Professor
Department of Anthropology, Trent University 1600 West Bank Dr.
Peterborough, Ontario CANADA
705 748-1011 x7329
ameneley@trentu.ca
Citizenship
Canadian
Research and Teaching Interests
Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, Italy, religion and world view, Palestine, Islam, embodiment, gender, culture and consumption, ethnographic methods, personhood and emotions, international commodity flows, histories of anthropology, auto-ethnographies of academic practices, culture and food, food politics, olive oil, circulations of commodities, mobilities, and consumerism.
Academic Appointments
2015- Professor, Department of Anthropology
2012-15 Associate Chair, Department of Anthropology, Trent University
2010-12 Chair, Department of Anthropology, Trent University
2008-10 Associate Chair, Department of Anthropology
2002 Associate Professor of Anthropology, Trent University
1998-02 Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Trent University
1996-98 Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Lewis and Clark College
Education
1984-1993 M.A., Ph.D. Dept. of Anthropology, New York University, New York. Dissertation Project “Style, Status and Sociability in Zabid,” a study of gendered consumption and exchange, based on participant observation research in the Republic of Yemen.
Summer 1987 Arabic, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, England
Summer 1986 Arabic, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont
1984 B.A., Hons. McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Awards and Grants
2021-2026 Gardens Elsewhere and Otherwise: A historical and Ethnographic Study of Georgia’s Green Heterotopias (SSHRC Insight Grant, co-applicant with Paul Manning)
2020 Merit Award for Research, Trent University.
2018 Guest Artist “The Art of Walking” Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, 2-14 April.
2018-2023 Fitbit Frenzies: The Quantification and Gamification of Walking. (SSHRC Insight Grant)
2016 Saving, Sharing, and Self-Sufficiency: New Ways of Preserving the Palestinian Homeland. (Internal SSHRC)
2009 Merit Award for Research, Trent University
2008-2011 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant for Palatable Peace: The global circulation of Palestinian extra-virgin olive oil (3-year Standard Research Grant)
2007 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant for The Politics of Production of Palestinian Olive Oil (Internal)
2005 Merit Award for Research, Trent University
2003 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for A Cultural Economy of Capitalism: The Production, Circulation and Consumption of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil (3- year Standard Research Grant)
2003b Ford Foundation supplemental grant for Politics and Practices of Academic Collaboration
2002 Ford Foundation Grant, Research Grant for study of the Politics and Practices of Academic Collaboration
2000 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research grant for preliminary research on Italian olive oil (Internal)
1999 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research grant for Yemen (Internal)
1997 Honorable Mention from the American Ethnological Society for Best First Book
1993 Esther De Berg Kahn Certificate of Achievement in Anthropology, New York University
1990-91 June F. Esserman Dissertation Fellowship, New York University
1988-89 American Institute for Yemeni Studies Research Fellowship
1988-90 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Research Fellowship
1988 Key Pin Award for Excellence in Anthropology, New York University
1984-85 Kriser Entrance Fellowship in Anthropology, New York University
Field Research
Palestine 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2017, 2018, 2019
Singapore 2022
New York 2007, 2009, 2012, 2019, 2022
California 2007
Toronto 2000-22
Italy Puglia 2008; Umbria and Tuscany, 2000, 2003, 2005
Multi-sited Trinidad, Peterborough, Canton, NY 2001-2003
Republic of Yemen Socotra, 2022
Republic of Yemen Zabid and San`a’, 1999
Republic of Yemen Zabid, 1989-90
New York City Ethnographic study of SoHo Irish pub, 1987
Books
2016 Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town. 20th Anniversary Edition. New preface “Reflections on Fieldwork in Zabid.” Foreword, Janice Boddy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
1996, 2002 Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Edited Books
2011 Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession. Co-edited with Don Kulick. Korean Edition. Seoul: Sodong Publishing Co.
2005a Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession. Co-edited with Don Kulick. New York: Tarcher Penguin.
