Duke Cultural Anthropology

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    Rebecca L. Stein

  • Rebecca L. Stein

  • Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Director of Graduate Studies
  • Cultural Anthropology
  • 212 Friedl Building
  • Campus Box 90091
  • Phone: 919-684-4663
  • Fax: (919) 681-8483
  • Office Hours: by appointment
  • Secondary web page

  • Specialties

    • Middle East
    • Mass Culture
    • Post Colonialism
    • Globalization
    • Sexuality
    • Culture Theory

  • Research Description

    My research studies linkages between cultural and political processes in Israel in relation to its military occupation and the history of Palestinian dispossession. I am the author of Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Political Lives of Tourism (Duke University Press, 2008) which considers the relationship between tourism, mobility politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coeditor of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2005) with Ted Swedenburg and The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 with Joel Beinin (Stanford University Press, 2006). I am currently working on two books that consider the linkages between new information and communication technologies and the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories. The first -- Another War Zone: Social Media and Military Occupation in Israel and Palestine (co-authored with Adi Kuntsman; under contract with Stanford University Press) -- studies the ways that social media is changing the Israeli relationship to its military occupation. The second -- Viral Occupation: How New Technologies Have Changed the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict -- charts the longer history of new technologies in the Israeli military context, with a focus on the role of digital cameras, cellphones, and viral video and photographic circuits in this relationship. In the broadest terms, these projects chart the ways that new technologies are being used by the Israeli state for both international PR and counterinsurgency within the occupation context, and how, in turn, these digital tools are remaking the terrain of human rights work and anti-occupation activism within Israel. These projects have been supported by grants from the Wenner Gren foundation and Palestinian American Research Council. My work on Israeli cultural politics has appeared in such journals as The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Social Text, Public Culture, Theory and Event, Journal of Palestine Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

  • Education

      • PhD,
      • Modern Thought and Literature,
      • Stanford University,
      • 1999
      • MA,
      • Stanford University,
      • 1995
      • BA (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa),
      • Amherst College,
      • 1991

  • Selected Publications

      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2012).
      • Inside Israel's Twitter War Room: History of a Social Media Arsenal.
      • Middle East Report
      • .
      • [web]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2012).
      • Impossible Witness: Israeli Visuality, Palestinian Testimony, and the Gaza War.
      • Journal for Cultural Research (special issue on Arab Cultural Studies)
      • .
      • [PDF]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2012).
      • An All-Consuming Occupation.
      • Middle East Report
      • .
      • [web]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2012).
      • StateTube: Anthropological Reflections on Social Media and the Israeli State.
      • Anthropological Quarterly
      • .
      • [PDF]
      • Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein.
      • (2011).
      • Digital Suspicion, Politics, and the Middle East.
      • Critical Inquiry (online feature on Arab Spring)
      • .
      • [PDF]
      • Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein.
      • (September, 2010).
      • Another War Zone: New Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
      • Middle East Report
      • .
      • [web]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2010, No. 43).
      • Israeli Routes Through Nakba Landscapes: An Ethnographic Meditation.
      • Jerusalem Quarterly
      • .
      • [PDF]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2010).
      • Explosive: Scenes from Israel's Queer Occupation.
      • GLQ: Gay Lesbian Quarterly
      • ,
      • 16
      • (4)
      • .
      • [PDF]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (2009).
      • Traveling Zion: Hiking and Settler-Nationalism in pre-1948 Palestine.
      • Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
      • ,
      • 11
      • (3)
      • ,
      • 334 - 351.
      • [PDF]
      • R.L. Stein.
      • (November, 2008).
      • Souvenirs of Conquest: Israeli Occupations as Tourist Events.
      • International Journal of Middle East Studies
      • .
      • [PDF]
  • View All Publications
  • African Fabric