Betty Anderson

Betty Anderson is a Professor of Middle East History at Boston University and 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 (Stanford University Press, 2016).  She is currently working on a project called “Mapping Amman:  A 21^stCentury City,” that examines how 22-35 year-olds interact with a cityscape that has been dramatically transformed in the 21^st century by a government-led neoliberal investment project.  Through focus groups and one-on-one interviews, she is asking how young people seek opportunities in a complex new job market, locate places of belonging within the city, and determine how they will tackle social and economic obstacles to their advancement, all while maintaining the family, kin and neighborhood networks that are still vital to successfully overcoming the city’s challenges.