Education:
B.A., Fordham University;
M.A.,Ph.D., New York University;
Caroleen Marji Sayej
Assistant Professor of Government
Joined Connecticut College: 2009
Specializations:
- Persistent authoritarianism in the Middle East
- Contemporary Islamic social movements
- Modernization and identity politics
- Middle Eastern studies
- Comparative politics
- International relations
Caroleen Marji Sayej joined the Connecticut College faculty in 2009 as an assistant professor of government, specializing in comparative politics and the Middle East.
Professor Sayej’s research and teaching interests encompass both macro- and micro-level analysis of authoritarian political systems with a focus on Middle Eastern studies. These include the comparative study of democracies and autocracies, legitimacy crises, and sub-systemic changes within regimes — all to account for the persistence of authoritarianism. She is also currently working on the inter-relationship of state and society, including the role of political Islam and the new social groups that are forming in contemporary Middle Eastern societies.
Most recently, she has been working on political change and consolidation in Iraq. The Iraq Papers, with John Ehrenberg, J. Patrice McSherry, and Jose Ramon Sanchez, will be the most comprehensive textbook on the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath, analyzing the event from the conceptual framework of preemption. In it, Caroleen Sayej focuses on the civil war in Iraq as well as indigenous voices for democratization. The book will be published by Oxford University Press in January 2010.
She will begin teaching Comparative Politics, Iran: State, Politics and Society, and Middle East Politics in the spring of 2010.
Visit the government department Web site.