Nayrouz Abu Hatoum
Ibrahim Abu Lughod Fellow
Academic Year 2018-19
Nayrouz Abu Hatoum was the recipient of the Leonhard-Woltjer Stichting postdoctoral award in the History and Art History Department at Utrecht University, the Netherlands in 2018. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from York University, Toronto, where she also worked as a visiting scholar at the City Institute examining theories in visual anthropology, urban politics, landscape, borders, bureaucracy and state violence. Her research explores visual politics in Palestine and the Israeli state, and focuses on people’s place-making and dwelling practices in a context of colonialism and military occupation. Her ethnographic manuscript (in progress), Visual Decolonization: Photography of Militarized Landscapes in Palestine, investigates the visual politics of engagement with the landscape in Palestine. The book project follows Palestinian artists who have captured the local landscape in their work, with particular attention to the wall. Visual Decolonization challenges the role of visual politics in shaping ideas of Palestine to explore interpretations of seeing, witnessing, and representing the landscape in the lives of Palestinians living within Palestine. Ultimately, the book expands the possibilities of using visual sensibilities as a tool for researching Palestine in the field of anthropology.
Abu Hatoum’s work has been published in Queering Urban Justice: Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto (2018), Visual Anthropology Review Journal (2017) and Min Fami: Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Space and Resistance (2014).
