The Regional Dimensions of Authoritarianism in the Arab World

Tuesday, March 30, 2010
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Samer Shehata

Samer S. Shehata is an Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton University. Before coming to Georgetown Dr. Shehata spent one year as a Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and another as Director of Graduate Studies at New York University's Center for Near Eastern Studies. He is the author of numerous academic and policy articles which have appeared in a wide variety of publications including International Journal of Middle East Studies, MERIP, Current History, Slate, Salon, Boston Globe, Al Ahram Weekly, etc. His first book, Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt (SUNY Press), was recently published in 2009. It is an ethnographic study of two textile factories in Alexandria, Egypt exploring questions of social class and class formation, power and resistance, and authority relations in the firm. In 2008-2009 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and in 2009 he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York for his research on Islamist politics. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.