2005b Auto-ethnographies: The Anthropology of Academic Practices. Co- edited with Donna Young. Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Articles
2021a Eating Wild: Hosting the Food Heritage of Palestine. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 44(2):207-222.
2021b Hope in the Ruins: Seeds, Plants, and Possibilities of Regeneration. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 4 (1): 158-172.
2021c The Companion to Every Bite: Palestinian Olive Oil in the Levant. Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean. Eds. Anny Gaul, Graham Auman Pitts, and Vicki Valosik, pp. 115-132. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2020a The Olive and Imaginaries of the Mediterranean. History and Anthropology 31 (1):66-83.
2020b The Distance of a Hockey Stick. Pandemic Insights, Anthropology News 29 June.
2019 Walk This Way: Fitbit and Other Kinds of Walking in Palestine. Cultural Anthropology 34(1):130-154.
2018 Consumerism. Annual Review of Anthropology 47:117-32.
2017 The Zabidi House. Architectural Heritage of Yemen: Buildings that Fill My Eye. Ed. Trevor H.J. Marchand, pp. 194-203. London: Gingko Library.
2016 Checking Your Waistline at the Checkpoint: Dieting as a Peace Initiative. Jerusalem Quarterly 68:90-103.
2014a The Accidental Pilgrims: Olive Pickers in Palestine. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 5: 186-199.
2014b Resistance is Fertile! The Re-invention of Food: Connection and Mediation, Cristina Grasseni and Heather Paxson, guest editors. Special Edition of Gastronomica Vol. 14(4):70-79.
2014c The Qualities of Palestinian Olive Oil in Fat: Culture and Materiality, Christopher E. Forth and Alison Leitch, eds. pp.17-31. New York: Bloomsbury.
2014d Discourses of Distinction in Contemporary Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Production. Food and Foodways 22 (1-2): 48-64.
2014e Comment on Andrew Bevan’s “Mediterranean Containerization.” Current Anthropology 55 (4):408-409.
2011a Blood, Sweat and Tears in a Bottle of Palestinian Olive Oil. Food, Culture and Society 14 (2): 275-290.
2011b Food and Morality in Yemen. In Food: Ethnographic Encounters. Editor, Leo Coleman. New York: Berg. Pp. 17-29.
2010 The Naturecultures of Foie Gras: Techniques of the Body and a Contested Ethics of Care (with Deborah Heath). Food, Culture & Society 13:3:422-452.
2008a Time in a Bottle: The Uneasy Circulation of Palestinian Olive Oil. Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). Fall 248:18-23.
2008b Oleo-Signs and Quali-Signs: The Qualities of Olive Oil. Ethnos 73:303-326.
2008c Material Objects in Cosmological Worlds: An Introduction (with Paul Manning). Ethnos 73:285-302.
2007a Like an Extra-Virgin. American Anthropologist 109:678-687.
2007b Techne, Technoscience, and the Circulation of Comestible Commodities: An Introduction (with Deborah Heath). American Anthropologist 109:593-602. “In Focus” Section entitled Food and Drink: Techne and Technoscience.
2007c Fashion and Fundamentalisms in Fin de Siècle Yemen: Chador Barbie and Islamic Socks. Cultural Anthropology 22:214-243.
2005a Oil. Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession, D. Kulick and A. Meneley, eds. New York: Tarcher Penguin, 29-43.
2005b Introduction to Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession, with Don Kulick, New York: Tarcher Penguin, 1-8.
2005c Teaching and Learning across Borders, with Julia Harrison. Auto-ethnographies: The Anthropology of Academic Practices. Peterborough: Broadview, 80-93.
2005d Introduction to Auto-Ethnographies: The Anthropology of Academic Practices, with Donna Young. Peterborough: Broadview, 1-21.
2004 Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Slow Food. Anthropologica. 46(2):165-176.
2003 Scared Sick or Silly? Social Analysis 47(2):21-39. Also reprinted in Illness and Irony. M. Lambek and P. Antze, eds. 2004. New York: Berghahn.
