Professor of History
History of the Middle East, social and intellectual history of the Arab world, history of education, and modern world history
Betty Anderson is the author of Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State (University of Texas Press, 2005), The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (University of Texas Press, 2011), and A History of the Modern Middle East: Rulers, Rebels and Rogues (Stanford University Press, Spring 2016), as well as a co-author with Carol Berkin of the History Handbook (Houghton-Mifflin 2003 and Cengage 2011). Her most recent book, Amman: Storytelling in a Restless City, is under review at the American University of Cairo Press. This book relates how residents of Amman story, history, write, read, use land, build structures, make home, and navigate a city primarily built by refugee and migrant arrivals. Dr. Anderson has also published articles in Civil Wars, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Critique, and Jordanies, as well as chapters for a number of edited volumes. She has written about the themes covered by Islamic and history textbooks used in Jordan, the politicizing role of education in the twentieth-century Middle East history, the evolution of the American liberal education system at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and, most recently, stories of belonging in the region’s cities. Dr. Anderson is a member of the Board of Trustees for the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan.