Lindsey Pullum is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in cultural expressions of ethnic and religious difference in Middle Eastern popular culture. Her research investigates how ethnonationalism shapes ways of belonging that are transmitted through tourism in/of Druze villages of Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. She has also published an article and book chapter on Druze popular culture and their intersectionality between Israeli and Arab identity via photography and food. She has conducted nine months of fieldwork in Israel and the Golan Heights from 2015-2018. Her dissertation, Faithful/Traitor: Violence, Nationalism, and Performances of Druze Belonging, was co-awarded the annual Ben Halpern Best Dissertation in Israel Studies from the Association of Israel studies. It details how Druze refugees of Israel and the Golan Heights incorporate nationally sanctioned forms of violence in cultural performances that result in their national inclusion.
As 2021-2022 American Druze Foundation Research Fellow, Pullum will continue work on her first book manuscript. She will also teach a graduate seminar for CCAS on popular culture and politics of belonging for ethnoreligious minorities of the Middle East.
