Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (October 21, 1927 – December 2, 2008) was an influential writer and filmmaker who spent much of her life in the field producing numerous ethnographies and films that capture the struggles and turmoil of African and Middle Eastern cultures.

[1] Because teaching jobs were hard to come by in America, her local school was staffed with great teachers who moved to Canada instead.

Fernea initially did not want to wear the veil or abayah but after being stared at, she decided it was best to don the clothing worn by the women of El Nahra.

Fayza Hassan argued that “This may have been the awakening of Fernea’s true pioneer spirit, but more importantly it underlined one of her more endearing traits, a genuine humility embodied in her belief that she has a duty to share the burden of the less fortunate without complaint, a price to pay for being lucky enough to belong to another, trouble-free world to which she will eventually return,”.

Pitied me, college-educated, adequately dressed and fed, free to vote and to travel, happily married to a husband of my own choice who was also a friend and companion.”[2] It was seen as a misfortune that she was skinny, had shorter hair, no children, no mother and no gold.

It was after she was back that Robert and her friend Audrey Walz kept encouraging her to publish her writings about her stay in El Nahra.

Between 1985 and 1986 she was the president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, and in 1994 she received an honorary doctorate from the State University at New York.

One of the skills it appears she obtained from living in El Nahra was the ability to learn from that culture and also realize that it needs to be taught to outsiders.

She earned two National Endowment for the Humanities grants and her list of produced films contain: “Reformers and Revolutionaries: Middle Eastern Women,” “The Struggle for Peace: Israelis and Palestinians,” “The Road to Peace: Israelis and Palestinians,” and “Living with the Past,”[4] The documentary “Living with the Past” deals with the restoration of Al-Darb Al-Ahmar in Egypt.

[1] She wanted to bring Middle Eastern culture closer to home for Americans, which is something she tried to do after living in Iraq for two years.

In 1999, Fernea retired from teaching at the University of Texas and her scholarly books include: “Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village,” “A View of the Nile,” “A Street in Marrakech,” “Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak,” “Women and Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change,” and “In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global Journey.”