Mejdulene Bernard Shomali

Mejdulene Bernard Shomali serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), concurrently holding a 2023-2024 Fellowship at Cornell's Society for the Humanities where she develops her project Palestine Matters: Aesthetics, Embodiment, and Pleasure in Palestine.

Her academic foundation includes a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan (2015) and an MA in Women’s Studies from Ohio State University (2009).

Shomali’s research pioneers Queer Arab Critique through transnational Arab archives, examining Palestinian aesthetics as resistance under occupation. Her decolonial, feminist framework intersects with affect theory and disability studies to analyze how Palestinian bodies navigate pleasure and survival via poetry, museums, drag performance, cuisine, and recreational spaces—revealing how sorrow and joy coexist as embodied resistance.

Recent publications demonstrate escalating focus on Palestinian liberation narratives and queer Arab poetic forms, blending autobiographical grief with political urgency while expanding scholarly discourse in gender studies through creative-scholarly hybridity.

Her recognition includes:

• Cornell Society for the Humanities Fellowship (2023-2024)
• UMBC Lavender Celebration Outstanding Faculty Ally Award (2017)

As an educator, she designed UMBC’s inaugural Arab and Muslim Experiences in the US course and Trans/National Femininities, while creating university-wide programming on Arab/Muslim identity. Her fellowship-supported research exemplifies institutional investment in decolonial humanities scholarship.

Her collaborative work spans Cornell’s interdisciplinary humanities cohorts and Arab American literary communities, particularly through poetry collectives addressing diaspora and resistance.