Rate My Professor Leila Hudson

Leila Hudson is an Associate Professor of Modern Middle East Culture and Political Economy in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at The University of Arizona, where she also serves as Chair of the Faculty. An anthropologist and historian, she earned a BA from Yale University and both an MA and PhD in Anthropology and History from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on Syria, Iraq, the late Ottoman Arab provinces, conflict dynamics, political history and economy, gender, refugees, extremism, media, Islam, and migration. She is currently working on projects titled Evolution and Revolution: Middle Eastern Media in the 21st Century and Cultural Capitalism: the Dynamics of Change in the Middle East.

Hudson has authored several books, including Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City (I.B. Tauris, 2008), Middle Eastern Humanities: An Introduction to Cultures of the Middle East (Kendall Hunt, 2010), and Middle East Humanities Textbook (Kendall Hunt, 2009). Her additional publications include chapters and journal articles such as “The Refugee’s Passage: Liminality, Gendered Habits, and the Emergence of Difference in Flight” (2017), “Dynamics of the Syrian Migration” (2017), “Liquidating Syria, Fracking Europe” in Middle East Policy (2015), and “Order, Freedom, and Chaos: Sovereignties in Syria” in Middle East Policy (2013). She holds appointments in the School of Global Studies and has contributed to academic discussions on Middle Eastern political economy and cultural change through her scholarship and institutional roles.