CALL | Transnational Solidarity Amongst (Settler) Colonised People: Palestine and Beyond

European Centre for Palestine Studies and IAIS at University of Exeter 
3-4 April 2023 / Exeter and hybrid

Call for Papers
The European Centre for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at University of Exeter are organising a conference for 3-4 April 2023 with the title “Transnational Solidarity amongst (Settler) Colonised Peoples: Palestine and beyond”.

The panels will cover different experiences of colonisation and resistance in the context of transnational solidarities. We encourage the submission of abstracts on topics related, but not limited to, the following:

• Building transnational connectivity,

• Liberated futures and decolonial solutions for settler colonial realities,

• Liberation beyond geopolitics,

• Community psychology across and in-between contexts, 

• Impact of transnational solidarity/ resistance,

• The limitations and challenges of transnational solidarity,

• The role of technology in building global solidarity,

• Liberatory publics and literatures,

• Decoloniality and transnational praxis.

We accept scholarly research papers, individuals or co-authored. We also encourage alternative and artistic contributions that present different mediums of research and knowledge production. Those can take the form of poetry, artistic performances, exhibitions, culinary experiences, journalism and many more.  

There are a limited number of accommodation grants available for presenters, grant applications for which will open once decisions on abstracts have been sent out. The conference will also be held in a hybrid format allowing people to attend worldwide and for participants who are unable to attend in-person.

How to submit
Please email a document including your paper’s title, an abstract of 250 to 300 words, up to five keywords and short biographical paragraph to tnsconference@protonmail.com by 22 January 2023. We request that the subject lines for abstract submissions follow the format “ABSTRACT SUB: [title of paper] – [presenter’s name]”. Emails with subject lines not following the specified format are at risk of not being considered for acceptance.

Please specify in your email if you intend on attending the conference in person and if you require support in applying for a UK visa.

The deadline for applying is 22 January 2023.

All decisions will be sent out by 1 February 2023. Decisions for applicants who specify in their email that they require a visa for in-person attendance will be sent out sooner.

 Please contact us if you require additional time for completing your visa process. We will deal with the review process of your paper as a priority.

For all enquiries, please email tnsconference@protonmail.com.

ATTEND | Whose Dead Matter? Defending the Muslim Cemetery of Balad al-Sheikh in the Jewish State

11 January 2023
7:30PM Palestine
12:30PM New York

Whose Dead Matter? Defending the Muslim Cemetery of Balad al-Sheikh in the Jewish State
Employing legal and extra-legal tools, attempts to appropriate and eradicate the Balad al-Sheikh Cemetery have been ongoing over decades, but have recently resurged with renewed vigor. Taking various vantage points—historical, legal, doctrinal, ethical, and comparative—this panel will examine the stakes of protecting this Muslim endowment in the modern state of Jewish sovereignty.

Speakers

• Simone Bitton is an independent documentary filmmaker, born in Morocco in 1955. She has lived in Rabat, Jerusalem, and Paris. She directed more than 15 documentary films, all of which attest to her deep personal and professional commitment to better represent the complex histories and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. She is particularly well known for her films addressing the Palestinian issue, such as “Wall,” “Story of a Land,” and “Mahmoud Darwich: As the Land is the Language.” Her most recent film, “Ziyara,” considers the Muslim guardians of Jewish sanctuaries and cemeteries in Morocco.

• Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago, is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and has served as President of the Middle East Studies Association. He has co-edited three books and authored eight, the most recent of which is The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Metropolitan Books, 2020), as well as over 100 scholarly articles and book chapters.

• Ahmad Amara is a part-time lecturer in History of Palestine and Judaic Studies at New York University and Tel Aviv University, and a senior researcher at al-Quds University. His most recent book, Settling in the hearts of Palestinian Neighborhoods: The Old City, Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, was published in Arabic by al-Quds University Press in 2020. His research focuses on questions of law, history, and geography, with a special focus on Ottoman land law, Waqf properties in Jerusalem, and Bedouin lands in the Beersheba region. 

