Join the Center for Palestine Studies for a panel celebrating the publication of Gaza on Screen (Duke, 2023) with a special screening of Arab and Tarzan Nasser’s film Gaza Mon Amour (2020).

Please note that advanced registration is required for this in-person event at Columbia’s Lenfest Center for the Arts.

ABOUT GAZA ON SCREEN (Duke, 2023)
Edited by Nadia Yaqub.
Gaza’s long association with resistance and humanitarian need has generated a complex and ever shifting range of visual material, comprising not just news reports and documentaries, but also essay, experimental, and fiction films, militant videos, and solidarity images. Contributors to Gaza on Screen, who include scholars and Gazan filmmakers, explore the practice, production, and impact of film and videos from and about the Gaza Strip. Conceptualizing screens—both large and small—as tools for mediation that are laden with power, the volume explores Gazan film and video in relation to humanitarianism and human rights, care, community, environment, mobility and confinement, and decolonization. The volume includes visual material ranging from solidarity broadcasts on Lebanese television, mid-twentieth-century British Pathé newsreels, and fiction films to breaking news, visuals of contemporary militant resistance, documentaries, and found footage films, arguing for a visual ecosystem in which differing types of film and video affect and inform each other. Throughout, Gaza on Screen demonstrates that screens shape and sustain relationships between Gaza and the world, and help to sustain the possibility of a different future.
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ABOUT GAZA MON AMOUR (2020)
Directed by Arab and Tarzan Nasser, 2020, 87 mins.
Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market with her daughter Leila. When he discovers an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing nets, Issa hides it, not knowing what to do with this mysterious and potent treasure. Yet deep inside, he feels that this discovery will change his life forever. Strangely, his confidence starts to grow and eventually he decides to approach Siham.
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PANELISTS
Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, Concordia University
Hadeel Assali, Columbia University
Helga Tawil Souri, New York University
Nadia Yaqub, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

INTRODUCTION
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Columbia University

Palestine Cuts is generously supported by Jeanne and Ken Levy-Church.

SPEAKERS

Seth Anziska Mohamed S. Farsi-Lindenbaum Associate Professor of Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London. (Columbia College ‘06, GSAS ‘15)

Rebecca Vilkomerson Former Executice Director, Jewish Voice for Peace

MODERATOR
Joseph Howley Associate Professor of Classics, Columbia University

INTRODUCTION
Nadia Abu El-Haj Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies

Organized by Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University and the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University.

PRESENTERS

• Professor Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia University, Anthropology and ISSG)

• Professor Jafari Sinclaire Allen (Columbia University, African American and African Diaspora Studies)

• Professor Jack Halberstam (Columbia University, English & Comparative Literature and ISSG)

• Professor Premilla Nadasen (Barnard College, History and BCRW)

• Professor Neferti Tadiar (Barnard College, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

MODERATOR

• Professor Sarah Haley (Columbia University, History and ISSG)

Co-presented by Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Center for Palestine Studies, Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies to celebrate the launch of the English translation of Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit by Khadijeh Habashneh. The evening will include a reading from the book, screening exclusive recorded interviews with the author, and sharing various archival images and videos that testify to the foundation of Palestine’s revolutionary cinema. This event is co-presented by Maysles Documentary Center.

Knights of Cinema is an account of the creation of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU) and its founding members, from the photography department in the early years of the Palestinian revolution (1967-1968), to its evolution in the mid-1970's into the Palestinian Cinema Institution. Khadijeh Habashneh weaves her own memories into excerpts from letters and other communications of survivors, friends and PFU family members, with writings by scholars who analyzed the work and the contributions of this remarkable film movement (from the late 1960's to early 1980's). As such the volume offers a unique perspective on this aspect of Palestine film history — which ended with the loss of its archive in the mid 1980's — providing details that have not been previously published in English.

Khadijeh Habashneh (also known as Khadijeh Abu Ali) is a researcher, film maker, and activist for women’s rights and human rights. She worked as a volunteer with the PFU, and became an integral member in 1974, when the unit evolved into the Palestinian Cinema Institution (PCI). From 1976-1982, she worked as the head of the Archive and Cinematheque of the PCI, and wrote and directed two documentaries, including Children Without Childhood, also known as Children Nevertheless. Habashneh has also worked extensively on women’s issues. She was a founding member and served as executive member in the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) from 1980-2009, was a founding member and vice president of the Center for Women’s Studies in Jordan 1989-1997 and taught and published several books and articles in this field. 

The 2023-24 Palestine Cuts season is guest curated by Nadine Fattaleh and Nasreen Abd Elal. Palestine Cuts is generously supported by Jeanne and Ken Levy-Church.

Nadine Fattaleh is a Palestinian writer and researcher from Amman. She is currently a PhD student in Media, Culture and Communications at New York University. 

Nasreen Abd Elal is a multidisciplinary graphic designer, illustrator, and researcher whose work centers on the intersection of graphic design and justice-oriented movement work. She works as an information designer at Visualizing Palestine. She graduated with a degree in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University in 2021.

How denial sustains the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities for a talk by Saree Makdisi about his recent book, Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (University of California Press, 2022). Introduction by Nadia Abu El-Haj.

