Teach-In

A Third Intifada?

Palestinians and the Struggle for Jerusalem 

Thursday, 20 May 2021
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EST

Are recent events yet another cycle of age-old ethnic and religious conflict over Jerusalem, or are we witnessing a third intifada by Palestinians against decades of systematic dispossession and displacement following the Nakba of 1948? And how is the Palestinian condition relevant to global justice struggles against settler colonialism and racism?

The teach-in is organized by the Center for Middle East Studies and the New Directions in Palestinian Studies Initiative at Brown University; co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, the Departments of Africana Studies, American Studies, History, and Religious Studies.

Moderator

Nadje Al-Ali is Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, mainly with reference to Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009, University of California Press, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (2007, Zed Books); and Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press 2000. She is on the advisory board of kohl: a journal of body and gender research and has been involved in several feminist organizations and campaigns transnationally.

Introductory words by event cosponsors

Tony Bogues (Ph.D., 1994, Political Theory, University of the West Indies, Mona) is a writer, scholar, curator, and the Director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice; Professor of Africana Studies, Royce Professor of Teaching Excellence (2004-2007); and currently the   Asa Messer Professsor of Humanities and Critical Theory. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the departments of Political Science,  Modern Culture and Media. History of Art  and Architecture and  the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.Bogues's major research and writing interests are intellectual, literary and cultural history, radical political thought, political theory, critical theory, Caribbean and African politics as well as Haitian, Caribbean, and African Art. He is the author of Caliban's Freedom: The Early Political Thought of C.L.R. James (1997); Black Heretics and Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals (2003); and Empire of Liberty: Power, Freedom and Desire (2010). He is the editor of From Revolution in the Tropics to Imagined Landscapes: the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié. (2014); Metamorphosis: The Art of Edoaurd Duval -Carrie (2017) as well as two volumes on Caribbean intellectual and literary history: After Man, Towards the Human: Critical Essays on Sylvia Wynter (2005) and The George Lamming Reader: The Aesthetics of Decolonisation (2011) He is  the co-editor of a special issue of the Italian journal Filosofia Politica ( 2017 ) on Black  political  thought and  the co-convener of  the interntional  project," Towards a Global History of Poltiical Thought." Additionally he has curated and co-curated shows in the United States,  South Africa  and  the Caribbean  and  published numerous essays and articles on the history of criticism, critical theory, political thought, political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history as well as Haitian Art. Bogues is a member of the editorial collective for the journal boundary 2 and was an honorary professor at the Center for African Studies at  the University of Cape Town, South Africa.(2006-2017), and now a Visiting Professor and Curator at the Univeristy of Johanesburg. He is  a member of the scientific committe of  Le Centre d'Art in Haiti . He teaches courses on Africana political philosophy, cultural politics, intellectual history and contemporary critical theory and comparative literature of Africa and the African Diaspora as well as courses on the history of Haitian society and art.

Brian Meeks is Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Brown University. He previously served as Professor of Social and Political Change and Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He has also taught at Michigan State University, Florida International University and Anton de Kom University of Suriname and served as Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University, Stanford University and Brown University. He has published twelve books and edited collections, including Critical Interventions in Caribbean Politics and Theory, Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory : an Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada, Narratives of Resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, the Caribbean and Envisioning Caribbean Futures: Jamaican Perspectives. His novel Paint the Town Red was published in 2003 and his volume of poems The Coup Clock Clicks was published in 2018.

Speakers

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature, Brown University, film essayist, and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include: Potential History – Unlearning Imperialism(Verso, 2019); Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008); and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, Pluto Press 2011. Among her films are Un-Documented – Undoing Imperial Plunder (2019) and Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012).

Rana Barakat is assistant professor of history and contemporary Arab studies at Birzeit University in Palestine. Her research interests include the history and historiography of colonialism, nationalism, and cultures of resistance. She earned her PhD in history from the University of Chicago and has since published in several venues including the Journal of Palestine Studies, Jerusalem Quarterly, Settler Colonial Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She is currently completing a book monograph, The Buraq Revolt: Constructing a History of Resistance in Palestine, which argues that this 1929 revolt was the first sign in the Mandate period of sustained mass resistance to the settler-colonial project, including direct and rhetorical actions against both political Zionism and British imperialism, planting seeds of mass political mobilization. She is currently working on a second book monograph titled Lifta and Resisting the Museumification of Palestine: Indigenous History of the Nakba, which advances an indigenous understanding of time, space, and memory in Palestine by focusing on the details of the people and place of Lifta village over time. 

Beshara Doumani is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley.  His works include Rediscovering Palestine, Family History in the Middle East, and Academic Freedom After September 11.  He is on the editorial committees of the Journal of Palestine Studies and occasionally does interviews for Voices of the Middle East and North Africa. 

Aya Ghanameh is a Palestinian illustrator, writer, and visual designer in her senior year at the Rhode Island School of Design pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts under the Illustration program with a concentration in Literary Arts Studies. Her areas of interest include children's books, graphic novels, narrative illustration, and graphic design. In her work, she is particularly invested in inclusivity and intersectionality, and exploring how literary and visual arts can expand the horizons of knowledge production related to cultural identity beyond nationalist ways of thinking to center the voices of ordinary people.

Weeam Hammoudeh is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, and coordinator of the mental health unit. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from Brown University, and an MPH in Community and Public Health from Birzeit University. Her research focuses on the social, political, and structural determinants of health and wellbeing, particularly in conflict contexts; health inequalities; political economy of health; conflict and population processes; and how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural factors. She is currently involved in research projects on a range of topics, including the health of adolescent refugee girls, deprivation and mental health, uncertainty, and health system preparedness in the COVID response. She is co-developer and co-instructor for the joint Birzeit University and King’s College London course “Qualitative Research Methods for Mental Health in War & Conflict”; consultative committee member of the Reproductive Health Working Group; and research steering committee member for the Palestine Global Mental Health Network.

Adrienne Keene is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies. Her research areas include college access, transition, and persistence for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Students, including the role of pre-college access programs in student success. Additionally, she examines representations of Native peoples in popular culture, Native cultural appropriation in fashion and design, and the ways that Indigenous peoples are using the internet, social media, and new media to challenge misrepresentations and create new and innovative spaces for art and activism. As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Dr. Keene has a deep personal commitment to exploring research methodologies that empower Native communities and privilege Native voices and perspectives, with the ultimate goal of increasing educational outcomes for Native students. She is also dedicated to pushing back against stereotypes and misrepresentations of Native peoples on her blog, Native Appropriations (nativeappropriations.com), which has received national and international attention as a voice on contemporary Indigenous issues. At Brown, Dr. Keene teaches courses on Indigenous Education, Native representations, and Native American Studies more broadly. She earned her BA from Stanford University in Native American Studies and Cultural Anthropology, and her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, in Culture, Communities, and Education.