Scholarly Perspectives: Spring 2024 Series on the Middle East

“The Settler Movement and the War on Gaza: Political Impasses and Beyond,” 4:30-6:30 PM, ISC 1127

Hagar Kotef is a Professor of Political Theory in the department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. She currently works on an ESRC-funded project on torture and bureaucracy in Israel/Palestine, in collaboration with the Public Committee against Torture in Israel.  

Her recent book, The Colonizing Self (Or: Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine), published by Duke UP, 2020, examines the construction of political belonging and territorial attachments in settler colonies. It investigates how people develop attachment to space not despite violence, or by denying it, but rather through violence. The Colonizing Self won the C.B Macpherson book award, the Yale Ferguson Award, and the Spitz Prize in Democratic Theory. It further received Honorable Mentions of the MESA Fatema Mernissi Book Award, the Sussex International Theory Prize, and the IPS-ISA book award. 

Her previous book, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom (Duke UP, 2015) charts the conceptual history of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces: from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.

Before joining SOAS she held positions and fellowships at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University, Columbia University's Society of Fellows, and the University of CA, Berkeley. 

“Unraveling the Historical Landscape of the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict,” 3:30-4:50 PM, Tucker 127A

Lina M. Kassem is a visiting assistant professor of politics.  Her primary research interests are Gender and Law, Islamic Feminism, Human Rights, and Middle East Politics, with a special focus on issues of sub-national identities. She has recently published a chapter on nationalism in Introducing Global Issues. Before joining William and Mary, she taught at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh. She has also taught at Qatar University, Zayed University (UAE), and Wilmington College in the United States. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati.

 “Palestine, Israel, and the Question of Context,” 3:30-4:50 PM, Tucker 127A

Jonathan Glasser is a historical anthropologist whose work focuses on questions of patrimony, memory, expressive culture, and social difference in modern North Africa, with particular attention to Algeria and Morocco. His first book, The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2016), explored the dynamics of revival and transmission in an urban performance practice in northwestern Algeria and eastern Morocco. He is currently finishing a book about Muslim-Jewish interactions around music and poetry in Algeria and its diaspora in the early modern and modern periods. He is also developing a new project about the fate of evolutionary concepts in anthropological thought. He regularly teaches courses on sociocultural theory, North Africa and the Middle East, language, and Muslim-Jewish relations. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2008.

“The Politics of Zionism: Conflict and Reconciliation,” 5:30-7:00, ISC 1221

Arnon Degani is a Fellow at Molad – Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, specializing in the history of Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He recently released the Hebrew podcast series "Hesket Oslo," examining the Oslo Accords, and is currently working on the English adaptation, "Still Processing." His doctoral research focused on the integration of Palestinian Arabs into Israeli society from 1948 to 1967, as revealed through daily encounters with Israeli officials, and his upcoming manuscript titled "Our Arabs" explores this topic in depth. He is contributor to the scholarly and intellectual debate on if and how the settler-colonialism comparative framework benefits the study of Israel and Palestine. Arnon has taught courses in Middle East Studies, Jewish studies, and global histories of colonialism and settler colonialism.

He is based in Philadelphia during the 2023-24 academic year.

“Palestine and Palestinians in Modern History: Denialism & the Question of Genocide,” 4-5:30 pm, ISC 1127

Dr. Ussama Makdisi is Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley. He has published widely on Ottoman and Arab history as well as on U.S.-Arab relations and U.S. missionary work in the Middle East. His most recent book Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World was published in 2019 by the University of California Press. His previous books include Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 2008), which was the winner of the 2008 Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association.

“Palestinian-Israeli Relations Before and After October 7th,” 12:30-1:30 PM, Tucker 127A

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity and Israel.

Halevi’s 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Book of the Year Award. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller. He writes for leading op-ed pages in the US, including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a former contributing editor to the New Republic.

“Palestinian Politics: The PA, Hamas, and State-Society Divergence”  1:00 PM, Washington 201

Dana El Kurd is Non-resident Senior Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond. Her work focuses on authoritarianism, international intervention, and state-society relations in the Arab world. Dana’s book, ‘Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine,’ was released in January 2020 with Oxford University Press.