University of Houston - Clear Lake
School of Human Science and Humanities
— Faculty Profile —
Maria F. Curtis
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Studies
Email: Curtis@UHCL.edu
Office: Bayou 2617
Phone: 281-283-3429
Mailing Address:
University of Houston-Clear Lake
2700 Bay Area Blvd.
Campus Box 82
Houston, TX 77058
Maria Curtis is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Studies at UHCL. She has written on medical racism in the United States, and women’s spirituality, performance and globalization in Morocco, as well as Turkish and Turkish-American women’s experiences in interfaith initiatives. She is currently working on several articles from her dissertation, Sound Faith: Nostalgia, Global Spirituality, and the Making of the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. Her current research interests range from the history of women’s roles in the monotheistic religious traditions, to representations of contemporary women in Turkish television serials. Most recently, she has been conducting interviews with Turkish women who work in various areas in the national and international media exploring alternative conceptions of religious identities and modernity that she plans to develop into a documentary film. Future projects also include research on the teaching of Middle Eastern studies in a post 9/11 environment. She launched a study abroad program to Turkey in 2008 around notions of interreligious and intercultural dialogue.
- Ph.D., Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University of Texas at Austin
- M.A., Anthropology, Univeristy of Texas at Austin
- B.A., Modern Romance Languages, Contemporary French Literature and French to English Translation, and Anthropology
Additional Study
- American Language Institute of Fes. Classical, and Moroccan Dialectical Arabic. Fes, Morocco.
- Bogaziçi University Turkish program, Istanbul, Turkey.
- Georgetown University and the American Institute for Maghreb Studies Arabic Program, Tangier, Morocco.
- University of Grenoble, French. Grenoble, France.
- Women’s religious traditions in Islam and Ahl al-Kitab.
- Turkish women’s interfaith and civic initiatives and shaping of the media and the public sphere
- Multiculturalism, festivals, and museums in Houston
- Methods and applications of interfaith dialogue
- Visual anthropology and feminist theory
- Cultural Anthropology
- Theories of Diversity
- Islamic civilization, Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa
- Performance and Media Studies
- Public Culture
- "Analysis of the Millet System in light of Contact Theory," co-authored with Yetkin Yildirim, in a volume on Diversity in the Ottoman Empire, University of Texas Press, (forthcoming).
- Authored and updated 17 entries for the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, 2nd ed. Macmillan Reference USA. Entries included: Bodrum, Bektashis, Satellite Cities Development in Egypt, Group of Destourien Women, Wafdist Women’s Central Committee, Arab Feminist Union, Fatna El Bouih, Soraya Adham, Aisha Rateb, Latifa Jababdi, Dance in the Middle East, Zayn Ben Ali, Middle Eastern Intelligence Organizations, Jami’a al-Islamia, Muwahhidun, Palestinian National Council, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 2004.
- "Flights of Fancy: On Settling in a Feminine 'Home' in Morocco." Al-Raida (The Pioneer) Quarterly Journal of the Institute of Women’s Studies in the Arab World, Vol. 101. Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon.
- Multiple Meanings of "Voice" in ‘Ayoua: Gender, Improvisation, and Self in the Recording Studio. Text, Practice, and Performance. Vol. 3, 2001.
- "Corpses as Commodities: The Ethnography of Covert Medical Practices in Georgia, circa 1835-1996," in Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth- Century Medical Training, Smithsonian Press, 1997.
- American Anthropological Association
- Middle Eastern Studies Association
- Visual Anthropology
- American Association of University Women
- Institute of Interfaith Dialog