Rula Quawas

Dr. Rula Butros Audeh Quawas (25 February 1960 – 25 July 2017) was a Jordanian academic known for her advocacy for women's advancement in Jordan and as the first academic to introduce courses on feminism at the University of Jordan.

Biography Quawas was born on 25 February 1960 in Amman, Jordan. She attended Al Ahliyya School for Girls in her youth, where her mother was a teacher. She went on to earn her Ph.D. from the University of North Texas.

Following her doctorate, she returned to the University of Jordan, where she would go on to teach for over twenty years. She was the first professor to teach feminist theory courses in the English Department. She founded the university's Women's Studies Center in 2006 She was Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Jordan from 2011 to 2012.

Quawas has been described as a "prominent champion of women's advancement in Jordan" whose "lifelong goal was to empower young women and challenge patriarchal structures" (13). Describing her own sense of purpose, Quawas wrote in 2017: "Arab women believe education to be their weapon....As a professor of literature and feminist theory, I have always glimpsed the possibility of a world that could be much more for Arab women. When I teach, I always ask myself, What is it that I can do within the domain of my classrooms to make this world a living reality? What kind of future do I want to create with my students?" She learned of her dismissal not from the university administration but through local media. She was allowed to continue to teach after her removal as dean. Writing in 2017, Quawas stood by the video as "revolutionary and heterodox in more than one way" and maintained that she had been surprised at the extent to which she and her students were "demonized and deprecated" following the video's public release.

Select publications

Bad Girls of the Arab World. Yaqub, Nadia and Rula Quawas (editors). Austin: University of Texas Press. 2017. The Voice of Being Enough: Young Jordanian Women Break Through Without Breaking Down. Quawas, Rula (editor). 2016. "'A sea captain in her own right': Navigating the feminist thought of Huda Shaarawi." Quawas, Rula. 2006. Journal of International Women's Studies 8(1): 219–235. "Pinched lives and stolen dreams in Arab feminist short stories." Quawas, Rula. Journal of International Women's Studies 15(1): 54–66.