Dr Samar Habib

• Areas of Expertise
• Selected Publications
• Conferences and Presentations
  
• Contact
  

Biography

Samar Habib received her doctorate from the University of Sydney, Australia. Her monograph Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations was published by Routledge in 2007. She lectures in the School of Humanities and Languages. She is chief editor of the international academic periodical Nebula. Her Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality 850-1700 AD was published by Teneo Press in 2009. Her critical translation of the Lebanese novel Ana Hiya Anti / I Am You by Elham Mansour was published in 2008. Islam and Homosexuality, a two-volume collection of essays, edited and introduced by Habib, is forthcoming from Pareger in December 2009. In addition to a number of published and forthcoming academic articles in EnterText and Nebula, Habib has published a number of creative works including the novel A Tree Like Rain (Sydney: Nebula Press, 2005), and the chapbook Islands in Space (Sydney: Nebula Press, 2008).

Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

Research Interests:

Arabic popular culture, literature and film. Homosexuality in the Arab world and the West. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Postcolonial literature, theory and colonial histories. Race, class and gender in world literature and film.

Teaching interests:

Women, gender and sexuality in the Arab and Muslim world. American, English and World Literature in English Contexts of colonial oppression and post-colonial resistance, Queer theory and texts, Palestinian literature and film, Twentieth century and world literature.

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Selected Publications

Academic Books

Islam and Homosexuality (forthcoming in 2009 from Praeger)

Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality 800-1500 A.D. Teneo Press, 2009. 

I Am You: a critical edition. By Elham Mansour, edited, translated and introduced by Samar Habib. New York: Cambria Press, 2008. 

Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations. New York & London: Routledge, 2007.

Article Publications

“Natheera Zein Addin” in History of Feminist Thought. Forthcoming from Greenwood, 2010.

Foreword to special issue on the Palestinian Struggle for Liberation in Nebula 5.3 (September, 2008): iv.

“Queer-Friendly Islamic Hermeneutics” ISIM Review 21 (2008): 30-31 


“An Appendix of Translations from the Arabian Middle Ages Concerned with Female Homosexuality,” EnterText 7.2 (2007).

“Reading the Familiarity of the Past: an Introduction to Medieval Arabic Literature on Female Homosexuality,” EnterText 7.2 (2007). 


“Re-visiting Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed: Anarcho-Taoism and World Resource Management”. Nebula 4.2 (2007): 334-348.

“The Historical Context and Reception of the First Arabic-Lesbian Novel, I Am You, by Elham Mansour” Entertext 5.3 (2006): 201-235.  

“Queering the Middle East and the New Anti-Semitism” Entertext 3.2 (2003): 52-71.

Reviews

“Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East. Edited by Pinar Ilkkaracan” forthcoming in the Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies (JMEWS), 2010.

“Women who Loved Cinema, in two parts, a film by Marianne Khoury (2002).” Published in Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, 2006.

Conferences and Presentations

“Arab Nationalism and religion in the songs of Abd al Halim Hafeth” Paper to be presented at the College of Arts Conference, The University of Western Sydney, Sydney, 2-3 November 2009.

“Lesbian Representation in Arab Popular Culture” Paper given at the Popular Culture Association annual conference, New Orleans, 4-8 April, 2009.
 

“The Middle East Film Series.” Organized and presented by Samar Habib at the University of Western Sydney. September-November, 2008.

“Homosexuality and Islamic Law.” A paper read and discussed in absentia at the “Lex of Somatechnics” conference held at Macquarie University on July 10, 2008.

Invited public lecture at the Feminist Coalition Complex in Haifa, February 3, 2008. Lecture in Arabic.

Postgraduate research training and publications seminar series. Prepared and convened by Dr Samar Habib for the School of Humanities and Languages, The University of Western Sydney. Seminars were held on a fortnightly basis beginning on September 5, 2007 until February, 2008.

“On Female Homosexuality in the Middle East” — paper presented and defended at the Writing and Society Research Group seminar, The University of Western Sydney on March 9, 2007.

“Some Like it Lukewarm: A Brief History of the Representation of Homosexuality in Egyptian Cinema.” Paper read, discussed and defended at the Institute for International Studies’ Annual Symposium “Global Queer Theory”, held at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney) June 27-28, 2005.

“(Homo)sexuality in Egyptian Cinema.”  A brief version of the abovementioned paper was presented at the University of Sydney’s English Departmental Seminars on October 11, 2005.

“The Case of Women in Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things”. A lecture given for the undergraduate unit of study Fiction, Film and Power, October 2004.

“Women Loving the Female Body: Homosexuality and Islamic Cultures 850-1500 A.D” – paper presented at the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Conference held at Sydney University, August 9-13, 2004.