Kimberly Katz

Kimberly Katz is professor of Middle East history and coordinator of the Human Rights and History minor at Towson University in Maryland. She joined Towson’s History Department in 2003 after earning her PhD in history and Middle East studies from New York University in 2001. Her research and teaching interests focus on social, cultural, colonial, and post-colonial history of the Middle East and North Africa in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. She has conducted research in Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Egypt with the support of various fellowships, including from the Fulbright Program, Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), and the American Center of Research (ACOR). 

Professor Katz’s publications demonstrate her long interest in urban and biographical history. Her first book, Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces, was published in 2005 by the University Press of Florida. Her second book, A Young Palestinian’s Diary, 1941–1945: The Life of Sami ‘Amr, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2009 and in Arabic by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing (AIRP) in 2017. Her current research focuses on legal history in Jordan and the West Bank in the early 1950s, specifically the legal challenges in applying Jordanian law to the kingdom’s newest citizens, many of whom were also refugees.