she/her/hers

Assoc. Professor, Chair

Arabic, Islamic, & Middle Eastern Studies, Feminist & Gender Studies

Nadia Guessous is an Associate Professor of Feminist and Gender Studies at Colorado College. An anthropologist by training but an interdisciplinary scholar in practice, her work lies at the intersection of feminist and political anthropology; transnational feminist theory; postcolonial/decolonial thought; critical Muslim, Middle Eastern, and North African Studies. Her research and teaching interests include the transnational politics of gender and sexuality; religion and secularism; affect, power and subjectivity; memory and embodiment; and the decolonization of politics and knowledge. She is currently working on a book entitled The Tragedy of Progress where she explores how postcolonial secular feminism in Morocco has been shaped by the legacies of colonial modernity and conscripted by the civilizing logics of the war on terror. Based on long-term ethnographic research, the book describes the sense of anxiety, exhaustion, and disorientation that prevails among older secular-leftist feminists in the wake of the Islamic Revival in contemporary Morocco. It raises questions about the faith in the promises of secular modernity that undergirds this anxiety and argues that it gives rise to an exclusionary politics of avoidance that comes in the way of a more generous ethos of intersubjective and cross-generational exchange. The book contributes to thinking about feminism in non-teleological ways by highlighting some of the tragic consequences that can accompany the search for feminist progress. It also provides an ethnographic and genealogical account of the affective blind spots of secular progressive subjectivities.

Professor Guessous’ work has been published in numerous academic journals and online publications including Hespéris-Tamuda; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society; American Anthropologist; Confluences Méditerranée; The Journal of Middle East Women's Studies; Review of Middle East Studies; Jadaliyya; and Conditions. She is also the author of a qualitative study on women, gender, and political violence during the years of lead in postcolonial Morocco, which was commissioned by the Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission.

Professor Guessous earned a PhD in anthropology at Columbia University in 2011. Prior to joining Colorado College, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University (2012-2014), and before that a Faculty Fellow at the Kevorkian Center at NYU, where she directed the MA program in Near Eastern Studies (2009-2012). She has also taught as a Visiting Lecturer at Amherst College, Columbia University, Barnard College, and Princeton University. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award, two American Institute for Maghrib Studies Research grants, a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Women's Studies Dissertation Fellowship, and a Five College Dissertation Writing Fellowship. At Colorado College, Professor Guessous has been recognized twice for her excellence in teaching by being awarded the Lloyd E. Worner Teacher of the Year Award in both 2020 and 2022.

 

Regular Classes

· Critical Feminist Methodologies
· Critical Disability Studies
· The Discourse of the Veil
· Gendered Controversies
· Gender & Sexuality in the Modern Middle East and its Diasporas
· The Politics of Transnational Feminism
· Middle Eastern and Islamic Feminist Thought
· Junior Seminar