Arab Families Working Group

Suad Joseph
Dr. Suad Joseph, University of California, Davis
Born	(1943-09-06) 6 September 1943 (age 74) Lebanon
Academic background
Alma mater	Columbia University
Academic work
Discipline	Anthropologist
Sub-discipline	Women and Gender Studies
Institutions	University of California, Davis
Notable works	Arab Families Working Group, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Culture

Suad Joseph (born 6 September 1943). Dr. Joseph received her doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1975. Dr. Joseph is Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis and current President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Her research addresses issues of gender; families, children, and youth; sociology of the family; and selfhood, citizenship, and the state in the Middle East, with a focus on her native Lebanon. Her earlier work focused on the politicization of religion in Lebanon. Joseph is the founder of the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology (now the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association), the founder and coordinator of the Arab Families Working Group, the founder of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies, the General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, and the Founding Director of the Middle East/South Asian Studies Program at the University of California at Davis. She is also the founder and facilitator of a six-university consortium of the American University of Beirut, American University in Cairo, Lebanese American University, University of California at Davis, and Birzeit University Consortium.

Born in Lebanon as the youngest of seven children. Joseph and four brothers and two sisters were taught to put schooling first by their parents who were unskilled laborers. Her mother, Rose Haddad Joseph, was illiterate. Joseph grew up in Cortland, New York, and thanks to the local State University of New York, Cortland, she was able to achieve an undergraduate education. She then went on to complete graduate school, studying anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and then at Columbia University, where she achieved her doctoral degree in anthropology. She and all six of her siblings went on to achieve advance degrees.