courses

“Palestine, Zionism and Israel” (undergraduate lecture survey course)

“Palestine and the Politics of History” (undergraduate and graduate versions)

“Egypt in Modern Times” (graduate course)

“The United States and the Middle East” (undergraduate seminar)

Publications

Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (Stanford University Press, 2016).

“Land, Labor and the Logic of Zionism: a Critical Engagement with Gershon Shafir,” Settler Colonial Studies 2 no. 1 (2012): 9-38.

Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge University Press, 2004; second edition, 2010).

“Explorations in the Field: Lost Voices and Emerging Practices in Egypt, 1882-1914,” in Histories of the Modern Middle East: New Directions, eds. Israel Gershoni, Hakan Erdem and Ursula Wokoeck (Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002).

“Arab Workers and Arab Nationalism in Palestine: A View from Below,” in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, eds. James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (Columbia University Press, 1997).

Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (University of California Press, 1996).

“Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899-1914,” Poetics Today 15, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 157-90.

Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies (State University of New York Press, 1993).

“Railway Workers and Relational History: Arabs and Jews in British-Ruled Palestine,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 3 (July 1993): 601-627.

Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, co-edited with Joel Beinin ( South End Press, 1989).

Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954, with Joel Beinin (Princeton University Press, 1987).