Linda Sayed
Assisstant Professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Linda Sayed's research focuses on the politics of citizenship as it relates to marginalized communities.
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Biography
Professor Sayed is an assistant professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics at James Madison College (JMC). She is a core faculty member of the Muslim Studies Program, and affiliate faculty of the Center of Gender in Global Context, and the Global Studies Program. Prior to arriving to JMC, Professor Sayed was at New York University, where she taught courses on Islam, gender, nationalism, colonialism, and Middle East history and politics. She holds a master’s degree in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University.
Professor Sayed is an interdisciplinary scholar of the contemporary Middle East and the Arab diaspora. Her research focuses on the politics of citizenship as it relates to marginalized communities, refugee rights, health care accessibility, and systems of national and international governance that inform global public health concerns in the Middle East and among Arab communities in the United States. Her current research focuses on Syrian refugee’s rights to health services and the political infrastructures that determine accessibility to those services in the context of Lebanon. This research assesses the ways in which Syrians negotiate health and social services, and the complexities that exist in both the structures of international aid, and the political infrastructure of Lebanon that limit the services Syrian refugees have access to.
Professor Sayed is also involved in two separate research projects examining the impact of COVID-19 on marginalized groups in the U.S. One of those projects supported by MCCFAD investigates the psychosocial impact of the pandemic on aging Middle Eastern/Arab American immigrants and/or refugees in Michigan based on qualitative research conducted at local Arab organizations and institutions. Her previous research explored the role marginalized religious groups played in the construction of the nation-state and the politicization of sectarian identity as it concerned the Shi'a of Lebanon during the French Mandate period. This research studied the power of sectarianism in shaping everyday experiences and politics for Lebanese Shi’a.
Industry Expertise (3)
Education/Learning
International Affairs
Political Organization
Areas of Expertise (5)
Muslim Studies
Muslim Mental Health
European Jewish History
Holocaust Studies
Global Studies
Education (3)
Columbia University: Ph.D., Near and Middle Eastern Studies; Middle East History 2013
Columbia University: M.A., Near and Middle Eastern Studies 2004
Fordham University: B.A., History 2002
Links (1)
News (1)
Faculty voice: Growing up Arab, Muslim
MSU Today online
2022-04-05
Linda Sayed (she/her) is an assistant professor of comparative cultures and politics in James Madison College. She is a core faculty member of the Muslim Studies Program. Sayed earned her doctorate in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her research and teaching focuses on the politics of citizenship as it relates to questions of marginalized communities, refugee rights, health care accessibility and systems of national and international governance that inform global public health concerns in the Middle East and among Arab communities in the United States.
Event Appearances (2)
Navigating Medical & Social Services for Refugees
2018 | Muslim Mental Health Conference Washington, DC
The Health and Humanitarian State of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
2017 | Muslim Studies Program Research Panel University of Michigan
Journal Articles (2)
Caregiving for Foreign-Born Older Adults with Dementia
Journal of Gerontology2022 Objectives: This study examines how nativity, dementia classification, and age of migration (AOM) of older foreign-born (FB) adults are associated with caregiver psychological well-being and care burden. Methods: We used linked data from Round 1 and Round 5 of the National Health and Aging Trends Study and Round 5 of the National Study of Caregiving for a sample of nondementia caregivers (n = 941), dementia caregivers (n = 533), and matched care recipients. Ordinary least squares regression models were estimated, adjusting for caregiver characteristics.
Negotiating Citizenship: Shi‘i Families and the Ja‘fari Shari‘a Courts in Lebanon
Practicing Sectarianism in Lebanon: Archival and Ethnographic Interventions2022 During French Mandate rule, Shi'i Muslims found themselves incorporated into the newly formed Lebanese nation-state as an officially recognized sect with, by 1926, distinct shari'a courts to litigate civil and personal disputes. Based on archival research at the Ja'fari shari'a courts from 1926 to 1943, this chapter argues that those courts became a place where Shi'i individuals pushed against the limitations of sectarian and national identities embedded in the formation of modern Lebanon. In making legal claims, Shi'i individuals—and Shi'i women in particular—asserted their subjectivity in ways that not only informed familial norms and gender roles, but went beyond the regulatory practices of the courts by negotiating and challenging legal categories of Shi'i sectarian and national belonging. This chapter investigates the ways in which Shi'i Muslims enacted, imagined, and challenged the sectarian identities that were set up as legal and political categories of the nation-state.
