DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Interests

Research Interest(s): Comparative Politics of the Middle East, Social Movements, Conflict Processes, Emotions, Migration and Refugee Studies, and The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Program Area(s): Comparative Politics

Regional Specialization(s): Middle East

Subfield Specialties: Comparative Historical Analysis; Conflict Studies

Biography

A scholar of the comparative politics of the Middle East, social movements, and forced migration, Wendy Pearlman has studied or conducted research in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Israel, and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. She is the author of five books: Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003); Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge, 2011); We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (HarperCollins, 2017); Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (with Boaz Atzili, Columbia, 2018); and Muzoon: A Syrian Refugee Speaks Out (with Muzoon Almellehan, Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2023). She has published forty academic articles or book chapters, including in American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, International Migration Review, International Security, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Politics & Society, Security Studies and Studies of Comparative International Development.

Since June 2023, Wendy has served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Perspectives on Politics. Her teaching has been recognized by the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence, Weinberg College Distinguished Teaching Award, R. Barry Farrell Award for Excellence in Teaching, and repeat elections to the Associated Student Government Faculty Honor Roll. As a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Wendy was a fellow at EUME at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin during the summers 2016-2018 and 2021-2022. Previously, Wendy was a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, a Starr Foundation Fellow at the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad at the American University in Cairo, a Junior Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, and a postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Wendy’s sixth book, provisionally titled The Home I Worked To Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora, is forthcoming from Liveright Books in 2024. It is based on interviews that she has conducted with more than 500 displaced Syrians on five continents since 2012.

Books

• Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors (with Boaz Atzili) Columbia University Press, 2018 
• We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria (HarperCollins, 2017)
  • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence
• Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
  • 2011 Foreign Policy Runner-up, Best Book on the Middle East; 2012 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
• Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003)
  • Washington Post Bestseller, Boston Globe Bestseller
• Muzoon: A Syrian Refugee Speaks Out co-authored with Muzoon Almellehan (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2023)

Select RECENT Publications

• “Emotional Sensibility: Exploring the Methodological and Ethical Implications of Research Participants’ Emotions,” American Political Science Review, first published online, December 14, 2022.
• “Putting Palestinian Agency First,” Introduction to the Special Issue: Recentering the Palestinian People in the Study of Politics, Middle East Law and Governance, Vol. 14, No. 3 (October 2022).

• “How Homeland Experiences Shape Refugee Belonging: Rethinking Exile, Home, and Integration in the Syrian Case,” International Migration Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (October 2022), pp. 160-186.

• “Mobilization from scratch: Large-scale collective action without preexisting organization in the Syrian uprising,” Journal of Comparative Political Studies Vol. 54, No. 10 (September 2021), pp. 1786-1817
• “Host state policy, socio-economic stratification, and Syrian refugees in Germany and Turkey,” Comparative Politics Vol. 52, No. 2 (January 2020), pp. 241-272.
• “Syrian Views on Obama’s Red Line and the Case for Limited Strikes against Assad,” Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 2 (July 2020), pp. 189-200.
• “Civil Action in the Syrian Conflict,” in Deborah Avant et. al, eds. Civil Action and Dynamics of Violence in Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 35-63.
• “Moral Identity and Protest Cascades in Syria,” British Journal of Political Science, 48, no. 4 (October 2018), pp. 877-901.
• “Becoming a Refugee: Reflections on Self-Understandings of Displacement from the Syrian Case,” Review of Middle East Studies Vol. 52, No. 2 (November 2018), pp. 299-309.
• “Memory as a field site: interviewing displaced persons,” International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 49, No. 3 (August 2017), pp. 501-505.
• “Narratives of Fear in Syria,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (March 2016), pp. 21-37.
• “Palestinians and the Arab Spring,” in Adam Roberts, Michael J. Willis, Rory McCarthy, and Timothy Garton Ash, eds., Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 248-269.

Courses taught

• Poli Sci 350: Social Movements, undergraduate lecture course
• Poli Sci 351: Middle East Politics, undergraduate lecture course
• Poli Sci 395: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, undergraduate seminar
• Poli Sci 390: Power and Resistance, undergraduate seminar
• Poli Sci 454: Social Movements and Mobilization, graduate seminar
• Poli Sci 486: Advanced Topics in Middle East Politics, graduate seminar