The question that Tolerance Is a Wasteland aims to answer might seem simple: how can a violent project of dispossession and discrimination be imagined, felt, and profoundly believed in as though it were the exact opposite––an embodiment of sustainability, multicultural tolerance, and democratic idealism? Despite well-documented evidence of racism and human rights abuse, Israel has long been embraced by the most liberal sectors of European and American society as a manifestation of the progressive values of tolerance, plurality, inclusivity, and democracy, and hence a project that can be passionately defended for its lofty ideals.

For more info about Tolerance Is a Wasteland, click here.

Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA. His most recent book is Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022). His other books include Reading William Blake (2015), Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race and Imperial Culture (2014); and Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2010).

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies.

Important Notes about the Venue

The Heyman Center is located in the East Campus Residential Facility. Please allow extra time if you are attending an event and have not visited before.

If you wish to use Google Maps to help you navigate to the Heyman Center, please search for Ancel Plaza and use the map above to find your way.

Click here for a printable PDF download of the map.

Please note that access to East Campus and the Heyman Center is controlled by a guard and advanced registration for this event is required.

Please be aware that seating is first come first served and an RSVP does not guarantee seating; we recommend early arrival.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies for a Town Hall with Tareq Baconi, Rashid Khalidi and Ali Musleh, moderated by Nadia Abu El-Haj.

Please note that this event is open to Columbia and Barnard ID holders only.

LOCATION
807 Schermerhorn Hall

SPEAKERS

Tareq Baconi serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He is the former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict at the International Crisis Group, based in Ramallah, and the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018).

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and the author of numerous books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017 (Macmillan, 2020).

Ali Musleh is the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. He is a political theorist who studies settler colonial warfare, arms and automation.

MODERATOR

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies.

DUE TO CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

After the 1993 Oslo Accords, a handful of Palestinians were allowed to return to their hometowns in Israel. Fida Jiryis and her family were among them.

Join us for an online conversation with Fida Jiryis and Rashid Khalidi in celebration of her recent memoir, Stranger in My Own Land, (Hurst, 2022).

This beautifully written memoir tells the story of their journey, which is also the story of Palestine, from the Nakba to the present—a seventy-five-year tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return and search for belonging, seen through the eyes of one writer and her family. Jiryis reveals how her father, Sabri, a PLO leader and advisor to Yasser Arafat, chose exile in 1970 because of his work. Her own childhood in Beirut was shaped by regional tensions, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion, which led to her mother’s death. Thirteen years later, the family made an unexpected return to Fassouta, their village of origin in the Galilee. But Fida, twenty-two years old and full of love for her country, had no idea what she was getting into.

Stranger in My Own Land chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora, asking difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come ‘home’.

Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer and editor who has written on life as a Palestinian in Israel and the West Bank. Her published works include Stranger in My Own Land (Hurst, 2022); three collections of Arabic short stories: Hayatuna el-Sagheera (Our Small Life), al-Khawaja (The Gentleman), and al-Qafas (The Cage); and a collection of her short stories in Hebrew translation, Ha-Cluv (The Cage). Fida contributed to Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a Washington Post bestseller on fifty years of Israeli occupation, and BeLashon Kruta (Amputated Tongue), a Hebrew anthology of Palestinian literature. 

Author Isabella Hammad will deliver a talk on narrative form and its relationship to discourse around Palestine and Palestinian history through the lens of Anagnorisis, or Recognition, a narrative turning point based on a moment of sudden awakening or understanding. This year’s Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture commemorates the 20th anniversary of Said’s death.

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. She won the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, an O. Henry Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award and a Betty Trask Award, and she was recognized as a National Book Foundation’s "5 under 35." Her work has been supported with fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Hammad has taught literature and creative writing at NYU, Brown University, and Al Quds Bard College. In 2023, she was included on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, which identifies the most significant British writers under the age of 40. She is currently working on a novel set at the Bandung Conference of 1955.

The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture is given in honor of the public intellectual and literary critic, Edward W. Said, who taught in the English & Comparative Literature Department at Columbia from 1963 until 2003. University Professor Said was perhaps best known for his books Orientalism, published in 1978, and Culture and Imperialism, published in 1993, both of which made major contributions to the field of cultural and postcolonial studies. The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture, organized by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, pays tribute to University Professor Said by bringing to Columbia speakers who embody his beliefs and the legacy of his work.

This event is organized by The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and cosponsored by The Center for Palestine Studies, The Institute for Ideas and Imagination and the Italian Academy.

There is a limit of one (1) reservation per person. Seating is limited and first come, first served. Priority will be given to those who register in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. Check-in begins one (1) hour before the event and early arrival is suggested.

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in the Alwehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, and began his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked as a journalist and a cultural Director. He has been a full-time writer since 2006, publishing 14 poetry collections and 22 novels, including his epic series The Palestinian Comedy of 12 novels covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history. Four of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English, including his novel Time of White Horses which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009 and for the 2014 London-based Middle East Monitor Prize for the Best Novel about Palestine. Lanterns of the King of Galilee was also long listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013. Three of his novels have been translated into Italian, one into Danish and one into Turkish. He is also an artist and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He has won eight literary prizes, among them the prestigious Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997. His novel Prairies of Fever was listed by The Guardian newspaper in the top 10 most important novels written about the Arab world. In 2012, he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work. His novel The Spirits of Kilimanjaro won the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel in 2016. He was awarded the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel The Second War of the Dog. In 2020 he became the first Arabic writer to be awarded the “Katara Prize” for Arabic Novels for the second time for his novel A Tank Under the Christmas Tree.