2000 Living Hierarchy in Yemen. Anthropologica 42(1):61-73.
1999a Goods and Goodness. Social Analysis 43(3):69-88.
1999b Introduction to "The Structuring of Subjectivities in Material Worlds." Social Analysis 43(3):1-5.
1998 Analogies and Resonances in the Process of Ethnographic Understanding. Ethnos 63:202-226.
1997 Tournaments of Value (in Arabic). Studies on the Ethnology of Yemen. Trans. Lucine Taminian and Abdul Karim al Aug. Yemen Research Series. American Institute for Yemeni Studies Publications.
1988 Kizb and the Discourse of Honor. New York University Journal of Anthropology 3:1-10.
Guest Editor
2008 Special Edition of Ethnos “Material Objects in Cosmological Worlds”.
2007 American Anthropologist, In Focus: Food and Drink: Techne and Technoscience.
1999 Special Edition of Social Analysis, The Structuring of Subjectivities in Material Worlds.
Book Reviews
2021a Our Daily Bread: A Meditation on the Cultural and Symbolic Significance of Bread Throughout History by Predrag Matvejević. Translated from the Croatian by Christina Pribichevich-Zorić. 2020. London: Istros Press, pp. 168. https://foodanthro.com/2021/01/25/review-our-daily-bread/
2021b Review of Andrew Warnes 2019. How the Shopping Cart Explains Global Consumerism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 161. ISBN: 978-0-520-29529-2. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27(4): 1013-14.
2015 Review of Food Between the Country and the City edited by Domingos, Nuno Miguel, Sobral, Jose Manuel and West, Harry G. (eds.). 2014. Food Between the Country and the City: Ethnographies of a Changing Global Foodscape. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 264 pp. Pb: £22.49. ISBN: 9780857855381 http://allegralaboratory.net/review-food- between-the-country-and-the-city/
2014 Review of Emma Tarlo and Annelies Moors, editors. Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion: New Perspectives from Europe and North America. Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life. Published online: 14 June 2014.
2013 Review of Habeeb Salloum, Muna Salloum and Leila Salloum Elias’ Scherezade’s Feasts: Foods of the Medieval Arab World. Middle East Media and Book Review Online. Volume1:8, December. http://membr.uwm.edu/review.php?id=91
2012 Review of Johan Fischer’s The Halal Frontier: Muslim Consumers in a Globalized Market. Anthropology News, November 2012.
2011a Review of Elizabeth Krause’s Unraveled: A Weaver’s Tale of Life Gone Modern. Political and Legal Anthropology Review Vol 34 (1): 190-192.
2011b Review of David Haslam and Fiona Haslam’s Fat, Gluttony and Sloth: Obesity in Literature, Art and Medicine. Gastronomica Fall 2011: 115-116.
2009a Review of Shelagh Weir’s A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen. The Historian Vol. 71: 346-347.
2008b Review of The Smell Culture Reader, ed. Jim Drobnick, Ethnos73: 274-276.
2008 Review of John, Fourth Marquis of Bute’s Moorish Recipes. New York: Kegan Paul. Food, Culture & Society 11:401-402.
2007a Review of Gabriele vom Bruck’s Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition. Palgrave Macmillian, 2005. Anthropology News 48:59.
2007b Review of Cristina Mazzoni’s The Women in God’s Kitchen: Cooking, Eating, and Spiritual Writing. Continuum, 2005. Gastronomica Winter:115.
2006a Review of Lila Abu-Lughod’s Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. University of Chicago Press, 2005. http://www.csaa.ca/CRSA/BookReview/Reviews/200606/200 606ABU.htm
2006b Review of Suzana Sawyer’s, Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador. Duke University Press, 2004. http://www.csaa.ca/CRSA/BookReview/Reviews/200606/200 606SAWYER.htm.
2005a Review of Aisha Khan’s, Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity in Trinidad. (2004, Duke University Press.) Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology On-Line Book Reviews, http://www.csaa.ca/CRSA/BookReview/GeneralInfo.htm
2005b Review of Rebecca Popenoe’s, Feeding Desire: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara. (2003, Routledge). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11:181-183.
