Elizabeth Thompson
Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program
October 1, 2007 – July 31, 2008
Project Focus:
Struggles for Justice in the Middle East
Democratization | Human Rights | International Law | Political Islam | Religion, Religious Conflict | U.S. Foreign Policy | Women and Conflict | Middle East
Phone: (202) 429-4735
E-mail: ethompson@usip.org
Languages: Arabic, French
Examining the role of justice in the West’s engagement with the Islamic world, Elizabeth Thompson is writing a history of the Middle East from the perspective of those who have struggled for justice against invasion, tyranny, and inequality. She also examines the ways in which today’s Islamist groups are heirs to struggles for justice waged in the early twentieth century.
Thompson is an associate professor at the University of Virginia, where she has lectured and taught in the department of history since 1995. She has received awards from the Carnegie Corporation, Guggenheim Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Republic of France, Library of Congress, and American Council of Learned Societies. Her book, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, received awards from the American Historical Association and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. A former reporter and feature columnist for Arab News in Saudi Arabia, Thompson holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.
Publications:
- Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. (Columbia University Press, 2000)
- "Public and Private in Middle Eastern Women's History." Journal of Women's History 15:1 (Spring 2003)
- "Neither Conspiracy nor Hypocrisy: The Jesuits and the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon." Altruism and Imperialism: Western Cultural and Religious Missions in the Middle East, edited by E. Tejirian and R. Simons (The Middle East Institute, Columbia University Press, 2002)
