Elizabeth Fernea in Beirut

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, author and editor of two feminist classics, Women and the Family in the Middle East and Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak (both publishedby the University of Texas Press), visited Lebanon in June with her husband Robert, a renowned anthropologist, to update their book, The Arab World: Personal Encounters (Anchor Press). The book, first begun in 1956, when they initially visited Beirut as young academics, is a personal narrative of their travels in the region, travels which took them to Egypt (1959, 1983 and 1995), to Morocco (1971 , 1983 and 1995), as well as to Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Iran, Yemen, and the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. The updated version of the book will conclude with an article on post-war Lebanon.