2001 Review of Susan F. Hirsch’s, Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court. (1998, University of Chicago Press.) The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 38(3):370-373.
2000 Review of Fatima Mernissi’s Women’s Rebellion in Islamic Memory. (1996, New Jersey: Zed) and Amira El Azhary Sonbol and Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, eds. Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History. (1996, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.) Signs 25(2):614-617.
Encyclopedia Entries
2005 Women, Gender, and Hospitality in Yemen and the Arabian Gulf. Encyclopedia of Islamic Women, Volume II, Family, Law and Politics, 229-231.
Invited Lectures
2021 Annual Gehman Lecture, Western University. “Plants of Resistance (and Hope),” 15 October.
2019 “Hope in the Ruins: Seeds, Plants, and Possibilities of Regeneration” Workshop on Environmental Justice in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, State University of New York, Buffalo, February 7-8.
2019 Keynote Presentation “Seeds, Plants, and Possibilities of Regeneration: Infrastructures, Art, Hospitality” at Consuming the Unique: Food, Art and the Globalizing Infrastructures of Value conference, Central European University, Budapest, May 9-10.
2019 “Olive Oil”. Making Levantine Cuisine Symposium. Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 7-8 June.
2018 Fitbit Walking, Nature Walking, Urban Walking: Genres of Walking in the Holy Land and Beyond. SAI Seminar Series, Department of Anthropology, University of Oslo, 21 February.
2017 Keynote Address: Resistance is Fertile! Multi-sited Research with Agro-Activists. For Anthropology and Community: An Exploration of Collaboration and Engagements Inside and Outside the Field, Western Anthropology Graduate Students Conference. Western University, 4 March.
2017 Guest Speaker "The Olive and the Mediterranean" Chicago Semiotics Circle, University of Chicago. 6 April.
2017 Seminar Leader "Food Auto-Ethnographies" El Beir, Arts and Seeds, Beit Sahour, Palestine, 3 May.
2017 Guest Speaker "The Olive and the Mediterranean" Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Bir Zeit University, Ramallah, Palestine, 4 May.
2017 A Fitbit in Jerusalem: Ways of Walking in the Holy Land. Middle East and North African Studies Center, Ryerson University. November 21st.
2015 Rooting and Uprooting: Olive Trees in Palestine. Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway, 26 October.
2014 Writing about Suffering and Hope in Palestine. The Ethnographic Pact: New Frontiers of Representation in the Anthropology of Suffering and Precarity Conference at the Centre for Ethnography, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Nov. 7-8th
2013 Artisans and Activists in Occupied Palestine. In: The Reinvention of Food Exploratory Seminar. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Oct. 18-19th.
2012 The Qualities of Palestinian Olive Oil. In Speakers Series on Morality and Ethics. Centre for Ethnography, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Oct 31st.
2011a The New Ethnography of Palestine/Israel. Anne Meneley and Alejandro Paz. Crossing Boundaries: Reading North Africa and the Middle East in Comparative Perspective Working Group. University of Toronto, St. George’s campus. March 24, 2011.
2011b Keynote Speaker at the University of Copenhagen. Luxurious Lipids: Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Foie Gras. April 15th.
2010 Olive Picking in Palestine: New Forms of Pilgrimage? In Speakers Series on Pilgrimage, Centre for Ethnography, University of Toronto, Scarborough, March 10th, 2010
2009a Keynote Speaker at the York University Graduate Conference “Playing the Field”.
2009b Keynote Speaker at the Food and Migration Workshop. School of Oriental and African Studies, February 2-3, 2009.
2009c Guest Speaker, Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, February 20.
2009d Guest Speaker, King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, March 2009
2008 Tales of Two Expulsions: The Aftermath of the Gulf War of 1990-1991 for Yemenis and Palestinians. G.C.C. Gender, Connectivity, and Change in the Gulf Arab States Conference, University of California, Irvine.
