Ella Shohat

Professor Ella Habiba Shohat is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University, and has taught, lectured and written extensively on issues having to do with Eurocentrism and Orientalism, as well as with postcolonial and transnational approaches to Cultural Studies. More specifically, since the 1980s she has developed critical approaches to the study of Arab Jews/Mizrahim.

Her award-winning publications include: Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (Duke Univ. Press, 2006), Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Univ. of Texas Press, 1989; New Updated Edition with a new postscript chapter, I.B. Tauris, 2010); Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (MIT & The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998); Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives (co-edited, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1997); and with Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism (Routledge, 1994); Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2003); Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism (Routledge, 2007); and Culture Wars in Translation (forthcoming, NYU press, 2011). Shohat’s co-edited volume, The Cultural Politics of “the Middle East” in the Americas (forthcoming, Univ. of Michigan Press, 2011).

Her writing has been translated into several languages, including: Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, and Italian. Shohat has also served on the editorial board of several journals, including: Social Text; Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies; Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; and Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. She is a recipient of such fellowships as Rockefeller and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, where she also taught at The School of Criticism and Theory. Recently she was awarded a Fulbright research / lectureship at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, for working on the cultural intersections between the Middle East and Latin America.

Books

• Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989; New Edition, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010).
• Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism (New York: Routledge, 2006).
• Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
• Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
• Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
• Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
• Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994).

Selected Articles

• “Travelling ‘Postcolonial’: Allegories of Zion, Palestine and Exile, “ published lecture delivered at the “Edward Said: A Continuing Legacy” conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, October 3, 2004; published in a special issue, “The conflict and Contemporary Visual Culture in Palestine & Israel,” Haim Bresheeth and Haifa Hammami, Eds. Third Text 80-81 May/July 2006, pp. 287-291
• “The ‘Postcolonial’ in Translation: Reading Said in Hebrew,” (a special issue on Edward Said, edited by Rashid Khalidi), Journal of Palestine Studies, XXXIII, no. 3 (Spring 2004), pp. 55-75
• "Rupture and Return: Zionist Discourse and the Study of Arab Jews," Social Text, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 49-74
• “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge,” Social Text 72 (Fall 2002), pp. 67-78 (based on a lecture in conjunction with book-signing events for Talking Visions)
• “’Coming to America’: Reflections on Hair and Memory Loss,” Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, Lisa Suhair Majaj & Amal Amireh, eds., Garland Publishers, 2000, pp. 284-300
• "Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions: Columbus, Palestine and Arab-Jews" in Performing Hybridity, May Joseph & Jennifer Fink eds., University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 131-156
• "The Invention of the Mizrahim," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 5-20
• "The Narrative of the Nation and the Discourse of Modernization: The Case of the Mizrahim," Critique, (Spring, 1997), pp. 3-18
• "Staging the Quincentenary: The Middle East and the Americas," Third Text (London) (Special issue on "The Wake of Utopia"), 21 (Winter 1992 93), pp. 95 105
• "Rethinking Jews and Muslims: Quincentennial Reflections," Middle East Report, No. 178 (Sep.-Oct., 1992), pp. 25-29
• "Dislocated Identites: Reflection of an Arab Jew," Movement Research: Performance Journal #5 (Fall-Winter, 1992), p.8
• "Notes on the `Post Colonial'," Social Text, 31 32 (Spring 1992), pp. 99 113
• "Territories of the National Imagination," Transition 53 (Spring 1991) pp. 124‑132
• "Gender and the Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema," Quarterly Review of Film and Video 131:1‑2 (Spring 1991
• "Imaging Terra Incognita: The Disciplinary Gaze of Empire," Public Culture 3:2 (Spring 1991), pp. 41‑70
• "The Media's War," Social Text 28 (Spring 1991) pp. 135 141
• "Gender in Hollywood's Orient," Middle East Report 162 (January‑February 1990), pp. 40‑43
• "From Didactic Texts to Allegorical Readings," Jewish Ethnology Review 11:1‑2 (1989), 38-41
• Wedding in Galilee," Middle East Report 154 (September‑October 1988), pp. 44‑46
• "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims," Social Text, No. 19/20 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 1-35
• "The Return of the Repressed: The 'Palestinian Wave' in Recent Israeli Cinema," Cineaste 15:3 (Spring 1987), pp. 10‑17
• The Trouble with Hanna: Costa Gavras and the Representation of Palestine," Film Quarterly 38:2 (Winter 1984 85), pp. 50 55 (co authored)