Call for Applicants: The 2015-2016 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Palestine Studies at Columbia University

[Ibrahim Abu-Lughod] [Ibrahim Abu-Lughod]

Call for Applicants: The 2015-2016 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Palestine Studies at Columbia University

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute is pleased to announce and to invite applications for the 2015-2016 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Award, a post-doctoral fellowship in Palestinian Studies.  The one-semester fellowship carries a stipend of $25,000 and the status of post-doctoral research fellow or visiting scholar at Columbia University, as appropriate.

About The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Award in Palestine Studies

The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Award is an annual fellowship at Columbia University, which was established in 2010.  The award recognizes and seeks to foster innovative and ground-breaking scholarship on issues related to Palestine and Palestinians. The award will support a post-doctoral scholar working on a book project in any field of the humanities or social sciences. 

The Fellow will spend one semester at Columbia University, pursuing her or his research and writing, and participating in the intellectual life of the Center for Palestine Studies at the Middle East Institute. In exceptional cases, as when research elsewhere is necessary for the completion of the project, shorter-term residence at Columbia (no less than 8 weeks during term time) can be considered.  The Fellow will present a seminar paper in the Middle East Institute’s colloquium series and may be invited to speak at other universities in the United States.

This award has been made possible through the generosity of 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 nakbah of 1948 and evolved into a shared commitment to justice for Palestinians to be realized in part through support for excellence in higher education and scholarship. In later years, upon the establishment of the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod helped found the Qattan Centre for Educational Research and Development, one of the Foundation’s core programs. In recent years, other generous donors, including Sahar Huneidi, have contributed.

About the Center for Palestine Studies

Launched in 2010, the Center for Palestine Studies is the first such center to be established in an academic institution in the United States.  The mission of the new Center is to promote the academic study of Palestine in all its forms and to offer a dedicated site for sustained interchanges among scholars and students.  Center activities are intended to advance the production and circulation of knowledge on Palestinian history, culture, society, and politics in diverse fields, including history, literary studies, the social sciences, religion, philosophy, law, archaeology, the arts and architecture. 

In its diverse activities, the Center for Palestine Studies will have a national and global reach. The Center is active in developing contacts with scholars and other institutions for the purposes of academic cooperation. Enhancements to the curriculum, library and faculty at Columbia will translate into new resources to advance the academic study of Palestine and Palestinians throughout the United States and the world.

Requirements & Eligibility

The international competition is open to all post-doctoral scholars who share the mission of the Center for Palestine Studies to advance the production and circulation of knowledge on Palestinian history, culture, society, and politics through outstanding scholarship. Preference will be given to individuals from underrepresented programs who would benefit most from the academic resources of Columbia University. The Fellow may not hold any other major fellowship or teaching obligations during the award period.

Application Process

The following list of materials is required for all applicants:

  1.  Application Cover Sheet.
  2. Curriculum vitae. Should include Education (names and location of colleges, graduate and professional schools, with dates attended and degrees earned); Employment; Academic honors; Publications (Please do not send the publications); Languages read, spoken, and written.
  3. Three-page (1000 word) description of the book project on which fellow will work and its significance. Indicate how much has been completed and what you intend to do during the fellowship period.
  4. Fifteen-page writing sample—maximum. Can be an extract from a longer work.
  5. Two letters of recommendation.  Recommendations should come from scholars familiar with the proposed project and the applicant’s qualifications. Letters should be e-mailed directly by the recommender to palestine@columbia.edu with the subject line: “IAL Recommend-[Applicant Last Name, Applicant First Name].”  If they prefer to send their letters via mail, please ensure all letters are signed on university letterhead to the CPS address below. Applications will not be considered without two letters in the file, postmarked or emailed by February 15, 2015.

Application materials should be emailed or postmarked on or before February 15, 2015 with the subject line: “IAL Application-[Applicant Last Name, Applicant First Name].” All evaluations made in connection with applications received are confidential. Please return completed applications to: palestine@columbia.edu  or mail to:

The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Award in Palestine Studies
Center for Palestine Studies, Middle East Institute
Columbia University
Knox Hall, Room 301A
606 West 122nd Street
New York, NY 10027
USA
 

For More Information

Please visit our website: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/palestine/about/fellowships.html

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412