READ | “Zionism’s Political Unconscious” by Nadia Abu El-Haj

 
 

“Zionism’s Political Unconscious” by Nadia Abu El-Haj, Verso Blog, 17 November 2023. 


“From the river to the sea” is “threatening” and “intimidating” speech; it is a call to “genocidal violence.” Perhaps such interpretations are revealing in ways those voicing them cannot quite hear—or admit.

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago, 2001), and most recently Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post 9/11 America (Verso, 2022).

ATTEND | "War and Peace in Israel/Palestine" w/ Nadia Abu El-Haj + Naor H. Ben-Yehoyada on 11/20

At times of conflict—when the world is looking with dismay at the devastating loss of life, or when disagreement about politics, policy, or values is dividing communities near and far—many are looking for ways to create common ground on campus. How can we make room for agreement as well as disagreement, discovery, and learning? In this spirit—which is also the spirit of our Core Curriculum—Arts and Sciences is offering a series of Community Discussions that will bring together faculty with relevant expertise and students who want to join the conversation, welcoming diverging perspectives to build greater mutual understanding.

Community Discussion: War and Peace in Israel/Palestine
Monday, November 20, 2023, 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Professors Nadia Abu El-Haj (Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies) and Naor H. Ben-Yehoyada (Assistant Professor of Anthropology).

Registration is appreciated, but not required.
Coffee and refreshments will be available.

 

VENUE
Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
For a map, click here.

EVENT CONTACT INFORMATION
Arts & Sciences
jl3880@columbia.edu

 

ATTEND | “War and Peace in Israel/Palestine” w/ Rashid Khalidi and Yinon Cohen on 11/16

At times of conflict—when the world is looking with dismay at the devastating loss of life, or when disagreement about politics, policy, or values is dividing communities near and far—many are looking for ways to create common ground on campus. How can we make room for agreement as well as disagreement, discovery, and learning? In this spirit—which is also the spirit of our Core Curriculum—Arts and Sciences is offering a series of Community Discussions that will bring together faculty with relevant expertise and students who want to join the conversation, welcoming diverging perspectives to build greater mutual understanding.

November 16, 3:30-5pm, Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
“Community Discussion: War and Peace in Israel/Palestine” 

Professors Yinon Cohen (Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies) and Rashid Khalidi (Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies)

 

VENUE
Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
For a map, click here.

EVENT CONTACT INFORMATION
Arts & Sciences
jl3880@columbia.edu

 
 

ATTEND | "Racism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia" with Gil Hochberg on 11/15

At times of conflict—when the world is looking with dismay at the devastating loss of life, or when disagreement about politics, policy, or values is dividing communities near and far—many are looking for ways to create common ground on campus. How can we make room for agreement as well as disagreement, discovery, and learning? In this spirit—which is also the spirit of our Core Curriculum—Arts and Sciences is offering a series of Community Discussions that will bring together faculty with relevant expertise and students who want to join the conversation, welcoming diverging perspectives to build greater mutual understanding.

November 15, 6:30-8pm, Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
“Community Discussion: Racism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia” 
Professor Gil Hochberg (Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies, Chair MESAAS)

Professor Hochberg will guide the discussion around her paper “‘Remembering Semitism’ or ‘On the Prospect of Re-Membering the Semites’” available via Clio here.

Registration is appreciated, but not required.
Coffee and refreshments will be available.

 

VENUE
Calder Lounge, Uris Hall
For a map, click here.

EVENT CONTACT INFORMATION
Arts & Sciences
jl3880@columbia.edu

 

ATTEND | Palestine and the University on 11/10

 
 

Join New York University's Faculty for Justice in Palestine for a conversation with Nadia Abu El-Haj, Sinan Antoon, Lou Cornum, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Zachary Lockman and Helga Tawil-Souri.

In-person attendance is limited to current NYU students, faculty and staff and a remote option will be provided for non-affiliates. For more info + to register, click here. 

ATTEND | Politics / Space with Nora Akawi and Léopold Lambert on 11/10

Join the Post-Conflict Cities Lab and GSAPP MS and PhD Students for a talk with Nora Akawi (The Cooper Union) and Léopold Lambert (The Funambulist).

Nora Akawi is a Palestinian architect and an assistant professor at The Cooper Union. She focuses on erasure and bordering in settler colonialism and works at the intersection of architecture with border studies, cartography, and archive theory. Nora previously taught at GSAPP, where she was the director of Studio-X Amman since 2012, and the founding director of the Janet Abu-Lughod Library and Seminar since 2015. Read more. 

Léopold Lambert is the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist,  a platform that engages with the politics of space and bodies. He is a trained architect, as well as the author of four books that examine the inherent violence of architecture on bodies, and its political instrumentalization at various scales and in various geographical contexts. Read more. 

Please note that in-person attendance is limited to GSAPP affiliates and that seating is first come, first served. Other CUID holders and members of the public can attend via Zoom. 

ATTEND | Ali Musleh's MESA Presentation on 11/04/23

Going to MESA? Be sure to check out, “Acoustic Ecologies of the Middle East,” on Saturday, November 4 at 11am. Ali Musleh will present his paper, “A Musicology of Settler Colonialism,” as part of the panel.

ABSTRACT
This paper explores how settler-colonial sonic spheres in Palestine translate topologies of experience into topologies of power. My focus will be on Israel’s use of remote and autonomous weapons, particularly drones, the Iron Dome and artificial intelligence, as atmotechnics productive of violent compositional beats that place the sensing bodies of the colonizer and the colonized in processual proximity to war. My argument is that such machining of experience is meant to individuate forms of life by hacking the nervous system, turning fear into a neural implant that can be engaged through giving war a musical character. Drawing on martial and affect theory, as well as theories of the flesh, I show how settler-colonial violence individuates forms of life according to an economy of pain that conditions Israelis’ experience of “the quiet” on the relentless invasion and hacking of the Palestinian sensorium.