Leila Ahmed

Egyptian-US memoirist, critic and academic Leila Ahmed was appointed to the Women's Studies in Religion professorship at Harvard Divinity School in 1999, the first woman to occupy that chair.  From 1981 until her current appointment, she was Professor of Women's Studies and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. While at the University of Massachusetts, she was director of the Women's Studies Programme (1992 to 1995) and director of the Near Eastern studies programme (1991 to 1992). In 1992, she was a distinguished visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, while in 1997, she was elected to a life membership at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

Professor Ahmed's latest book is the widely acclaimed memoir A Border Passage. Other publications include the books Women and Gender in Islam: the historical roots of a modern debate, and Edward William Lane: A Study of His Life and Work and of British Ideas of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century.  Among Professor Ahmed's many articles are "Arab Culture and Writing Women's Bodies" and "Between Two Worlds: the Formation of a Turn of the Century Egyptian Feminist."

"It was as if there were to life itself a quality of music in that time, the era of my childhood, and in that place, the remote edge of Cairo. There the city petered out into a scattering of villas leading into tranquil country fields. On the other side of our house was the profound, unsurpassable quiet of the desert."
- from A Border Passage

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/newsite/authors/AHMEDleila.htm