About Dr. Pérez

Dr. Pérez received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Michigan State University in 2011. He currently holds the Human Rights seat for the Members' Programmatic Advisory and Advocacy Committee (MPAAC) in the American Anthropological Association (AAA).

In his dissertation, Identifying Palestinians: Refugees and the Politics of Ethno-National Identity in Jordan, Dr. Pérez examined the everyday politics of Palestinian identity among refugees in Jordan. Through an analysis of everyday symbols, discourses, and practices in United Nations refugee camps and urban neighborhoods in Amman, he showed how ethnicity and national identity among Palestinians reflected an engagement with both local and transnational factors: first, with Jordanian nationalism and state policies of exclusion and, second, with the national politics of Palestine. His dissertation also examined how refugee status functioned as a national identification grounded in experiences of displacement and exile and a diasporic relation to the Palestinian homeland.

Dr. Pérez has also examined the struggles of stateless Palestinian refugees in the Gaza refugee camp in Jordan. After 50 years of statelessness, his research considers how Palestinians understand, challenge, and survive the limits of non-citizen status. This project focuses on the various forms of precariousness Palestinians encounter in the practice of everyday life and the ways they creatively confront the existential challenges of their marginal status. It is fundamentally concerned with the intersections of statelessness and everyday decisions and practices in the making of a meaningful life.

Dr. Pérez is currently working with Dr. Matthew Ingalls of the American University in Dubai on a new project focused on the meaning and practice of Islam among Muslims in Chile. Part of a larger interest in the contemporary practice of Islam in Latin America, this research seeks to understand the local dimensions of global Islam.

Publications:

Refereed Journal Publications

• Kyle Benedict Craig & Michael Vicente Pérez, "Rooting the Palestinian Shatat in Jordan: Art, Objects, and the Matter of Belonging," Journal of Palestine Studies, (2023) DOI: 10.1080/0377919X.2023.228190
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. “Minoritizing Gaza Refugees in Jordan” in Minorities and StateBuilding in the Middle East: The Case of Jordan, eds. Oahes, Idir and Paolo Maggiolini (London: Palgrave Press, 2022), 131-150.
• Pérez, Michael. "‘Min Al-Mukhayyam’(‘From the Camp’): Discourses of Difference and the Boundaries of Exile amongst Palestinian Refugees in Jordan." Anthropology of the Middle East 16, no. 1 (2021): 9-31.
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. "Living as enduring: The struggle for life against the limits of refuge among Gaza refugees in Jordan." Un-Settling Middle Eastern Refugees: Regimes of Exclusion and Inclusion in the Middle East, Europe, and North America (2021): 121.
• Feldman, Lindsey Raisa, and Michael Vicente Pérez. "Living at the LUX: Homelessness and Improvisational Waiting under COVID-19." Visual Anthropology Review 36, no. 2 (2020): 379-400.
• Bleibleh, Sahera, Michael Vicente Perez, and Thaira Bleibleh. "Palestinian refugee women and the Jenin refugee camp: Reflections on urbicide and the dilemmas of home in exile." Urban Studies 56, no. 14 (2019): 2897-2916.
• Pérez, Michael Vincente. "“Free Speech” against Critique." South Atlantic Quarterly 117, no. 1 (2018): 202-210.
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. "The everyday as survival among ex-Gaza refugees in Jordan." Middle East Critique 27, no. 3 (2018): 275-288.
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. "Materializing the nation in everyday life: On symbols and objects in the Palestinian refugee diaspora." Dialectical Anthropology 42 (2018): 409-427.
• Pérez, Michael Vicente, and Elena Boffetta. 2018. "Repetition and Extraordinary Living in the Gaza Camp." Writing with Light, Cultural Anthropology website, June 20. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/repetition-and-extraordinary-living-in-the-gaza-camp
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. “The Non-National in Jordan: Statelessness as Structural Violence Among Gaza Refugees,” in Cultural Anthropology: Contemporary Public and Critical Readings, ed. Keri Brondo (Oxford: OxforUniversity Press, 2016), 204-211.
• Pèrez, Michael Vicente. "Between religion and nationalism in the Palestinian diaspora." Nations and Nationalism 20, no. 4 (2014): 801-820.
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. "Human rights and the rightless: the case of Gaza refugees in Jordan." The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 7 (2011): 1031-1054.

