Law and rights in the Middle East
(November 2006)
Books
- Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class, by Keith David Watenpaugh, (Princeton University Press, 2006)
Related news
- "Middle East needs strong middle class for social change," UC Davis News Service, 11.1.06
- "Law meets culture: Legal scholar studies Muslim women reforming from within," UC Davis web Spotlight, 8.11.06
- "Grant helps UC Davis boost Middle East, South Asia education," UC Davis News Service, 5.30.06
Web sites
Profiles
Madhavi Sunder, professor of law
Sunder is an expert on women's human rights in Muslim countries and communities.
With law and culture as the focus of her scholarship, Sunder says international human rights law often fails to address women's rights under even the most oppressive regimes because such law is reticent to interfere with religion and culture.
A 2006 Carnegie scholar, she is researching and writing a book about activists working for the reform of women's rights in Muslim countries.
Sunder published a leading article on women's rights activism in the Muslim world, titled "Piercing the Veil," in the Yale Law Journal in 2003. Her related article on dissent within cultural groups was published in the Stanford Law Review in 2001.
Contact: Madhavi Sunder, School of Law, (530) 752-2896, msunder@ucdavis.edu
Keith Watenpaugh, associate professor of modern Islam, human rights and peace
Watenpaugh, a Middle Eastern historian, can speak on a wide variety of topics regarding Iraq, its history and prospects for peace and, more generally, the Middle East, where he has conducted extensive research. Watenpaugh has written and spoken on campuses around the country on issues raised by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, in particular the challenges facing Iraq's intellectuals and college and university professionals, as well as threats to cultural heritage. He is the author of Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton University Press, 2006). He is currently editing the volume The Arab Intellectual and the Question of Modernity and finishing a second book, It Made Orphans of Their Children and Widows of their Wives: Human Rights Abuse and the Formation of the Modern Middle East.
Contact: Keith Watenpaugh, (530) 313-5115, kwatenpaugh@ucdavis.edu