She earned her BA in Art History from Columbia University and her PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University. She has been working in the happy disjuncture between the fields ever since. Her research and teaching interests are Modern and Contemporary Arab Art, particularly in Lebanon and Palestine, Aesthetics and Affect as alternative sources for ethnography and political study, Art Historiography and Theory, Civilizing Discourses and Cosmopolitanism, Activism, and Elites. She has conducted field and archival research since 1992 in Lebanon and Palestine.