Dr Youssef Choueiri - research

My research interests span a number of inter-related Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern topics.
My initial research as a PhD candidate at Cambridge University centred on the emergence and development of modern Arab historiography, with particular reference to the notion of the nation-state. In 1989 my revised dissertation was published by Routledge under the title: Arab History and the Nation-State: A Study in Modern Arab Historiography. In 2003 a second updated edition appeared with a more nuanced title: Modern Arab Historiography: Historical Discourse and the Nation-State

With the rise of political Islamism and Islamist movements in the 1980s my research focus shifted to the study of this novel domain. The outcome of my investigation resulted in the publication of Islamic Fundamentalism in1989 by Pinter Publishers, revised for a new edition in 1997 and reissued by Continuum in 2002. Islamic fundamentalism, later elaborated in a number of articles, referred to three Islamist movements or currents: Revivalism, Reformism and Radicalism, with the first having its roots in the 18th century, the last denoting contemporary organizations and ideologies and their founding fathers: Abu al-'Ala' al-Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb, while the second (i.e. reformism) was judged to have developed in the 19th century and continued to grow in the twentieth century, turning in the process into Islamic modernism.

As the study of Islamism grew into a gigantic industry, my scholarly pursuits widened to include civil society, democracy and the possibility of offering an alternative interpretation of the historical trajectory of Arab Nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hence my book on Arab Nationalism, State and Society in the Arab World, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000 & John Wiley and Son, 2001. It was in this context that I welcomed a proposal by Blackwell Publishers to plan and edit a volume covering the history of the Middle East since the rise of Islam down to the present time. Published in 2005, A Companion to the History of the Middle East presented the most recent developments and contributions in the field by twenty-six eminent scholars.

In 2006 I organized an international conference on Lebanese Society and its civil wars and edited the proceedings: Breaking the Cycle. Civil Wars in Lebanon, London, 2007.In 2011 I published a new and expanded edition of my Arab Nationalism in its Arabic version.The new edition took account of the arrival of what has been dubbed 'the Arab Spring' and includes two new chapters on the Ottoman establishment,Islamic reform and imperialism.

I am currently working on a short monograph, provisionally titled: A History of Arab Democracy.