2007 Olive Oil in the Mediterranean Diet. The Mediterranean Diet Conference, James Beard Foundation and New York University, New York.
2004 Chador Barbie and Islamic Socks: Fashion and Fundamentalisms. Department of Anthropology, 26 March 2004, Tulane University.
2003 Chador Barbie: Islamism, Commodities, and Styles of Modesty in Yemen. Department of Anthropology, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
2002 Fright Illness in Yemen. Paper presented to the Seminar on Contemporary Directions in Anthropology, Lafitte, Louisiana.
2001 Good and Bad Commodities from Prestigious and Dangerous Locations: Reflections on Fieldwork in Italy and Yemen. Department of Anthropology, York University.
1999a Goods and Goodness. Department of Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 12 March.
1999b How I became a Zabidi socialite. American Institute for Yemeni Studies Guest Lecture Series, San’a, Republic of Yemen, 13 May.
1999c Doing Ethnographic Fieldwork in Zabid. Royal Ontario Museum, Near Eastern and Asian Colloquium, 18 June.
1998a Creating social hierarchy in Yemen through consumption and exchange. University of Western Ontario, February 1998.
1998b On Qat and Consumption in Yemen. University of Toronto, March 1998.
1994 Personhood, Emotion, and Hierarchy. Paper presented at McGill University, 21 March.
Panels Organized
2010 “Circulation Interrupted: Walls and Their Discontents” (with Miguel Diaz-Barriga and Farha Ghannem). Presidential Session, American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, 2010
2007 “Cosmopolitan Circulations of Emotions: Fear, Terror, Sympathy.” American Ethnological Society Meetings, Toronto.
2006 “Nature/Culture: Folk Knowledge, ‘Faux’ science, and Technoscience.” (with P. Manning) Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Montreal.
2005 “Material Infrastructures of Cosmological Worlds.” Society for the Anthropology of Religion, Vancouver, B.C.
2004 “Food and Wine: Techne and Technoscience.” (with D. Heath); American Anthropological Association, delayed until 2005, Washington, DC
2003 “Symposium: Auto-ethnographies of Academic Practices.” (with D. Young). Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2002 “Fat.” (with D. Kulick) American Anthropological Association meetings, New Orleans.
1999 “Shaping Time and Making Space in Middle Eastern Communities.” American Association Anthropological Meetings, Chicago, Illinois.
1998 “Battening Down the Body, Staving Off Collapse: Subjectivities of Illness, Race and Murder.” American Ethnological Society Meetings, Toronto, Canada
Conference Presentations
2022a Plantoptimism. Insaniyyat: Society for Palestinian Anthropologists, Conference in Beit Jala, Palestine and online, 7 January.
2022b Olive Oil and Movement, Moving Olive Oil. Dublin Gastronomy Symposium, 31 May.
2021 Reflections of an Anthropologist on Covid Gardening. Just Food Conference, online. 12 June.
2019 Consuming and Desiring Self-Monitoring. American Ethnological Society, St Louis, MO, 15 March.
2018 Fertile Circulations: Planting, Harvesting, Foraging, Sharing. Middle East Studies Association, San Antonio, 17 November.
2018 Regeneration from the Ruins: Palestinian Agro-Resistance. Political Ecology Network, POLLEN 18. Oslo, Norway, 22 June.
2018 Performing Vulnerability in Claustrophobic Infrastructures. Vulnerabilities Conference, Uppsala, Sweden, 20 April.
2017 Sprouting from the Ruins. American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC., 30 November.
2017 FitBit Frenzy: Walking Doesn’t Count Unless You Count It. International Visual Methods Conference (IVMF 5): Visualizing the City. Singapore, 17 August.
2016 Moral Economies of Oil. American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, 20 November.
2015a Olives in the Family, Olives on the Land. SIEF Conference, Zagreb, Croatia, 24 June.
2015b Shaping Taste in Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Grading: Making the Familiar Strange and the Strange Familiar. American Anthropological Association, Denver, CO, November 20.