• Johnny Mansour is a historian, researcher, and lecturer from Haifa. He has published numerous studies in Arabic and English, including: “The Military Institution in Israel,” “Israeli Settlement,” “The Hejaz Railway,” “A Dictionary of Zionist and Israeli Terms and Personalities,” “The Other Israel: A View from the Inside,” “Distance Between Two States,” “Arab Haifa Streets,” “Haifa the Word That Has Become a City,” “Centenary of the Balfour Declaration,” “Aqila Agha Al-Hassi,” “Religiosity in Curricula and Instructional Books in Israeli Schools,” and with Ilan Pappe,  “Historical Dictionary of Palestine” (Rowman  & Littlefield, 2022). He is currently studying displacement inside Palestine in the first decade after the Nakba. 

Moderator

• Khaled Furani is a professor of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and author of Redeeming Anthropology: A Theological Critique of a Modern Science (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry (Stanford University Press, 2012).

APPLY | Ibrahim Abu-Lughod 2023 Fellowship Competition

The Center for Palestine Studies is pleased to announce that the competition for the 2023-2024 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Award is open!

Applications are due on February 15, 2023.

The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Award is a year-long fellowship that recognizes and fosters innovative and ground-breaking scholarship on issues related to Palestine and Palestinians. The award will support a scholar working on a book project in any field of the humanities or social sciences who will spend the academic year at Columbia University in New York, pursuing their research and writing, contributing to curricular matters, and participating in the intellectual life of the Center for Palestine Studies.

Established in 2010, the IAL Award was made possible through the generosity of the late Abdel Mohsin Al-Qattan in honor of his friend, the Palestinian scholar and intellectual, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (1929-2001). Their close friendship began in the aftermath of the Nakba of 1948 and evolved into a shared commitment to justice for Palestinians to be realized through support for excellence in higher education and scholarship. Major support for the IAL Award comes from the A.M. Qattan Foundation.

For complete information about eligibility and application requirements, visit the IAL section of the Center's website.

READ | Washington Post Review of Nadia Abu El-Haj's "Combat Trauma"

Can we heal wartime trauma without confronting the real causes of war?
In ‘Combat Trauma,’ Nadia Abu El-Haj examines the history and politics of PTSD

By Lyle Jeremy Rubin
December 13, 2022

“El-Haj is an academic, and her book amounts to a brave act of scholarship. But at its best moments, ‘Combat Trauma’ also musters a rhetorical force reminiscent of past public intellectuals like Hannah Arendt. Indeed, on multiple occasions El-Haj cites Arendt, who likewise pushed readers to think critically about war and empire. There is much in El-Haj’s argument that can be questioned, beginning with whether her anti-imperialist approach to healing could be put to work within the halls of power, an idea bound to trip over its own paradoxical preconditions. Likewise, it’s not entirely clear how her approach applies to veterans who don’t share her politics or her commitment to transformative activism. But as a prod for a citizenry whose unspoken politics is one of imperial amnesia or self-congratulation, El-Haj’s contribution couldn’t be more welcome. And for a nation that persists in seeing itself as the victim to justify its status as avenging victimizer, this book may be a necessary one.”

Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-9/11 America is available now from Verso.

ATTEND | The Fisheries of the Southern Mediterranean From Morocco to Turkey, 1950-2020

The Fisheries of the Southern Mediterranean From Morocco to Turkey, 1950-2020 with Daniel Pauly

14 DEC 2022
12:00 PM NEW YORK
7:00 PM JERUSALEM
ONLINE

Join the Bisan Center, Scientists for Palestine and the Center for Palestine Studies for the next talk in the Bisan Lecture Series!

The Mediterranean and its fisheries have been studied for millennia, but much of the published information pertains to its Northern coast, from Spain to Greece, i.e., to countries of the European Union. This account presents the ‘catch reconstructions’ and information gathered in the process of detailed examinations of the fisheries along the Southern coast of the Mediterranean by country, from Morocco in the West to Turkey in the east, which are often ignored in Mediterranean studies. Some of the challenges facing fisheries and fisheries research in the countries of the Southern Mediterranean will be presented.

