Sherene Seikaly, University of California, Santa Barbara
In conversation with Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University
Moderated by Brinkley Messick, Columbia University

Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the editor of Arab Studies Journal, co-editor at the Journal of Palestine Studies, and founding co-editor of Jadaliyya. Her first book, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (2016) explores how Palestinian "men of capital" and British colonial officials in the Thirties and Forties forged ideas of economy, property and accumulation in relation to broader currents in modern Arab thought, and in response to wartime austerity. Professor Seikaly's work draws on diverse sources to illustrate how this under-studied group of thinkers sought to shape concepts of frugality, scarcity, law, the home and the body, territory and region, ultimately constituting modern notions of "social man" in Palestine.