Rate My Professor Nadine Naber

Nadine Naber is a Professor and Director of Gender and Women's Studies and Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Davis. Her research lies at the intersections of decolonial feminism, empire studies, reproductive justice, Arab and Arab American feminist studies, and social movement studies. Prior to UIC, she taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she co-founded Arab and Muslim American Studies, an Ethnic Studies unit within the Program in American Culture. At UIC, she is the faculty founder and former director of the Arab American Cultural Center, holds an affiliation with Global Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology, and co-founded Global Middle East Studies. She serves as a steering committee member of the Social Justice Initiative and co-organizer of the Race and Empire Working Group at the Institute for the Humanities.

Dr. Naber is an award-winning scholar, named a Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar in 2024 and a University of Illinois University Scholar in 2025. She received the Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Lifetime Achievement Prize from the American Studies Association. Her publications include authoring Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (NYU Press, 2012); co-authoring forthcoming books Radical Mothering: Caregiving and Resistance beyond Prison Walls (Haymarket) and Social Movement Led Research (NP Press); and co-editing Race and Arab Americans (Syracuse University Press, 2008), Arab and Arab American Feminisms, winner of the Arab American Book Award 2012 (Syracuse University Press, 2010), The Color of Violence (South End Press, 2006), and Towards the Sun (Tadween Press/George Mason University, 2020). She led the policy report The Status of Racial Justice for Arab Americans (IRRPP/UIC, 2022) and co-authored The Paradox of Social Development in the Arab Region (United Nations, 2015). Dr. Naber serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Palestine Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. As a community-engaged scholar, she co-founded and directs research for Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity, founded Liberate Your Research Workshops, and has served on steering committees for INCITE! Women and Gender non-Conforming People against Violence, Arab Movement of Women Arising for Justice (AMWAJ), and the Arab American Action Network. She is a TEDx speaker with op-eds in the Chicago Reporter and Truthout, and perspectives featured in NPR, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune.