Max Weiss studies the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the modern Middle East, and holds a joint appointment in the Department of History.
He is the author of In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi`ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon (Harvard UP, 2010); co-editor (with Jens Hanssen) of Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge UP, 2016), and Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present (Cambridge UP, 2018); and translator, most recently, of Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper (New York, 2018), and Nihad Sirees, States of Passion (London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Modern Middle East History from Stanford University, held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the Harvard Society of Fellows, and his research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the Social Science Research Council, and the Carnegie Corporation. Currently he is writing about the intellectual and cultural history of modern Syria, and translating several works of modern and contemporary Arabic literature.
Recent Publications
1. In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi`ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon
3, Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (co-edited with Jens Hanssen)
4. Facing Fear: The History of an Emotion in Global Perspective (co-edited with Michael Laffan)
5. Translation of Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq
6. Translation of Nihad Sirees, The Silence and the Roar
7. Translation of Samar Yazbek, A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution
8. Translation of Hassouna Mosbahi, A Tunisian Tale