Pembroke Center

Judith Surkis is Professor of History at Rutgers University. She specializes in Modern European History, with an emphasis on France and the French Empire, gender and sexuality, and intellectual, cultural, and legal History. She is currently working on The Intimate Life of International Law: Children and Development After Decolonization, which examines how population movements tested the boundaries of postcolonial sovereignty by focusing on international family law conflicts. This follows her most recent book Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930 (Cornell University Press, 2019), which won the 2020 Association for Middle East Women’s Studies Book Award for excellence in the field of Middle East gender, women’s and sexuality studies. Surkis previously taught at Harvard University and Cornell University, and was a visiting scholar at Princeton University (2019-2020).

Surkis earned an A.B. in history and literature and society from Brown University and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. She was the 2003-2004 Nancy L. Buc ’65 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pembroke Center.