2015c Rooting and Uprooting: Olive Trees, Memory and Materiality in Palestine. Middle East Studies Association, Denver, CO, November 22.
2014 Beyond Ritual? Olive Oil and the Everyday in Palestine American Anthropological Association Meetings, Washington, D.C., 1 December.
2014 Discussant for “Beyond the Material/Immaterial Divide: Aesthetics, Affects, and the End(s) of Work. Society for Cultural Anthropology meetings, Detroit, MI, 9 May.
2013 The Complicated “Craft” of Palestinian Olive Oil. American Anthropological Association Meetings, Chicago, 21 Nov.
2012a Histories and Futures in the Narrative of Olive Pilgrims/Activists, American Ethnological Association Meetings, New York City, 20 April.
2012b Indigestible, Contestable or Peaceful? Food Debates in Palestine/Israel. Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and Society for Anthropology of Food (SAFN), New York City, 21 June.
2012c Talismans, Kuffiyas and Cartoon Characters: Charismatic Objects from the Holy Land. American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Francisco, November 12th.
2012d Discussant for Eating as Bodily Practice. American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Francisco.
2011a The Mediterranean From Two Perspectives: Tuscany and Palestine. Olive oil in the Mediterranean. Institute for Mediterranean Studies, November 11, Toronto.
2011b Accidental Pilgrims: Olive Pickers in Palestine. American Anthropological Association Meetings, November, Montreal.
2010a Cultivating and Eating NatureCulture in Palestine: Olive Trees and Olive Oil. Society for Cultural Anthropology Meetings, Santa Fe, May 2010.
2010b Arrested Circulation: The Troubled Travel of Palestinian Olive Oil. Panel Entitled: Circulatory Food Systems. American Anthropological Association Meetings, November, New Orleans
2009a Tawfik Canaan and early explorations of Palestinian olive oil in ritual. American Ethnological Society Meetings, Vancouver.
2009b Trees, Land and Livelihood: Palestinian Olive Oil Production in the West Bank, Presidential Session (Invited) “The Crisis in Gaza: Challenges and Lessons for Anthropology and Human Rights”, sponsored by the Committee for Human Rights and the Middle East Section, American Anthropological Association Meetings, Philadelphia, December 2009.
2009c Discussant for panel entitled “Food and Language.” American Anthropological Association Meetings, Philadelphia, December 2009.
2008a Extra-Virgin Peace: Palestinian Fair-Trade Olive Oil and Culinary Peace Initiatives, sponsored by the Middle East Section. American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Francisco.
2008b Blood, Sweat and Tears. Middle East Studies Association, Washington, DC.
2008c How to Hijab like Rayyan Hamoudi! Muslim Fashion and its Followers in Little Mosque on the Prairie. Marketing Muslim Women Conference, Duke University.
2008d Fair Trade in an Unfair World: The Global Circulation of Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. The Association for the Study of Food and Society Meetings, New Orleans.
2007a Fear and Sympathy: The Global Circulation of Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. American Ethnological Society Meetings, Toronto.
2007b Foie Gras or Fowl Play? Embodied Epistemologies and an Emergent Ethics of Care” (with Deborah Heath). “Knowing Food: Taste, Technology, and Skill”, Heather Paxson and David Sutton, Organizers, Society for the Social Studies of Science, Montreal.
2007c Olive Oil: Pressed between Religion and Science. Washington, D.C. American Anthropological Association Meetings.
2006a The Circulation of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil from Prestigious and Dangerous Locations. Cultural Anthropology Meetings, Milwaukee.
2006b Sense or Senselessness? Childrearing in Yemen. Canadian Anthropological Society Meetings, Montreal.
2006c Crossing Borders with the Ford Foundation. American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Jose.
2005a Like an Extra Virgin. American Anthropological Association Meetings, Washington, D.C.
2005b Extra-Virgin Olive Oil as Sacred and Secular Commodity. Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meetings, Vancouver, British Columbia.
