Mejdulene Bernard Shomali is a queer Palestinian writer and Associate Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Williams College.

She received a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 2015 and an MA in Women’s Studies from Ohio State University in 2009. She is the author of Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives and the poetry chapbook agriculture of grief: prayers for my father’s dementia. Previously she was an associate professor of GWST at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (2015-2024) and fellow at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities (2023-2024). Her current research concerns affect and embodiment in Palestinian resistance.

Prof. Shomali has published a number of peer reviewed essays on gender and sexuality in transnational Arab culture, as well as several personal essays on queerness and Palestine. Her poetry has been featured in Protean, Foglifter, Adroit, and elsewhere. She is currently developing a full length poetry manuscript. For published poems and essays, click here.

At Williams, Prof. Shomali teaches core courses in WGSS such as Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and electives like: Trans/National Femininities; Queer of Color Crit & Lit; and Feeling Free: The Role of Emotion in Social Movements.

Headline photo: El Seed mural at Wynwood walls, Miami, FL, March 2017.  Photo by MBS.