Barakat received his
bachelor's degree in
sociology in 1955, and his
master's degree in 1960 in the same field. He received both from the
American University of Beirut. He received his
PhD in
social psychology in 1966 from the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. From 1966 until 1972 he taught at the American University of Beirut. He then served as research fellow at
Harvard University from 1972 to 1973, and taught at the
University of Texas at Austin in 1975-1976. From 1976 until 2002 he was Teaching Research Professor at the
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies of
Georgetown University. Barakat has written about twenty books and fifty essays on society and culture in journals such as the
British Journal of Sociology, the
Middle East Journal,
Mawakif, and
al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi. His publications are primarily concerned with difficulties facing modern Arab societies such as
alienation,
crises of
civil society, and a need for
identity,
freedom and
justice. He has also published seven
novels and a collection of
short stories. These are rich with
symbolism and
allegory to world events. His novel
Six Days (
Sitat Ayam, 1961) is prophetically named for a real war yet to come in 1967; as such, it became a prelude to the later novel
Days of Dust ('''Awdat al-Ta'ir ila al-Bahr'', 1969), which unfolds the existential drama of the June War of 1967. ==References==