Book Reviews 

• Pérez, Michael Vicente. Review of What Jerusalem Means to Us: Muslim Perspectives and Reflections ed. by Saliba Sarsar and Carole Monica C. Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 7, no. 2 (2022): 90-94. https://doi.org/10.2979/ims.2022.a896979.
• Pérez, Michael Vicente. Review of LIfe Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics, by Ilana Feldman. Anthropological Quarterly 93, no. 1 (2020): 1629-1634. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2020.0004. 
• 2018 Pérez, Michael Vicente. Review of “Crescent Under Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA” by Maria Del Mar Logrono Narbona, Paulo G. Pinto, and John Tofik Karam(eds.). Reviewing Religion : http://readingreligion.org/books/crescent-over-another-horizon
• 2018 Pérez, Michael Vicente. Review of “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer. Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 2(2): 105-110.
• 2014 Pérez, Michael Vicente. Review of “The Anthropology of Islam” by Jens Kreinath. Sociology of Islam. 1(3-4):277-280

Non-Refereed Publications

• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Bombings in Gaza add to generations of Palestinians displaced from their homes," Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-01/israel-gaza-war-palestinians-refugees.
• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Gaza bombing adds to the generations of Palestinians displaced from their homes," The Conversation, November 1, 2023, https://theconversation.com/gaza-bombing-adds-to-the-generations-of-palestinians-displaced-from-their-homes-216142.
• Michael Vicente Pérez and Matthew Ingalls, "Chile has a growing Muslim population - but few know about it," The Conversation, September 14, 2021, https://theconversation.com/chile-has-a-growing-muslim-community-but-few-know-about-it-165942.
• Michael Vicente Pérez, The detractors are wrong: Islam is like other religions, Altmuslimah, April 9, 2019, http://www.altmuslimah.com/2019/04/the-detractors-are-wrong-islam-is-like-other-religions/.
• Michael Vicente Pérez and Elena Boffetta, "Fifty years of refuge in the Gaza camp," Anthropology News, August 30, 2018, https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/AN.954.
• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Why the electricity crisis in Gaza is a human rights violation," American Anthropological Association Committee for Human Rights, September 13, 2017, https://humanrights.americananthro.org/electricity-limited-in-the-gaza-strip/. 
• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Feminism is for Everybody, Muslims Included," Critical Muslims 21 (January - March 2017): 109-122.
• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Executiv disorder: living the travel ban in Seattle," Cultural Anthropology: dispatches, August 18, 2017, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/executive-disorder-living-the-ban-in-seattle.
• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Trump, immigration, and the politics of deception," The Islamic Monthly, 2017, http://theislamicmonthly.com/trump-immigration-politics-deception/.
• Michael Vicente Pérez, "Fear and mourning in the shadow of Orlando," Contending Modernities, December 22, 2016, https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/fear-and-mourning-in-the-shadow-of-orlando/.

Selected Awards:

• 2019 University of Memphis Faculty Research Grant for "Beyond Diaspora Islam: Transnational Networks and the
• Localization of Islam in Chile and Argentina"
• 2019 Global Religion Research Initiative International Collaborative Research Grant, Notre Dame University for "Beyond
• Diaspora Islam: Transnational Networks and the Localization of Islam in Chile and Argentina"
• 2018 American Academy of Religion Collaborative International Research Grant
• 2016 Council of American Overseas Research Center Senior Fellowship
• 2015 Global Innovation Fund for Study Abroad Program in Jordan
• 2010-2011 Montgomery County Community College Faculty Diversity Teaching Fellowship
• 2007 Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Completion Research Grant
• 2006 Fulbright IIE Doctoral Dissertation Research Award

Courses Taught:

Refugees and Displacement in the Modern World
Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa
The Culture and Practice of Human Rights
Collective Memory and Violence
Anthropology of Islam and Muslim Practice
Islam and Popular Culture