Tamir Sorek is a Liberal Arts Professor of Middle East History at Penn State University. He studies culture as a field of conflict and resistance, particularly in the context of Palestine/Israel. His research has highlighted the political role of sports, poetry, and collective memory, as well as tensions around the boundaries of the religious and the secular realms. He is the author of The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad (Stanford University Press, 2020), Palestinian Commemoration in Israel: Calendar, Monuments, and Martyrs (Stanford University Press, 2015) and Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave (Cambridge University Press 2007).