Suad Joseph Receives Service Award

Calling her an “institutional cornerstone,” the Middle East Studies Association of North America recently presented its annual Jere L. Bacharach Service Award to Distinguished Professor Suad Joseph. The award recognizes outstanding service to the association and the profession, and is named after the University of Washington historian who received the honor in 2004.

Joseph has appointments in the departments of Anthropology, and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, and is the founding director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program.

She is a past president and served on numerous committees of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, an organization in which she has been involved since graduate school.

“She has routinely led and developed many major professional and academic initiatives, with impressive success in fundraising for their long-term sustainability,” the association said in a write-up on her award. “In all her endeavors, she has included, encouraged and empowered women scholars from North America and across the Middle East.”

Joseph is the founder of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and co-founder of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She is the founding editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, six volumes examining Muslim women globally and non-Muslim women in Muslim-majority societies.

“It is an honor to recognize Suad Joseph as a dedicated and generous colleague who has built connections and institutions both in the U.S. and in the region, promoting some of the best scholarly and educational networks across the globe in our field,” the association stated.

This article originally appeared in Dateline UC Davis.