Daniel Pauly is University of British Columbia Killam Professor

SUBMIT | Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem

Jerusalem Quarterly Announces the 2023 Cycle of the Ibrahim Dakkak Award

The Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Outstanding Essay on Jerusalem is an annual award launched by the Jerusalem Quarterly in 2017 to honor the memory and work of Ibrahim Dakkak (1929–2016), Jerusalem architect, activist, political leader, and former chairman of the Advisory Board of the Jerusalem Quarterly.

It is awarded to an outstanding submission (in English or Arabic) that addresses either contemporary or historical issues relating to Jerusalem. A committee selected by the Jerusalem Quarterly determines the winning essay. The author will be awarded a prize of U.S. $1,000, and the essay will be published in the Jerusalem Quarterly.

Essays submitted or nominated for consideration should be based on original research and must not have been previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Essays should be 4,000 to 5,000 words in length (including endnotes), preceded by an abstract of no more than 200 words, and up to 10 keywords.

If the submitted or nominated essay is in Arabic, the abstract and keywords should be in English.

Preference will be given to emerging/early career researchers and students.

Any images should be submitted as separate files with a resolution of 600 dpi minimum, if possible. Submitted images must have copyright clearance from owners, and have captions that are clear and accurate.

Please submit or nominate essays and a short bio (including current or previous affiliation with a recognized university, research institution, or non-governmental organization that conducts research) via email to jq@palestine-studies.org, mentioning the Award. In the case of nomination, please provide a contact address for the nominated author.

The deadline for submissions is 15 January of each year.

ATTEND | Reassessing the British Mandate in Palestine Conference

DATE
Monday, October 31, 2022 - 9:00am - Wednesday, November 2, 2022 - 6:00pm

LOCATION
Birzeit, Online

The Institute for Palestine Studies, in partnership with several research centers in the region, Europe and North America are organizing a conference titled “Reassessing the British Mandate in Palestine”, 31 October – 2 November 2022. 

The British Mandate (1922-1948) represents over a quarter-century in the modern history of Palestine during which the groundwork was laid for the usurpation of Palestinian political rights and the establishment of a Zionist state. It was also a period of vibrant Palestinian mobilization, which was already in motion during the late Ottoman era, and through the mandate, reaching its height during the rebellion of 1936-1939—across cities and the countryside—to respond to newly emerging realities.

It is this vibrancy that the conference seeks to explore. Beyond treating the Mandate as a legal and political system, the conference revisits the social, legal, cultural, economic, and political history of Palestine and Palestinians during the Mandate period. It brings together scholars from Chile to Palestine and beyond, working on a wide array of disciplines and topics.

The conference will convene in Arabic and English, with simultaneous interpretation available.

For more info, visit the Institute for Palestine Studies website, here.

SPEAKERS

Hana Sleiman, Beshara B. Doumani, Khaled Farraj, Nazmi Jubeh, Maher Charif, Gabriel Polley, Magdalena Pycinska, Hussein Ayaseh, Lorenzo Kamel, Toufic Haddad, Hamdan Taha, Sarah Irving, Beverley Butler, Salim Tamari, Rana Anani, Sarah Dweik, Dennis Sobeh, Hadeel Karkar, Hamed Salem, Brian Boyd, Mahmoud Hawari, Munir Fakher Eldin, Adel Manna, Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, Chris Sandal-Wilson, Cynthia Kreichati, Islah Jad, Rasha Salameh, Areej Abou Harb, Dia Barghouti, Refqa Abu-Remaileh, Ibrahim Abdou, Musa Sroor, Charles W. Anderson, Mai Taha, Tareq Radi, Sana Hammoudi, Ghada al-Madbouh, Jehad Alshwaikh, Bassam Abun-Nadi, Nadi Abusaada, Nisa Ari, Issam Nassar, Samar al-Saleh, Bret Windhauser, Marisa Gabrielle Natale, Joni Aasi, Laura Robson, Ghassan Khatib, Canan Özcan Eliaçık, Ricardo Marzuca, Sreemati Mitter, Riyad Musa, Lana Judeh, Leena Dallasheh, Falestin Nail, iLaila Parsons, Julio Moreno Cirujano, Majdi al-Malki, Pietro Stefanini, Martin Bunton, Rachel Mairs, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Terry Regier, Maha Samman, Jacob Norris, Sharri Plonski, Nivi Manchanda, Dalal Iriqat, Jens Hanssen, Hanna Al Taher, Sarah el-Bulbeisi, Anna-E. Younes, Sanabel Abdelrahman, Rana Barakat, Ilana Feldman, Amal Bishara, Alejandro Paz, Sherene Seikaly

