Mary-Jane Deeb is an American Middle East expert, librarian and novelist. Deeb worked at the Library of Congress, where she succeeded George Atiyeh as Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division.

Life

Deeb's mother was Slovenian and her father was a Levantine from Egypt. She grew up in Alexandria, where she spoke French at home and English at a school run by Irish nuns. Deeb gained her MA from the

American University in Cairo The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning programs ...

in 1972, with a thesis on the

Khazin family Khazen (also El-Khazen, Al-Khazen, Khazin or De Khazen, ar, آل الخازن, is a prominent Levantine family and clan based in Keserwan District, Lebanon, Damascus, Syria, Nablus, Palestine (region), Palestine, as well as other districts around ...

. She gained her doctorate at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She then taught for a decade at the

American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...

in Washington, and was Director of the Omani Program there. During the Lebanese Civil War she spent four years in Beirut, working for international organizations including the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia, the

United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to c ...

(UNICEF), America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc. (AMIDEAST), and the US Agency for International Development. From 1995 to 1998 Deeb was editor-in-chief of '' The Middle East Journal''. She was also director of the Algeria Working Group at The Corporate Council on Africa. She was a UN observer for the 1997 Algerian parliamentary election. In 1998 Deeb joined the Library of Congress as Arab World Area Specialist. She became Head of the Near East Section, and in 2005 became Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED). She retired from the Library of Congress in February 2019.

Works

Non-fiction

* (with Marius K. Deeb) ''Libya since the revolution : aspects of social and political development''. Praeger, 1982. * 'Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption', ''Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Sciences'', No. 524 (Nov. 1992) * (ed. with Mary E. King) ''Hasib Sabbagh: from Palestinian refugee to citizen of the world''. Lanham, Md. : Middle East Institute/University Press of America, 1996.

Novels

* ''Cocktails and Murder on the Potomac''. hiladelphia: Xlibris Corp., 2000. * ''Murder on the Riviera''. Brewster, Mass. : Paraclete Press, 2004. * ''A Christmas Mystery in Provence''. Brewster, Mass. : Paraclete Press, 2004. * ''Death of a Harlequin''. North Charleston, SC : CreateSpace, 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deeb, Mary-Jane Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American librarians Middle Eastern studies scholars Librarians at the Library of Congress