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Skip Navigation LinksElizabeth-Suzanne-Kassab Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab
Associate Professor

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab studied philosophy at the American University of Beirut and the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). She taught in Lebanon at the American University of Beirut and Balamand University, and has been a Visiting Professor at a number of Universities in Europe and the US, including Bonn, Columbia, Yale, and Brown. She has been a Fulbright fellow at the New School University in NYC, a Research Fellow at the German Orient Institute in Beirut, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Universities of Bieleleld and Erfurt, at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies of the Free University of Berlin, at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Bonn and the Marburg research network "Re-Configurations. History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa" She has been a faculty member of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies since October 2016.

Her research interests center on Western and post-colonial philosophies of culture, with a particular focus on contemporary Arab thought and philosophy. She has received the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in Abu Dhabi in the category of "Contribution to the Development of Nations" for the Arabic version of her book Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (Columbia University Press, 2010). Her new book is entitled Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia University Press, 2019)


Education:

PhD Philosophy, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland.

MA Philosophy, American University of Beirut.

BBA, American University of Beirut.


Languages (fluent): 

English, French, German, Arabic, Armenian.

Modern and contemporary Arab philosophy and thought, Western and postcolonial philosophy of culture. 

Philosophy of Western and Postcolonial Cultures and Civilizations, Modern European Philosophy, Modern and Contemporary Arab Philosophy, Modern and Contemporary Arab Thought.

Contemporary Arab philosophy and thought, Contemporary Arab thought, Western and Postcolonial Philosophy of culture, Gender in the modern and contemporary Middle East, History of liberation ideas.


Taught courses: 

- Contemporary Arab Philosophy

- Gender and Identity in the Middle East

- History of Liberation Ideas

- Issues in Social and Human Sciences

Books:

Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (Columbia University Press, 2010).

Book Chapters:

- "On the intertwinement of the political and the intellectual in modern Arab History" in Larbi Sadiki ed., The Routledge Handbook on the Politics of the Middle East. Routledge, forthcoming.

- "Jahrhundertwende Aufklärungsdebatten am Vorabend der Revolution in Ägypten und Syrien" in Sarhan Dhouib (hg.), Philosophieren unter der Diktatur. Weilerwiest: Vellbrück Wissenschaft, forthcoming.

- "Summoning the spirit of Taha Husayn's Enlightenment project: The Nahda revival of Qadaya wa shahadat in the 1990s" in Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss eds., Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age. Towards an Intellectual History of the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

 

Journal articles:

- "Critics and rebels: Older Arab intellectuals reflect on the uprisings," in a special issue of the British Journal of Middle East Studies devoted to "Intellectuals in the Middle East," 1-20, 2014

 

- "The Arab quest for freedom and dignity: Have Arab thinkers been part of it?" META, electronic journal of the Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Marburg, Germany, 2013:

http://meta-journal.net/article/view/1038

 

Encyclopaedia entries:

- "Qustantin Zurayq" in Rudolph, Ulrich und von Kügelgen, Anke (Hrsg.) Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, volume 4, (History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy in the Middle East). Basel (Schweiz), Überweg, forthcoming.

 

- "Sadeq Jalal al-Azm" in Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition.

Email: elizabeth.kassab@dohainstitute.edu.qa​​

Tel: +974 40356921 

Mail Address

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab

Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

School of Social Sciences and Humanities 

P.O.Box: 200592 

Doha, Qatar 
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