Isabella Hammad Gives the Stage to Ismail Khalidi
Mar
3
7:00 PM19:00
The Arts

Isabella Hammad Gives the Stage to Ismail Khalidi

Limited capacity; RSVP does not guarantee entry and we suggest early arrival.
Those who are unable to be with us in person are invited to listen live on Montez Press Radio!

Set in the West Bank, Isabella Hammad’s novel Enter Ghost (2023) tells the story of a British-Palestinian actress who returns to Haifa to stage a performance of Hamlet in the West Bank. Isabella uses theater as a metaphor and as a narrative device to navigate the dilemmas of identity, homecoming, and the broader tensions of a Palestinian society living under occupation.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that she would be interested in the work of Ismail Khalidi, a Palestinian-American playwright and director.

Ismail’s plays are brought together in his newest book, Until I Return: The Selected Plays of Ismail Khalidi (Bloomsbury, 2025). His early mono-dramas, as well as his newer plays, travel through Palestine’s history and tell stories about the defiant life-affirming practices of its people. He situates the Palestinian play as a register of life and a tool of storytelling able to transcend the limitations and blockades regularly imposed on Palestinian narration. 

The playwright Naomi Wallace writes that “this collection of plays is original, disruptive, and pulls no punches when it comes to staging the human intricacies, not to mention intimacies, of colonialism and war… Here you have a body of work that refuses to trade in easy political rhetoric or clichés.”

In this event, Ismail asks actors John Early, Ahmad Maher, and Leta Levy and the filmmaker Hind Shoufani to animate his plays with a performed reading of excerpts. Isabella then joins Ismail in conversation.

Co-presented by the Center for Palestine Studies and the Palestine Festival of Literature at Giorno Poetry Systems.

Limited capacity; RSVP does not guarantee entry and we suggest early arrival.
Live on Montez Press Radio

ISABELLA HAMMAD
GIVES THE STAGE TO
ISMAIL KHALIDI
March 3, 2026
7:00 PM — Doors
7:30 PM — Event Start

 

Giorno Poetry Systems
222 Bowery
New York, NY 10012

RSVP

Tickets to this event are free and open to the public. This evening doubles as a fundraiser for Omar Hamad's library project in Gaza. Donations are highly encouraged. Click here to donate.

ISABELLA HAMMAD (b. 1991, London) is a British-Palestinian novelist. Her debut novel The Parisian (2019), won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel Enter Ghost (2023) received the Encore Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her book-length essay Recognizing the Stranger (2024), was longlisted for the 2024 NBCC Award for Criticism. 

ISMAIL KHALIDI (b. 1982, Beirut) is a playwright and director. His plays include Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre), Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater), Foot (Teatro Amal), Sabra Falling (Pangea World Theater), Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre), and The Magic Bullet (co-writer, Lub Dub). 

Khalidi has written three plays with Naomi Wallace, adapting Ghassan Kanafani's Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre) and Sinan Antoon's The Corpse Washer (Actors Theatre of Louisville), as well as the one-act, Visions from the Center of the Earth (Ashtar Theatre). His plays have been published in numerous anthologies, including Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG), which he co-edited. Khalidi holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has been a past artist-in-residence at Teatro Amal (Chile), Mizna, and Boston University's Center on Forced Displacement. He is currently a Directing Fellow at Pangea World Theater.

JOHN EARLY is currently starring in Wallace Shawn’s new play What We Did Before Our Moth Days directed by Andre Gregory. His directorial debut Maddie’s Secret opened the Discovery section of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025 and will be released by Magnolia Pictures in 2026. Early received Emmy and Critics’ Choice nominations for his HBO stand-up special Now More Than Ever, and also for Would It Kill You to Laugh? (A24), a sketch comedy special he created and stars in with frequent collaborator Kate Berlant. He produced and starred in the film Stress Positions (Neon) directed by Theda Hammel. In 2018 Early produced a revival of Wallace Shawn’s play Marie and Bruce, and in 2019 he directed Jacqueline Novak’s Off Broadway show Get On Your Knees. He played Elliott Goss for five seasons on HBO Max’s Search Party. 