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The conference is jointly sponsored by the following institutions: Birzeit University; Council for British Research in the Levant; New Directions in Palestine Studies, Brown University; Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University; Hearing Palestine, University of Toronto; European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter; Centre for Palestine Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

ATTEND | Celebrating Recent Work by Nadia Abu El-Haj

17 November 2022
6:15pm
Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room
contact: sofheyman@columbia.edu

Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-9/11 America
by Nadia Abu El-Haj

Americans have long been asked to support the troops and care for veterans’ psychological wounds. Who, though, does this injunction serve?

As acclaimed scholar Nadia Abu El-Haj argues here, in the American public’s imagination, the traumatized soldier stands in for destructive wars abroad, with decisive ramifications in the post-9/11 era. Across the political spectrum the language of soldier trauma is used to discuss American warfare, producing a narrative in which traumatized soldiers are the only acknowledged casualties of war, while those killed by American firepower are largely sidelined and forgotten.

In this wide-ranging and fascinating study of the meshing of medicine, science, and politics, Abu El-Haj explores the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder and the history of its medical diagnosis. While antiwar Vietnam War veterans sought to address their psychological pain even as they maintained full awareness of their guilt and responsibility for perpetrating atrocities on the killing fields of Vietnam, by the 1980s, a peculiar convergence of feminist activism against sexual violence and Reagan’s right-wing “war on crime” transformed the idea of PTSD into a condition of victimhood. In so doing, the meaning of Vietnam veterans’ trauma would also shift, moving away from a political space of reckoning with guilt and complicity to one that cast them as blameless victims of a hostile public upon their return home. This is how, in the post-9/11 era of the Wars on Terror, the injunction to "support our troops," came to both sustain US militarism and also shields American civilians from the reality of wars fought ostensibly in their name.

In this compelling and crucial account, Nadia Abu El-Haj challenges us to think anew about the devastations of the post-9/11 era.

This event will be in person at the Heyman Center and live-streamed online. Please register for both in-person and virtual attendance via the link.

Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.

About the Author

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. She also serves as Vice President and Vice Chair of the Board at The Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington DC. The recipient of numerous awards, including from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Harvard Academy for Area and International Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, she is the author of numerous journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today.

About the Speakers

Thomas W. Dodman is an Assistant Professor of French at Columbia University. His first book, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion explores how people once died of nostalgia in order to tell a larger story about social transformation and alienation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He also co-edits the French journal Sensibilités: histoire, critique & sciences sociales, and serves on the editorial board of Critical Historical Studies.

Catherine Fennell’s work examines the cultural transformation of the American welfare state and the effects of this transformation on the politics of citizenship, belonging and race within redeveloping cities. Through her ethnographic research, she has focused on how large-scale changes in the urban built environment shape the ways in which urbanites come to understand social difference, and practice new forms of social care, concern and intimacy.

Miriam Ticktin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She came from the New School for Social Research, where she was Chair of Anthropology from 2016-2018, Co-Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility [newschool.edu] between 2013-2016 and Director of Gender Studies from 2012-2013. She received her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, France, and an MA in English Literature from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Miriam also was a Fellow in the Society of Fellows (2002-2004).