Amy Aisen Kallander

Associate Professor, History

Degree

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2007

Specialties

Modern Middle East, Ottoman Empire, women and gender, Tunisia

Biography

Amy Kallander is a historian of the early modern and modern Middle East and affiliated faculty with Women’s and Gender Studies. Her first book, Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia (University of Texas Press, 2013) is a social history of women and the family that governed Tunisia in the 18th and 19th centuries. She is currently at work on a project examining the relationship between women, gender, and citizenship in postcolonial Tunisia, as exemplified through discourses on romantic love and companionate marriage, family planning as a form of development, and the modernization of the family. Her writing on modern Tunisia has appeared in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report Online, Arab Media & Society, and Nouri Gana ed. The Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects (Edinburgh University Press 2013). Professor Kallander teaches courses on the Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East, the Arab Revolutions, popular culture, women and gender in Middle East history, Palestine and Israel, and gender and race in European colonial empires. She is also part of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies.

Publications

Book 

Women, gender, and the palace households in Ottoman Tunisia (University of Texas Press, 2013).

Articles and Book Chapters

Miniskirts and “Beatniks”: Gender Roles, National Development, and Morals in 1960s Tunisia. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 50:2 (2018), 291-313

"'Friends of Tunisia': French economic and diplomatic support of Tunisian authoritarianism," in Nouri Gana ed. The Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects. Edinburgh University Press (2013).

“From TUNeZINE to Nhar 3la 3mmar: A Reconsideration of the Role of Bloggers in Tunisia’s Revolution” Arab, Media, and Society 17 (Winter 2013).

“Tunisia’s Post-Ben Ali Challenge: A Primer” in David McMurray and Amanda Ufheil-Somers eds. The Arab Revolts: Dispatches on Militant Democracy in the Middle East (Indiana University Press, 2013). Updated and revised from the Middle East Report Online 26 January 2011.

"The Color of Orientalism: Race and Narratives of Discovery in Tunisia," Ethnic and Racial Studies 33:2 (February 2010).

Research Grants and Awards

NEH Summer Stipend, 2015
Syracuse University Humanities Center Faculty Fellow, spring 2012
Fullbright CASA III Fellow, Cairo, June-July 2009
Sultan Fellow, UC Berkeley, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, September 2006 – June 2007
Chancellor’s Dissertation Fellowship, UC Berkeley Graduate Division, September 2006 – June 2007
American Institute for Maghreb Studies (AIMS), short-term research grant, June-July 2006
Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, UC Berkeley, September 2005 – June 2006
Fulbright Fellowship, September 2004 – May 2005
Department of Education, FLAS Fellowship, Arabic, Summer 2004
Department of Education, FLAS Fellowship, Arabic, September 2003 – June 2004

Selected Professional Activities

Professional Affiliations:

 - Middle East Studies Association
 - Association for Middle East Women's Studies  - Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Reviews Editor http://jmews.org/about/the-journal/)