Sahar Khamis is an assistant professor in the department of communication and an affiliate faculty with the department of women’s studies and the consortium on race, gender and ethnicity at the University of Maryland. Dr. Khamis holds a Ph.D. in mass media and cultural studies from the University of Manchester in England. The title of her Ph.D. was: “Egyptian rural women, television and public awareness programs.” It was based on an in-depth ethnographic audience study that analyzed women’s patterns of media reception and interpretation of government family planning, literacy and health awareness campaigns. Dr. Khamis conducted a series of longitudinal ethnographic follow-up studies in the same research site in rural Egypt over a number of years to detect the impact of social, political and communication developments on women’s reactions to these issues. These studies resulted in a series of publications including a chapter titled: “Multiple literacies, multiple identities: Egyptian rural women’s readings of televised literacy campaigns” in the book “Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression”, edited by Naomi Sakr and published by I.B. Tauris, London in 2004; an article titled: “Multiple meanings, identities, and resistances: Egyptian rural women’s readings of televised family planning campaigns”, which was published in the International Journal of Communication in 2009; and an article titled: “New media and social change in rural Egypt”, which was published in the journal Arab Media & Society in 2010.
Contact: skhamis@umd.edu