Laurence Michalak, Ph.D.

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Laurence Michalak, Ph.D.

Background Information and Areas of Research

Laurence Michalak is a cultural anthropologist with extensive experience in the Middle East and North Africa.

Michalak served as vice chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also as outreach coordinator, faculty advisor for the Middle Eastern studies major, and lecturer in Middle Eastern studies and anthropology. In December 2002, he retired after 22 of service for the University of California.

Over the course of his career, Michalak has conducted research in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Eritrea, and Tunisia, where he lived seven years between 1964 and 2000. His research in the 1980s and 1990s on Tunisian migrants in France led to an interest in alcohol-related beliefs and behaviors of Muslims who migrate to non-Muslim settings.

Today, he is a postdoctoral fellow and affiliate associate scientist at ARG. His studies at ARG are related to alcohol and Islam. He is planning a study on alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors among Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Selected Publications

Michalak, L. (2003) Advice for Muslims about Alcohol via the Internet, Kettil Bruun Society, Krakow, June 5.

Michalak, L. (2002) Alcohol and Islam: Alcohol Consumption among Tunisian Emigrants to France, Kettil Bruun Society, Paris, June 3.

Michalak, L. (2002) The Arab in American Cinema: From Bad to Worse, or Getting Better? Social Studies Review 42(1), 11-17.

Michalak L. and A. Saeed (2002) The Continental Divide Islam and Muslim Identities in France and America, in Nezar AlSayyad and Manuel Castells, eds., Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam Politics, Culture and Citizenship in an Age of Globalization, Lexington Books and University Press of America.

Michalak L. (1997) L’impact de l’émigration internationale et de retour en Tunisie Le cas du Nord-ouest Tunisien, in Abdellatif Bencherifa, et al (eds), Migration internationale et changements sociaux dans le Maghreb, University of Tunis Press.

Bencherifa, A, L. Michalak, H. Mzabi and G. Sabagh, editors (1997), Migration internationale et changements sociaux dans le Maghreb, University of Tunis Press.

Michalak, L. and J. Salacuse (1986) Tools for Development, Tools for Domination Social Legislation in the Contemporary Middle East. Berkeley Institute of International Studies, Berkeley, CA.

Michalak, L. (1997) The Effects of International Labor Migration on the Maghrib, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 31(1), 3-33.

Diop, M. and L. Michalak (1996) Refuge and Prison Islam, Ethnicity, and the Adaptation of Space in Worker Housing in France, in B. Metcalf, ed., Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Michalak, L. (1985) Popular French Perspectives on the Maghreb Orientalist Painting of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries, in Jean-Claude Vatin (ed.), Connaissances du Maghreb Étude comparée des perceptions américaines et françaises, Paris CNRS.

Other ARG Publications of This Author

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Last updating of page: September 9, 2004