Ilana Feldman
Ilana Feldman
Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs
Full-time Faculty
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Ilana Feldman is Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at George Washington University and the former Vice Dean of the Elliott School. Her research has focused on the Palestinian experience, both inside and outside of historic Palestine, examining practices of government, humanitarianism, policing, displacement, and citizenship. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-67 (2008), Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule (2015), Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics (2018); and co-editor (with Miriam Ticktin) of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (2010).
Historical anthropology, government and bureaucracy, humanitarianism, citizenship, colonialism, policing and security. Regional focus: Middle East.
Recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Office of the GW Vice President for Research.
Ph.D., University of Michigan
ANTH 3513 Human Rights
ANTH 3707 Anthropology of the Middle East
ANTH 6102 Proseminar: Sociocultural Anthropology
ANTH 6302 Anthropology of Intervention: Development, Human Rights, Humanitarianism
ANTH 6591 Anthropology of Security
ANTH 6707 Anthropology of Citizenship and Displacement: Belonging and Exclusion in the Middle East
ANTH 6707 Anthropology of the State and Government in the Middle East
Books
2018 Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics. Oakland: University of California Press.
2015 Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
2010 Feldman, I., and M. Ticktin, eds. In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care. Durham: Duke University Press.
2008 Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule (1917-1967). Durham: Duke University Press.
Selected Articles
2018 “Care and Suspicion: Corruption as Definition in Humanitarian Relations.” Current Anthropology 59, S18: S160-S170.
2017 “Humanitarian Care and the Ends of Life: The Politics of Aging and Dying in a Palestinian Refugee Camp.” Cultural Anthropology 32, 1: 41-66.
2016 “Reaction, Experimentation, and Refusal: Palestinian Refugees Confront the Future.” History and Anthropology 27, 4: 411-29.
2015 “Looking for humanitarian purpose: Endurance and the value of lives in a Palestinian refugee camp," Public Culture 27(3):: 427-447.
2015 "What is a camp? Legitimate refugee lives in spaces of long-term displacement," Geoforum 66: 244–252.
2012 "The humanitarian condition: Palestinian refugees and the politics of living," Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism & Development (3)2: 155-172.