Home Department: School of Anthropology
SLAT Areas of Specialization: Linguistic Dimensions of L2 Learning, Sociocultural Dimensions of L2 Learning
Dr. Rabie is a linguistic anthropologist whose research interests center on gender and language in the Arabic-speaking world, namely the Arabian Gulf States, but also the greater Middle East and North Africa (MENAS) and their diasporas in the US and Europe. In her most recent project, she focused on the role of English in the United Arab Emirates as the state prepares for an imminent future after oil. She examined the impact of the country’s widespread English language policies on the professional and social mobility of Emirati women, members of the country’s autochthonous citizen minority. In particular, she focused on the country’s English-medium higher education system as a gateway channel of mobility that enables Emirati women to advance professionally in multinational organizations, attain state leadership positions hitherto reserved for male ruling elites, become entrepreneurs and social media influencers, and otherwise achieve forms of social and economic mobility that are historically quite new. She conceptualizes language, hence, in infrastructural terms, centering linguistically mediated modes of circulation and mobility as processes through which new gendered subject positions develop in emergent global knowledge economies.
Stemming from this greater project, some of Dr. Rabie's other related research in Abu Dhabi focuses on the evolving role of quotidian sounds, like the Islamic call to prayer, and linguistic landscapes in framing citizens’ everyday experiences of ethnonational and gendered socialization amid dynamic social change. She is also interested in social media as a space of governance and governmentality. She is currently conducting preliminary comparative research in different Arabian Gulf countries on social media influencers and the extent of their political reach within the autocratic and increasingly neoliberal political-economic terrain they inhabit. She asks: In what ways is the ostensibly apolitical Gulf lifestyle influencer able to be political? Moreover, how do language and gender inform their content, follower base, and reach?
Research Interests
Language and Gender, Semiotics, Feminist Anthropology, Anthropology of Infrastructure, Mobility, Media Anthropology, Digital Ethnography, Globalization, and Neoliberalism
Areas of Study
- Arabian Gulf States with a special focus on the United Arab Emirates
- The greater Middle East and North Africa (MENAS)
- Arab diasporas in the United States and Europe
Graduate Courses
- Gender, Language, and Piety in the Arab World
- Language and Power
- Research Methods in Linguistic Anthropology
- Foundations in Linguistic Anthropology
- Discourse-centered Approaches in Linguistic Anthropology
Degree(s)
- PhD – Linguistic Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin
- MA – Linguistics, University of Chicago
- BA – Linguistics, University of Chicago