2003a Teaching and Writing about the Middle East in a post 9-11 World. Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings, Portland, Oregon.
2003b Teaching and Learning Across Borders. Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2003c Communitas or Collapse? Collaboration in the Ford Foundation “Crossing Borders” Project. Peterborough, Ford Foundation Final Meeting.
2002a Oil. American Anthropological Society Meetings, New Orleans.
2002b Olive Oil Production, Circulation and Consumption in Cultural Economies. Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Windsor.
2001a Tracking the Flow of Tuscan Olive Oil. Ford Foundation “Crossing Borders” Project: Interconnecting Diasporas, Global Area Studies. Faculty Seminar, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY.
2001b Scared Sick or Silly? Fright Illnesses in Yemen. Canadian Anthropology Society meetings, Montreal.
2001c Discussant, “Critical Explorations in Performance.” Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Montreal.
2000a Honey, Sugar and Pig Meat: Talking about food in Zabid. Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Calgary.
2000b Roundtable “Tri-council ethics policy.” Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Calgary.
1999a Space and Place, Goods and Desires. American Anthropological Association Meetings, Chicago, Illinois.
1998a Class and Sociability in Yemen. Annual Gender Symposium, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.
1998b Illness as Systemic Collapse: Class, Subjectivity, and Emotion in Narratives of Healing. American Ethnological Society Meetings, Toronto.
1998c The Hegemony of Virtue. Canadian Anthropology Society Meetings, Toronto.
1998d Chewing the Qat on the Web. American Anthropological Association Meetings, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1997a Qat, Marlboros, Refrigerators, and Jewelry: Consumption in Yemen. American Anthropological Association Meetings, Washington, D.C.
1997b Between Feminism and Orientalism: Duelling Canons. American Ethnological Society meetings, Seattle, Washington.
1997c Gender and Politics in the Middle East. Annual Gender Symposium, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.
1997d Teaching and Writing about the Middle East in the Contemporary US. Oregon Middle East Studies Consortium, Portland, Oregon.
1993 Hierarchy and Modesty in Zabid. American Anthropological Association Meetings, Washington, D.C.
1991 Ensuring Health and Contemplating Salvation: Reading the mawlid in Zabid. Middle East Studies Association Meetings, Washington, D.C.
1990 Kizb and the Discourse of Honor: Reflections on Gilsenan’s “Lying Honor and Contradiction.” Middle East Studies Association Meetings, Washington, D.C.
Community-Invited Lectures
2012 The Accidental Pilgrims: Picking Olives in Palestine. Beit Zatoun, Toronto, March 22.
2011 “Olives in Palestine” to Seasoned Spoon’s General Board Meeting, 25 November, Trent University.”
2011 “Olive Advocacy in Palestine” Trent University’s Israeli Apartheid Week, 21 March 2011.
2009a Transdisciplinary Research in Progress Seminar, Trent University, January 2009.
2009b Culture and Food. Champlain College Lecture Series.
2008 Lecture to the First Faculty Symposium at the Theory, Culture, and Politics Center at Trent University, September 2008.
