Peer-reviewed Journals
Poor Education, unemployment and the promise of skills: The hegemony of the “skills mismatch” discourse (2021) International Journal of Educational Development 82: 102381.
Development discourse frames youth in the Arab world as lacking in the skills needed for employment and educational institutions as failing. The “skills mismatch” is offered as both the reason for unemployment, and evidence of the poor quality of education in the region. This paper undertakes a genealogy of the skills mismatch discourse, tracing how it became central to education development policy with a focus on Jordan. We show that this discourse often lacks analysis of prevailing labor force dynamics and barriers to economic development, and serves to blame youth, educators, and local culture for the failures of economic restructuring.
Getting In and Getting Through: Navigating Higher Education in Jordan. (2019) Comparative 
Education Review 63 (1): 79-97.
* Co-authored with Angela Haddad, Abdel Hakim Al-Husban, and Afaf Al-Khoshman
In this article, we analyze the educational experiences of students enrolled at Yarmouk University, one of the oldest public universities in Jordan. Based on the evidence analyzed, we argue that young people are well aware of the effects of neoliberal economic policies on higher education and the Jordanian economy, and they actively seek to try and make the system work for them. At times embracing a neoliberal subject position of self-reliance and personal responsibility, they also work tirelessly to circumvent and negotiate a system that limits their educational and professional aspirations.
Decolonizing our questions/decolonizing our answers. (2018) Gender and Education 31 (4): 452-57.
In this article, I examine two educational trends and consider how neo-colonial means of engaging with the region (particularly in the field of educational development) continue to limit the understanding of these trends and their significance in people’s lives. First, I consider the growing “male crisis” in education in the Arab world and what a decolonizing orientation to this trend might illuminate about inequalities, class, and status. Second, I consider the case of women in computing fields in the Arab world and the ways in which their participation in these fields complicate the gendered discourse surrounding STEM fields in the United States. I argue that decolonizing educational knowledge requires recentering the actors engaged in the pedagogical process—students and teachers—and their experiences.
A Different Kind of Love: Compatibility (Insijam) and Marriage in Jordan. (2016) Arab Studies Journal 24 (2): 102-127.
Drawing on tales of love and marriage I gathered during my research in Jordan, this article considers how discourses that describe romantic love as doomed to failure circulate alongside stories of love whose moral lessons are more ambiguous. By examining the terms of compatibility (insijam) that single men and women articulate, the article contends that ascertaining the grounds for compatibility is crucial to finding a marriage partner in uncertain times. Shifting socioeconomic realities shape assumptions about ideal marriage partners, particularly for the upwardly mobile university graduates (or those desiring such mobility) who were the focus of this research. Concomitant shifts in gender roles produce new expectations and desires that color the perspective of young people about marriage, while challenging the male breadwinner ideal. Finally, a prevalent discourse of marriage crisis and the attendant concerns about “spinsterhood” and seemingly high rates of divorce contribute to anxieties about getting married, as well as fears of bad marriages.
The Emergence of a New Labor Movement in Jordan. (2012) Middle East Report 264: 34-37.
“God Made Beautiful Things”: Proper Faith and Religious Authority in a Jordanian High School. (2012) American Ethnologist 39 (2): 297-312.
Outside the formal and intended curriculum in Jordanian schools, the efforts of students and instructors to teach about religion and living piously as Muslim women span a myriad of spaces and approaches. At the al‐Khatwa Secondary School for Girls, tensions surrounding religious authority were enmeshed with struggles outside school, specifically with a local piety movement and with a politics of authenticity that has women at its center. Competing interpretations of Islamic orthodoxy, and contests for moral authority, come to the fore in schools in unique ways, and schools provide a space and tools for young women to negotiate these tensions.
Educating Women for Development: The Arab Human Development Report 2005 and the Problem with Women’s Choices. (2009) International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (1): 105-22.
This article provides analysis and critique of the Arab Human Development Report 2005: Towards the Rise of Arab Women (AHDR 2005). The expansion of people’s “choices” is critical to the framework of the UNDP human development reports. I argue that there is a tension, evidenced in the AHDR 2005, between the claim that providing education is an essential element of expanding choices and the assumptions embedded in discussions about women and education regarding which choices are acceptable and/or desirable. These tensions point to the persistence of values derived from the mandates of global capital, albeit in the new language of neoliberal choice, revealing that human development in reality does not present a significant departure from earlier conceptualizations of development. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article interrogates such assumptions and sheds light on the ambiguities built into the educational project.
The Mixed Effects of Schooling for High School Girls in Jordan: The Case of Tel Yahya. (2004) Comparative Education Review 48 (4): 353-373.
This article addresses access to schools as a new social space and examines the opportunities and tensions that are posed by this access. Looking primarily at the experience of girls in one school in Jordan, I try to understand how access to school has affected the boundaries that shape the lives of adolescent girls, asking: In what ways does school reinforce existing boundaries and notions of respectability for young women? In what ways does it extend or create new controls? In what ways can school open up new opportunities and potentials for change?
Book Chapters
(2021). Refusing to Settle: Migration among single professional women in Jordan. In Marcia C. Inhorn & Nancy J. Smith-Hefner (Eds.) Waithood: Gender, Education, and Delays in Marriage and Childbearing. New York: Berghahn Books. (pp. 269-89).
Education and Arab Families. In Arab Family Studies: Critical Reviews, edited by Suad Joseph. (2018) Syracuse University Press (pp. 416-36). * Co-authored with Michael Hendrix
Pedagogy, Islamic Education, and Life Lessons in a Jordanian Secondary School for Girls. In Evelyn Early, Donna Lee Bowen, and Becky Schulthies (Eds.) (2014) Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East. 3rd Edition. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press (pp. 282-292).
Schools, Skills, and Morals in the Contemporary Middle East. In Bradley A.U. Levinson and Mica Pollock (Eds.) (2011) A Companion to the Anthropology of Education, First Edition. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (pp. 349-367). * Co-authored with Gregory Starrett
Performing Patriotism: Rituals and Moral Authority in a Jordanian High School. In André E. Mazawi and Ronald G. Sultana (Eds.) (2010) Education and the Arab “World”: Political Projects, Struggles, and Geometries of Power. World Yearbook of Education 2010. Routledge. (pp. 132-144).