Fedwa Malti-Douglas

Malti-Douglas grew up in Deir el-Qamar, where her father was a physician.[1] Her primary education took place at French Catholic boarding schools and at age 12, she emigrated to the United States.[1] She learned to become fluent in English and when she attended Cornell University, she started taking Semitic languages.[1] Malti-Douglas attended the University of California, Los Angeles and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales where she did her graduate work in Arabic.[1]

Malti-Douglas received a 1997 Kuwait Prize for Arts and Letters and earned the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Dean of Women's Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington in 1998.[2] In 2004, she was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.[2] Malti-Douglas was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2015.[3]

Malti-Douglas is currently a professor emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington and the Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences.[2]

Malti-Douglas studied Muslim literary texts from medieval to modern times and wrote about her findings in Women and Gender in Islam (1991).[4] She describes how women's bodies are increasingly seen as a threat in this literature.[4] Malti-Douglas wrote the second English language examination of the work of Nawal El Saadawi in 1995.[5] The work, Men Women and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics is a "penetrating and admiring analysis of El Saadawi's writing," according to Library Journal.[5] Men, Women and God(s) is also about showing that El Saadawi's work is literature, not just "polemics," as it is often labeled.[6]

In The Star Report Disrobed (2000), Malti-Douglas deconstructs the issues surrounding the Bill Clinton sex scandal from a feminist perspective.[7] The California Law Review called The Star Report Disrobed an "insightful and peppy book."[8] The journal also felt that the book highlighted another issue: legal document are no longer just for lawyers and jurists, but have become "salable media content and, ultimately, popular cultural artifacts."[8] The New York Times writes that Malti-Douglas deals with the differences between the facts in the case and the conclusions drawn by prosecutor, Kenneth Starr.[9]

In Medicines of the Soul: Female Bodies and Sacred Geographies in a Transnational Islam (2001), Malti-Douglas gives an analysis of three autobiographies belonging to Muslim women who became more religious.[10] Each of the women she studies have rejected the ideas of the "secular West."[11] Her book examines how men impact and guide the daily lives and even spiritual dreams of Muslim women.[10]

In 2008, Malti-Douglas edited the comprehensive reference book, The Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, which cover topics about sex and gender through the fields of psychology, sociology, biology, religion and history.[12] Booklist wrote that "Bringing together a remarkable array of material, this set, which appears to be without competition, will no doubt succeed in providing information but also in creating dialogue around issues of sex and gender.[13]