2000 Thoughts on Gender Segregation and Food. Peterborough Fortnightly Club, 8 April.
2000 Qat Chewing in Yemen. Friends of the Bata Library, Peterborough, Ont., 24 February.
1998 Gender-segregated societies in the Middle East. Peterborough Art Gallery.
Manuscript and Peer Reviewer
Africa, Altamira, American Ethnologist, Anthropologica, Anthropological Quarterly, Anthropolgie et Sociétés, Anthropology Today, Broadview Press, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, City and Society, Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, Cultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Environment and Planning E, Nature and Space, Ethnography, Ethnology, Ethnos, Encounters, Food, Culture, and Society, Gastronomica, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Contemporary Anthropology, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, Journal of Religion in Africa, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Language and Communication, Medical Anthropology, Oxford University Press, Political Geography, Political and Legal Anthropology, Prentice-Hall Press, Public Culture, Qualitative Sociology, Resources for Feminist Research, Routledge, Rural Studies, Signs, SSHRC, Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, Space and Culture, Stanford University Press, Westview Press, World Art, University of Toronto Press, University of California Press
Member
2021- Board Member, Anthropologists of the Middle East Studies Association (AMEA)
2020- Member of the International Advisory Board for the PhD program in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ilia State University, Tbilisi
2019- Insaniyyat: Society of Palestinian Anthropologists
2018- Graduate Faculty, Dept of Anthropology, U Toronto
2017- Ryerson Middle East and North Africa Center, Board
2015-2018 Anthropologica Board Member
2006-2009 Elected Board Member, Middle East Section, American Anthropological Association
Selection Committees
- American Council for Learned Society (ACLS) 2017-2020
- Research Council of Norway
- American Institute for Yemeni Studies, Grant Proposal Reviewer
- German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) 2018
- Danish Council for Individual Research: The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation – Grant proposal reviewer
- Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan – Research fellow reviewer
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program
- Chair, Best Senior Scholar Award and Best Student Paper Award for Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, 2006- 2009
- Program Committee for the American Anthropology Association meetings, 2010, 2011 for the Middle East Section
- Christine Wilson Award Committee, Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, American Anthropological Association, 2015
External Tenure and Promotion Reviewer
- University of Vermont
- Oregon State University
- Reed College
- McMaster University
- University of California, Davis
- Duke University
- New York University, Abu Dhabi
- University of Bergen
- University of Waterloo
- University of Oslo
- Bard College
- Rice University
- Lafayette College
- Haverford College
- City University of New York (CUNY)
External Examiner
- Swarthmore College, Undergraduate Honors Program (1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2017, 2019, 2020)
- York University, PhD External for Allyson Mitchell (2006)
- University of Bergen, Norway. PhD External for Janne Boe (Anthropology, 2015), Laura Adwan (Anthropology, 2020)
Graduate Committees
- Supervisor for Grace McKinney, Cultural Studies (MA, 2019-2020, PhD ongoing)
- Internal External for Connie Gagliardi, Dept of Anthropology, University of Toronto
- Internal External for Matt Tegelberg (Cultural Studies PhD program, 2013)
- Co-supervisor for Patricia Morris, Theory, Culture and Politics (2011)
- Supervisor for Andrea Palichuk, Theory, Culture and Politics
- Supervisory committee for Omar Abdollah, Theory, Culture and Politics
- Supervisory committee for Leslie McCartney, Department of Anthropology (successfully defended April 2005)
- Supervisory committee for Louise Hornagold, Department of Anthropology (successfully defended March 2004)
- Supervisory committee for Anne Hartman, Theory, Politics, and Culture (successfully defended October 2003)
- Supervisory committee for Jason Nesbitt, Department of Anthropology (successfully defended, April 2002)
Graduate Teaching
2012 Reading course on Theories of Place, Elizabeth Savage
2011 (winter, fall) Cultural Theory: The Ethics of Circulation. Theory, Culture and Politics Interdisciplinary Graduate Program, Trent University
2011 Guest Professor for PhD seminar entitled: Eating Bodies and Places, University of Copenhagen, Center for Health and Society, 13th-15th April. (10 PhD student participants).
2009 Reading course on Ethnographic Methods, Patricia Morris
Postgraduate Supervision
2019-2020 Supervisor of FRQSC post-doc Philippe Messier
2013-2014 Co-supervisor of FRQSC funded post-doc Kiven Strohm (with Davide Panagia of Cultural Studies).
Undergraduate Teaching
Theories of Society and Culture; Ethnographic Methods; Anthropology of Religion; Gifts and Commodities; Culture and Food; Anthropology of Food Politics; Colonialism; Anthropology of Mobilities; Anthropology of the City
Professional Affiliations
American Anthropological Association
Society for Food and Nutrition
The Society for Cultural Anthropology
Middle East Section
Middle East Studies Association
Association of Middle East Women’s Studies
American Institute for Yemeni Studies