Smadar Lavie

Smadar Lavie

Smadar Lavie (Hebrew: סמדר לביא‎) is a Mizrahi Israeli anthropologist, author, and activist specializing in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, with special emphasis on issues of race, gender and religion. She is a visiting fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley (2013–14), and a visiting professor at the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century, University College Cork (2011–14). Lavie received her doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (1989) and spent nine years as Assistant and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Lavie authored The Poetics of Military Occupation (UC Press, 1990), receiving the 1990 Honorable Mention of the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing, and Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Berghahn 2014). She also co-edited Creativity/Anthropology (Cornell UP, 1993) ISBN 978-0-8014-9542-7 and Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity (Duke UP, 1996) ISBN 0-8223-1720-6. Lavie won the American Studies Association’s 2009 Gloria Anzaldúa Prize for her article, “Staying Put: Crossing the Palestine-Israel Border with Gloria Anzaldúa,” published in Anthropology and Humanism (2011). In 2013, Smadar Lavie won the “Heart at East” Honor Plaque for lifetime service to Mizraḥi communities in Israel-Palestine.

Academic life

Lavie received her BA in Social Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1980 (Majors: Sociology and Social Anthropology; Minors: Medieval Islamic Civilization, Musicology). Lavie received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 and was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award from the Middle East Studies Association for her dissertation titled, "The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule" which was later published by the University of California Press.

In 1990, Lavie became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, where she was promoted to an Associate Professorship in 1994. Professor Lavie held visiting professorships at Diablo Valley College (1984), U.C. Berkeley’s Fall Freshman Program (1985–89), Stanford (1994), Beit Berl’s College (2001–07), Macalester College (2007-2009) University of Virginia (2009–10) and the University of Minnesota (2010–12). Professor Lavie was the recipient of residential fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio (1993), Stanford Humanities Center (1993-4) Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota (2010–11), Cento Incontri Umani Ascona (2011), and the Beatrice Bain Research Group, U. C. Berkeley (2012-2013).

Activism

Lavie is a member of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition, of Ahoti for Women in Israel, and of other political, feminist and anti-racist organizations. In 2013 she won the “Heart at East” Honor Plaque for committed excellence and lifetime service to the Mizrahi communities of Israel, given by a coalition of twenty NGOs working for equal distribution of cultural funds in Israel. 21 May.

Lavie served on the board of Ahoti (Sistah) - Israel's feminist of color movement, was the liaison of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow to Israel's Palestinian-Mizrahi NGO coalition against racism, co-founded the Coalition of Women for Mothers and Children, and several other feminist, anti-racist social movements.

Select publications

Books

• Lavie, Smadar. 2014. Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78238-222-5
• Lavie, Smadar, and Ted Swedenburg. 1996. Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-1720-6
• Lavie, Smadar, Kirin Narayan, and Renato Rosaldo. 1993. Creativity/Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-9542-7
• Lavie, Smadar. 1991. The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity Under Israeli and Egyptian Rule. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07552-8

Selected articles

• 2012 “Writing Against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain,” American Ethnologist, 39 (4): 780-804.
• 2012 “The Knafo Chronicles: Marching on Jerusalem with Israel’s Silent Majority.” Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. Vol. 27 (3): 300-315.
• 2011 “Staying Put: Crossing the Israel–Palestine Border with Gloria Anzaldúa.” Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly. Vol. 36 (1): 101-121.
• 2011 “Mizrahi Feminism and the Question of Palestine.” Journal of Middle East Women Studies. Vol. 7 (2): 56-88.
• 2007 “Imperialism and Colonialism: Zionism.” Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, Vol. 6. Leiden: Brill pp. 9–15
• 1996 “Between and Among the Boundaries of Culture: Bridging Text and Lived Experience in the Third Timespace.” Cultural Studies 10(1):154-179.
• 1995 “Border Poets: Translating by Dialogue.” In Women Writing Culture. R. Behar and D. Gordon, eds. pp. 412–427. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 1993 “Notes on the Fantastic Journey of the Hajj, His Anthropologist, and Her American Passport.” American Ethnologist (co-authored with Hajj A. and Forest Rouse) 20(2):363-384.
• 1992 “Blow-Ups in the Borderzones: Third World Israeli Authors’ Gropings for Home.” New Formations 18:84-106.
• 1989 “When Leadership Becomes Allegory: Mzeina Sheikhs and the Experience of Occupation.” Cultural Anthropology 4(2): 99-135.
• 1984 “Bedouin in Limbo: Egyptian and Israeli Development Policies in the Southern Sinai.” Antipode 16(2): 33-44. [co-authored with William C. Young]

Selected public anthropology articles

• 2009 “Sacrificing Gaza to Revive Israel’s Labor Party.” Counter Currents.19 January.
• 2007 “Dry Twigs.” The Electronic Intifada. 3 August.
• 2006 “On the Progress of Affirmative Action and Cultural Rights for Marginalized Communities in Israel.” Co-authored with Rafi Shubeli. Anthropology Newsletter. November. pp. 6–7.
• 2006 “Operations ‘Summer Rains’ and ‘Adequate Pay’ — Yet Other Acts in the Mizrahi-Palestinian Tragedy.” Co-authored with Reuven Abarjel, co-founder of Israel’s Black Panthers. Counter Currents.
• 2005 “Rachel Gamliel of the Ma‘abari Family, My Granny.” Beirut Independent Media Center.
• 2005 “Israeli Anthropology and American Anthropology.” Anthropology Newsletter January Issue. P. 8.
• 2003 “Lilly White Feminism and Academic Apartheid in Israel.” Anthropology Newsletter, October Issue, pp. 10–11.
• 1991 “Arrival of the New Cultured Tenants: Soviet Immigration to Israel and the Displacing of the Sephardi Jews.” The Times Literary Supplement 4602:11, 14 June.

External links

• Smadar Lavie
• Smadar Lavie in Beatrice Bain Research Group