Insaniyyat Talks: Fall 2021

Insaniyyat | Society of Palestinian Anthropologists announces its Fall 2021 Talks. This series of meetings will be delivered in a format of seminar talks that will include a lecture and a discussion afterwards. The series will bring Insaniyyat members and other anthropologists into conversation about recent ethnographic research in/on Palestine, and beyond. Lectures will be delivered in either English or Arabic, according to the preference of each speaker. All meetings will be conducted online to allow broad participation. Interested friends from other disciplines are also welcome to join.

Updated zoom links can be found here. Write to Insaniyyat at mail@insaniyyat.org if you would like to be in touch or if you have any questions or suggestions.

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Gaza as Southern Palestine
غزة، فلسطين الجنوبية

 Wednesday 8th September, 6 p.m (Palestine time) – Hadeel Assali 

Abstract: In this talk, anthropologist Hadeel Assali (PhD, Anthropology, Columbia University) argues for the geographical unmapping of the Gaza Strip through both historical and ethnographic study. Rather than taking the territorial entity for granted, ethnography and history instead bring into relief a geography of Gaza that is much more broad, which Assali refers to as Southern Palestine. Dominant and even critical discourses have kept Gaza trapped in "the Gaza Strip" while focusing almost solely on Israeli techniques of domination. However, the framework of "relational place-making" allows us to center and amplify Palestinians in Gaza as active agents in shaping and reshaping the world (and the material earth) around them.

For info on how to attend this session with Hadeel Assali and to read the abstracts of future sessions, visit the link below.

CONGRATS | Lila Abu-Lughod wins 2021 GAD Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship

Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia University) is the 2021 winner of the GAD Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship for her article, “Imagining Palestine’s Alter-Natives: Settler Colonialism and Museum Politics” (2020) in Critical Inquiry 47 (Autumn): 1-27.

This essay is an anthropologist’s reflections on Palestine’s political impasses in relation to the experiences of other colonized places and people. It was inspired by the current ferment in critical indigenous and native studies, and now Palestinian studies, around the framework of settler colonialism. Tracing the promises and pitfalls of new imaginations of sovereignty and self-determination emerging through indigenous activism—in contrast to the previous forms of anti-colonial nationalism—the essay reflects on museum politics and contested rituals of liberal recognition in North America and Australia to highlight both the stark differences in the situations of Palestinians under Israeli rule and the radical significance of the efflorescence of Palestinian cultural projects. Focusing particularly on the history of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit that was conceived in 1999 but opened in 2016, the essay argues that the productivity of the settler colonial framework may lie in the new solidarities it engenders and its potential to burst open the Palestinian political imagination. Recent debates about the ethics of repatriation from colonial museums, for example, suggest new ways that a Palestinian museum could challenge Israeli rule by highlighting state appropriation of archeological heritage.

About the Cross-Field Award
The General Anthropology Division (GAD) has long supported innovative scholarship that transcends the seemingly all too rigid boundaries that divide the various fields of anthropology.

The Cross-Field Award is awarded annually by GAD for a peer-reviewed journal article published in the preceding three years that demonstrates exemplary scholarship from any theoretical or methodological perspective including applied research that transcends two or more fields of anthropology, broadly construed, or is interdisciplinary in nature. 

For more info, click here.

READ | Call for Applications to Graduate Student Fellowship

The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities (SOF/Heyman) and the Center for Palestine Studies (CPS) invite applications from graduate students at Columbia University for a Public Humanities Fellowship in support of the NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان Radio Play Project.

The NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان program will commission, develop, translate, produce, and distribute four new radio plays by Palestinian playwrights in 2021-2022, culminating in two fully-realized radio productions of each play (one in Arabic and one in English). The production process will take place simultaneously at Columbia University in New York City as well as at Al-Qattan Cultural Centre in Ramallah, Palestine. The plays will be broadcast in 2022 as part of a month-long festival celebrating this work, alongside conversations, interviews, and events exploring the work's conception and the lived realities out of which it was born. The recordings will be archived on the Center for Palestine Studies website, released as part of an ongoing podcast series, and broadcast worldwide on WKCR 89.9 FM, Columbia University's radio station, as well as through partners in Palestine and around the world. A series of ancillary events will build skills in writing and producing within the audio medium and be open to the public.

The Public Humanities Radio Play Fellow will work closely with members of the LA MAKAN team as they develop and produce four new radio plays by Palestinian playwrights.

The fellowship term will run from September 2021 - April 2022 and the fellow will receive a stipend of $4000. For more details and information about eligibility and how to apply, visit the link below.

All applications must be submitted by 6 September 2021.

To learn more about the Center's NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان program, including information about this season's commissioned playwrights, ancillary programing and partners, click here.

NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, The Tides Foundation, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

READ | NO PLACE / LA MAKAN Press Release in Arabic

Read the press release on the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s website here.

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NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, The Tides Foundation, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.