LETA LEVY is a proud native New Yorker, actor, educator and activist. NY theater credits include: The Weasel Festival (The Public Theater); Outer Banks (Signature Theatre); 48 Hour Forum (Noor Theatre); The Animals (JACK); The Place We Built (The Flea, dir. Danya Taymor); and The People Speak (Lincoln Center). She’s also a long time volunteer at The 52nd Street Project. BA: Brown University, MFA: Brooklyn College, Graduate Acting. IG: @LetaHLevy www.LetaLevy.com

AHMAD MAHER is an Egyptian actor who has worked internationally, including in Egypt, Sweden, and the United States. Credits include - Theatre: Pilgrims Musa and Sheri (The Public Theatre); The Jungle (Mixed Blood); Waiting for Lefty (Small Boat); 2nd Murderer, Richard III (SoHo Shakespeare Company); INVASION! (Ancram Center for the Arts - Berkshire Theatre Critics Award). Film: Forever Mama (Riven Productions); You Gotta Dance For It (Tin Tin Pictures); Threnody (Purple Duck - Best Horror Short at PIFF). Commercial: Google (DDB House); BookBeat, Länsförsäkringar (Bleck Film); Lidl (Est E Ban); Nicotinell (Sun Days); Resy (Amex);  ABB Motion (SiteSing). www.ahmad-maher.com

HIND SHOUFANI (b. 1978, Lebanon) is an Oscar-nominated Palestinian-American filmmaker, writer, & poet. She holds an MFA in film from NYU as a Fulbright scholar and has been publishing and performing poetry and prose since 2006. Hind has directed, produced, and edited documentaries, museum films, video art and fiction for over 25 years. Her first feature film, Trip Along Exodus, screened in over 40 cities and her short Heavy Metal, opened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023. She has a BAFTA for the short film The Present. Diode Editions published her poetry collection, Dark Star Requiem, in 2025. 

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Contours of Thought: The Humanities and the Possibilities of Anti-Discipline
Apr
16
to Apr 17
History of the Present

Contours of Thought: The Humanities and the Possibilities of Anti-Discipline

VENUE
Second Floor Common Room
The Heyman Center
Columbia University
Click here for a printable PDF download of the map

The symposium brings together scholars working across and beyond Middle East and North Africa studies to explore how discursive fields are constituted, and to ask what becomes possible when we read across and against established disciplinary and regional boundaries. Rather than simply juxtaposing area studies frameworks (e.g., Syria or Palestine), we aim to theorize “the regional” anew. This conversation began as an exchange around Syro-Palestine, reflecting on how regional fields—particularly those of Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, and Algeria—have been positioned in relation to the Question of Palestine. This positioning has tended to circumscribe the terrain of inquiry, foreclosing other narratives, epistemologies, and questions. Our symposium aims to explore a conceptual vocabulary that resists colonial inheritances and disciplinary segmentation, and that reimagines scholarly methods through forms of relation not yet captured by dominant frameworks.

The two-day program includes a Thursday evening keynote panel featuring four speakers, open to the public and the Columbia community, followed by three closed-door sessions on Friday with a cohort of invited scholars.

SYMPOSIUM CO-ORGANIZERS

Esmat Elhalaby, Assistant Professor in History, University of Toronto

Iheb Guermazi, The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University

Aamer Ibraheem, Assistant Professor in Anthropology, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Davis & The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

Adrien Zakar, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and the History of Science and Technology, University of Toronto.

This symposium is organized by The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by Center for Palestine Studies, Middle East Institute, and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.

