Narrating Palestine

This new course offers an introduction to cultural, social, political and historical discourses of heritage and memory making and destruction in conflict, hidden histories, unruly narratives of identity, and alternative archiving from Palestine. The course will center on the work of Palestinian academics and cultural practitioners, highlighting the richness and diversity of theory and praxis from the region, often reduced or simplified into one-dimensional conceptualizations. Students will learn how to challenge and critique rudimental and antagonistic tropes, and instead study the diverse and multilayered past, present, and future of Palestine and the region. Students will also develop academic skills to intervene in polarized public discussions. The course therefore engages with conceptual and methodological issues of material history, archives, temporalities, gender, race, (anti/post/de) coloniality and racial capitalism. Over the weeks we explore key themes including heritage and memory archives, the politics of victimization/perpetration, affect, commemoration, everyday life, embodiment, gender, space, home, literature, maps, visual culture, identity and resistance, and how each of these play a particular role in the multiple narration of Palestine as well as their global repercussions on cultural, artistic and political discourses.

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