Gaza in Context: A Collaborative Teach-In Series

First Installment: Gaza 101

20 October 2023
1:00-2:30 PM EST | 10:00-11:30 AM PST

Featuring: Ziad Abu-Rish, Fida Adely, Aslı Bali, Rana Barakat, Rochelle Davis, Beshara Doumani, Noura Erakat, Adel Iskandar, Maya Mikdashi, Sherene Seikaly, Lisa Wedeen

Moderated by: Bassam Haddad

We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza awaits a massive invasion of potentially genocidal proportions. This follows an incessant bombardment of a population increasingly bereft of the necessities of living in response to the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. The context within which this takes place includes a well-coordinated campaign of misinformation and the unearthing of a multitude of essentialist and reductionist discursive tropes that depict Palestinians as the culprits, despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid existence on which most Human Rights organizations have established consensus.

The co-organizers below are convening weekly teach-ins and conversations on a host of issues that introduce our common university communities, educators, researchers, and students to the history and present of Gaza, in context.

In this first teach-in session, we feature short introductions to the topic and foreshadow the conversations to come. We will also be screening clips from the documentary GAZA IN CONTEXT, which provides an analytical and data-driven background on Gaza.

Organized by: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown Doha, American University of Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies’ Global Academy