Joyce Dalsheim, a cultural anthropologist in the Department of Global Studies at UNC Charlotte, was named a 2018 Luce/ACLS Fellow in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs.
She will use her ethnographic research in Israel/Palestine to engage in a critical examination of the relationship between sovereignty and liberation, focusing on questions of religion and religious freedom. Her work adds new perspective to a broad set of interdisciplinary conversations on secularism and citizenship in the modern world.
“Focusing on Israeli Jews, it examines the processes through which sovereign ethnonational majorities are produced,” she wrote in her abstract. “Using stories from many different communities, this research reveals how different ways of being Jewish challenge the policies and practices of the Jewish state, and how, conversely, the existence of the Jewish state constrains the range of possible ways of being Jewish.”
Dalsheim joined the UNC Charlotte faculty in 2010 as a visiting assistant professor and became an assistant professor in 2012. She has published numerous articles and chapters, along with her books, “Unsettling Gaza: Secular Liberalism, Radical Religion and the Israeli Settlement Project” and “Producing Spoilers: Peacemaking and the Production of Enmity in a Secular Age,” both published by Oxford University Press.
Originally published April 24, 2018.