Donald Powell Cole (March 21, 1941 in Bryan, Texas) is a noted anthropologist at the American University in Cairo. He joined the university in 1971. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association. Cole has studied Arab nomadic cultures, such as the Al Murrah, in his The Social and Economic Structure of the Āl Murrah: A Saudi Arabian Bedouin Tribe, his PhD dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley.
Cole, an American expat, currently resides in Cairo.
Academic positions
The American University in Cairo
Assistant Professor, 1971–73; 1974–75
Associate Professor, 1975–86
Professor, 1986 to 2007
Emeritus Professor, 2007 onward
University of California, Berkeley
Acting Assistant Professor, Spring Quarter 1971
Visiting Assistant Professor, 1973–74
The University of Chicago
Visiting Associate Professor, Winter and Spring Quarters 1976
University of Texas, Austin
Visiting Associate Professor, Spring Semester 1983, plus several summer sessions
Visiting Scholar, Center for Middle East Studies, Spring Semester 1987
Georgetown University
Visiting Researcher, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Spring Semester 1995
Books
Road to Islām: From Texas to Saudi Arabia and Egypt / Donald Powell Cole. Cairo: Al-Madinah Press, 2010. Bedouins of the Empty Quarter / Donald Powell Cole. New Jersey: Aldine Transaction, 2010. Bedouin, settlers, and holiday makers : Egypt's changing northwest cast / Donald P. Cole, Soraya Altorki. 1998. Investors and Workers in the Western Desert of Egypt: An Exploratory Survey / Donald Powell Cole, Naiem A. Sherbiny and Nadia Makary Girgis. Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, Volume 15, Monograph 3. 1992. Arabian oasis city : the transformation of ʻUnayzah / Soraya Altorki and Donald P. Cole. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1989. Saudi Arabian Bedouin: An Assessment of their Needs / Donald Powell Cole and Saad Eddin Ibrahim. Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, Volume 5, Monograph 1. 1978. Nomads of the nomads : the Āl Murrah Bedouin of the Empty Quarter / Donald Powell Cole. 1975 (hardcover), (paperback)