Joseph Massad was born in Jordan in 1963 and is of Palestinian Christian descent. He is a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. His theoretical writings have focused on Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli nationalism. His most famous book is Desiring Arabs, a history of sexual desire in the Arab world. His other books include The Traces of Colonialism: The Making of National Identity in Jordan and The Insistence of the Palestinian Question.
Massad was born in Jordan in 1963 and is of Palestinian Christian descent. He earned a PhD in political science from Columbia in 1998. He is best known for his book Desiring Arabs, which examines representations of sexual desire in the Arab world.