Lila Sharif is assistant professor of Asian AmericanStudies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She teaches courses on race, empire, militarization, settler colonialism, food and culture. Sharif earned a dual Ph.D. in Sociology and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2014. She is currently completing a book manuscript that analyzes the intersections between the politics of consumption, indigenous survival, neoliberalism, gender and race. She traces the circulation of olive commodities from Palestine to the United States in order to ask: How is Palestine made palatable to Western consumers and what is masked/revealed in this process? She is the first Palestinian American to earn a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies to date.
