Frances Hasso

Educational Background

• Bachelor of Arts, Univ California Los Angeles, 1987
• Master of Arts, Georgetown University, 1990
• Master of Arts, University of Michigan, 1994
• Doctor of Philosophy, University Michigan Ann Arbor, 1997

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Frances Hasso is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department, and Affiliated Faculty member in the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies (GSFS) at Oberlin College. During Spring 2009, she is Director of GSFS. She teaches a range of courses, including: Gender, Social Change, Social Movements (SOCI 233*); Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East and North Africa (SOCI 238*); Feminist Research Methodologies (SOCI 305); Partition, War, Dislocation: Mid-Twentieth Century Historic Palestine and South Asia (SOCI/ENG 362*), with Prof. Anuradha Needham; and Gender and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (SOCI 406*). In addition to fulfilling sociology requirements, these courses can count toward GSFS major and minor requirements; a number of them (*) focus on Middle East and North Africa Studies.

She has received numerous research grants and fellowships, including from the Rockefeller Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, American Sociological Association/National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies, and the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World.

Ms. Hasso’s research interests focus on the intersections of transnational processes, states, social movements, and identities, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. Her first book is titled: Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan (Syracuse University Press 2005) and focuses on Palestinian nationalist and women’s organizations. Recent journal articles include: “Discursive & Political Deployments by/of the 2002 Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers/Martyrs” (Feminist Review, October 2005) and “‘Culture Knowledge’ and the Violence of Imperialism: Revisiting The Arab Mind” (MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, Spring 2007), available at http://web.mit.edu/CIS/www/mitejmes/intro.htm. A journal article titled, “Empowering Governmentalities Rather Than Women: The Arab Human Development Report 2005 and Western Development Logics,” is forthcoming in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (February 2009).

She is currently completing a comparative book project: “Identities and Practices of Desire: Sexuality, Marriage, and ‘Family Crisis’ in the Middle East and North Africa.” This book is based on field and other research in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and focuses on the relationship between transnational flows of bodies, ideas, products, and capital on the one hand, and emerging identities and marital and sexual forms on the other. The book is written with particular attention to state, religious, and activist discourses of “family crisis,” as well as policy and legal developments in these arenas.

Ms. Hasso co-founded (1999), co-chaired (2000-2002), and is a continuing member of the American Sociological Association Caucus on Transnational Approaches to Gender and Sexuality. In 2008 she was elected to the Sally Hacker Paper Award Committee (2-year term), Sex and Gender Section, American Sociological Association. Between 2005 and 2007, she was an editorial board member of Gender & Society. In 2007, she was a member of the Middle East Studies Association Program Committee.

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