Smadar Lavie is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California Davis, and a Mizrahi anthropologist, author, and activist. She specializes in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, emphasizing issues of race, gender and religion. She received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (1989).

Academic life

Lavie received her BA in social anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1980 (majors: sociology and social anthropology; minors: medieval Islamic civilization, musicology). Lavie received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989 and was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award from the Middle East Studies Association for her dissertation titled, "The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule" which was later published by the University of California Press, and received the 1990 honorable mention of the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing. In 1990, Lavie became an assistant professor of anthropology and critical theory at the University of California, Davis, where she was promoted to an associate professorship in 1994. Lavie held visiting professorships at Diablo Valley College (1984), University of California, Berkeley's Fall Freshman Program (1985–1989), Stanford University (1994), Beit Berl College (2001–2007), Macalester College (2007-2009) University of Virginia (2009–2010) and the University of Minnesota (2010–2012). Professor Lavie was the recipient of residential fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio (1993), Stanford Humanities Center (1993-1994) Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota (2010–2011), Cento Incontri Umani Ascona (2011), the University College Cork (2010–2016), the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley (2013-2014), the Beatrice Bain Research Group, University of California, Berkeley (2012-2016), the Simon and Riva Spatz Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies, Dalhousie University (2018/2019), the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley (2016-2020), and the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Vilnius University (2017, 2018, 2022).

Recognition

Lavie authored The Poetics of Military Occupation (UC Press, 1990), receiving the 1990 honorable mention of the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing, and Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture (Berghahn Books 2014, University of Nebraska Press 2018 ) receiving the 2015 honorable mention of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award Competition. Wrapped in the Flag of Israel first edition was also one of the four finalists in the 2015 Clifford Geertz Book Award Competition of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. Lavie won the American Studies Association's 2009 Gloria Anzaldúa Prize for her article, "Staying Put: Crossing the Palestine-Israel Border with Gloria Anzaldúa", published in Anthropology and Humanism (2011). In 2013, she won the "Heart at East" Honor Plaque for lifetime service to Mizraḥi communities in Israel-Palestine. Her 2019 article "Gaza 2014 and Mizrahi Feminism" was awarded certificates as a top downloaded paper for 2018 to 2022, 2020, and 2021 to 2022 by Wiley Publishing. In 2022, she was elected a senior Fulbright scholar at the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies at Vilnius University in Lithuania.

Activism

Lavie is a member of many political, feminist and anti-racist organizations. In 2013, she won the "Heart at East" Honor Plaque for committed excellence and lifetime service to the Mizrahi communities of Israel, given by a coalition of twenty NGOs working for equal distribution of cultural funds in Israel. Lavie was co-founder and a member of CAFIOT (the Berkeley Committee for Academic Freedom in the Israeli Occupied Territories) from 1982 to 1989. Lavie is co-signatory to the 1993 Bellagio Declaration for the protection collective indigenous and exilic cultural heritage as intellectual property. Lavie has served a number of roles at Ahoti (Sister) for Women in Israel, Israel's feminist of color movement. From January 2003 to January 2005, she served on the board of directors. From 2002 to 2003, she both served as the liaison to the New Israel Fund and was a member of the newsletter's editorial collective. From 2003-2004, she was the liaison to the FFIPP (Educational Network for Human Rights in Palestine/Israel). Lavie co-founded the Coalition of Women for Mothers and Children and served as co-director of this coalition of many NGOs from 2003 to 2006. Lavie has been a member of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition (MDR) since 2002. She served on the Culture Committee from 2002 to 2004, the Committee on Education and the Core Curriculum from 2002 to 2003, and was the MDR Representative to the Coalition of NGOs against Racism from 2005 to 2007. Lavie has been an Advisory Board Member of Israel's Women's Parliament since 2002. Lavie co-founded the Mizrahi-Palestinian Coalition Against Apartheid in Israeli Anthropology (CAAIA) and was a member from 2002 to 2008. Lavie is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Select publications

Books

Selected articles

Selected public anthropology articles

Selected video lectures