Courses
Writing Culture, Women and Islam, Islam and Politics

Research Interests
Professor Beck conducts anthropological field research among Qashqa'i nomadic pastoralists in Iran, and combines the results of this research with her on-going historical study of the Qashqa'i tribal confederacy as it emerged and has changed during the past two centuries. In addition to using archival sources, she especially relies on her collection of oral histories from Qashqa'i people in Iran and in exile in Europe and the United States. As part of Professor Beck's research in Europe in the past seven summers, she has interviewed members of the Qashqa'i tribal elite in exile. They discuss Qashqa'i history and especially the participation of these elite in the rapidly changing political climate in Iran. In 1995, 1996, and 1997 Professor Beck continued her research in Iran among Qashqa'i nomadic pastoralists in their winter and summer pastures. She is currently revising a previously published book on Qashqa'i history and am writing several new books, one on tribal politics and another on the strategies of nomads in the postrevolutionary period. Partly because only several Americans have been allowed to conduct research in Iran since the revolution in 1979, she also writes about changes in Iranian society in general, particularly the rural sector and the role of women in the Islamic Republic.

Selected Publications:

2004 Beck, Lois and Guity Nashat, eds. Women in Iran from 1800 to the Islamic Republic. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.

2000 Beck, Lois. Local Histories: A Longitudinal Study of a Qashqa'i Subtribe in Iran. In Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie, Rudi Matthee and Beth Baron, eds. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers. Pp. 262-288.

1998 Beck, Lois. Use of Land by Nomadic Pastoralists in Iran, 1970-1998. In Bulletin of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies 103: 58-80.

1993 Beck, Lois. Rostam: Qashqa'i Rebel. In Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. Edmund Burke, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

1991 Beck, Lois. Nomad: A Year in the Life of a Qashqa'i Tribesman in Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press; London: I. B. Tauris.