CONTACT sofheyman@columbia.edu

THURSDAY PUBLIC KEYNOTE PANEL

Nadia Abu El-Haj
Professor of Anthropology
Columbia University & Barnard College

Khaled Furani
Professor of Anthropology
Tel Aviv University

Ussama Makdisi
Professor of History
University of California, Berkeley

Helga Tawil-Souri
Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication
New York University

REGISTER FOR KEYNOTE

FRIDAY ROUNDTABLE
(closed to the public)

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi
Associate Professor of History
Northeastern University

Fadi A Bardawil
Associate Professor of Contemporary Arab Cultures
Duke University

Seda Altuğ
Independent Scholar

Reem Bailony
Associate Professor in History
Agnes Scott College

Youssef Ben Ismail
Assistant Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought
Amherst College

Margaux Fitoussi
Assistant Professor in Anthropology
University of California, Irvine

Idriss Jebari
Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies
Trinity College, Dublin

Saphe Shamoun
PhD Candidate in Anthropology
Columbia University

FRIDAY MODERATORS / DISCUSSANTS
Julia Elyachar
Associate Professor in Anthropology
Princeton University

Marwa Elshakry
Professor in History
Columbia University

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A State of Passion: Ghassan Abu Sittah | Film Screening & Discussion
Feb
10
6:10 PM18:10
Palestine Cuts

A State of Passion: Ghassan Abu Sittah | Film Screening & Discussion

The Center for Palestine Studies presents a screening of A State of Passion: Ghassan Abu Sittah followed by a discussion with Omar Dewachi (Rutgers University). 

 
REGISTER

Advance registration for this event has closed. Tickets may still be available at the door; an in-person stand-by line will form one hour before the event. There is no charge for tickets to this event.

VENUE
The Katharina Otto-Bernstein Screening Room
Lenfest Center for the Arts
615 West 129th Street
New York, NY 10027

 

After 43 horrific days working round the clock under constant bombardment in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance.   

With news footage of him pale and shell-shocked reverberating around the world, he spoke of a catalogue of horrors from lacerated bodies, to amputations without anesthetics, orphaned children with no surviving family, and the deliberate targeting of medics and hospital facilities.  

This was Ghassan’s sixth and most horrific Gaza “war”. Why does he do it? Where does he find the strength to face it again and again? How does it impact his family? How do they process the risks he takes? The answer lies simply in their shared passion: Palestine, a passion they articulate through their support of his perilous humanitarian work.  

Filmmakers Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi, close friends of the Abu Sittahs, share that same passion. They were waiting anxiously for Ghassan to emerge from Gaza, following a long and terrifying journey through the night, to meet him in Amman. Determined to capture his raw emotions they began filming him the moment he arrived through the door. Following him to Beirut, Amman, London, Kuwait and Dubai, they and he explore their common State of Passion.


This film includes graphic footage of war, including torture, injury, surgery and views of dead bodies.


DISCUSSANT
Omar Dewachi is a physician-trained anthropologist whose work examines medicine, governance, and violence in the modern Middle East. Trained as a medical doctor in Iraq, he is currently Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, where his research and teaching bridge anthropology, the history of medicine, and critical global health to explore how care, expertise, and health systems are reshaped by war and political upheaval. His first book, Ungovernable Life, examines the rise and unraveling of state medicine in Iraq, tracing the entanglement of medical governance with colonialism, authoritarianism, sanctions, and war. His forthcoming book, Death of the Clinic: Chronicles of War Biology, explores how prolonged violence transforms biological life, injury, and the foundations of clinical practice. His writing has appeared in a wide range of venues, from The Lancet to interdisciplinary journals and public forums.

A central thread in Dewachi’s work is his long-standing collaboration with the Palestinian-British surgeon, academic, and activist Ghassan Abu Sittah, spanning more than a decade and a half, particularly in Beirut. Together, they co-founded and directed the Conflict Medicine Program at the American University of Beirut (2016-2018), developing a critical framework for war surgery, humanitarian ethics, and the political afterlives of injury. Most recently, The New York Times Magazine profiled Dewachi and the work he has carried out with Abu Sittah, highlighting their joint efforts to document and reflect on medicine and violence in contexts of war.

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