Tag Archives: Palestine

Dr. Atshan inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan to return to Swarthmore College and the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies

Prof. Sa'ed Atshan
Professor Sa’ed Atshan

It is with great pleasure and anticipation that we share that Dr. Sa’ed Atshan will return to the faculty of Swarthmore College and that he will serve as Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies in the fall semester. We are so excited that future generations of students will benefit from his exceptional teaching and mentoring.

Dr. Atshan (Swarthmore ’06), a renowned anthropologist and peace and conflict studies scholar, has extensive teaching experience at institutions including Birzeit, Brown, Emory, MIT, Swarthmore, Tufts, and UC Berkeley.

He joined our program in 2015 and contributed mightily to its development as a department. His popular classes included the introductory course; Crisis Resolution in the Middle East; Gender, Sexuality, and Social Change; Humanitarianism; and more. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict course included five consecutive and transformational embedded study trips to Israel/Palestine, not to mention a related and well-attended annual film series. He also co-organized a large conference on resisting anti-Semitism with Rabbi Michael Ramberg, Swarthmore’s Jewish Advisor. 

A widely sought public intellectual with a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, MA in Social Anthropology, and Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University, Dr. Atshan’s areas of focus include peace and conflict, anthropology, Palestine/Israel, and gender and sexuality. He is author, co-author, or editor of award-winning books, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (2020 Stanford University Press), The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (2020 Duke University Press; with Katharina Galor), and Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema (2022 Bloomsbury; with Katharina Galor). 

Dr. Atshan is the recipient of a wide range of awards including the Arab America Foundation’s ’40 Under 40’ Award, the Young Global Leader Award from the Council for the United States and Italy, and a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace. Just this semester, Dr. Atshan became the first Palestinian inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College, King’s alma mater in Atlanta.

Dr. Atshan inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College
In October, Dr. Atshan was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College.

Dr. Atshan returns to us from the Anthropology Department at Emory University, where he is a tenured professor and the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies. His reputation as a beloved mentor precedes him. While at Swarthmore, he not only supported prospective students, current students, and alums in their academic and vocational pursuits, he also served as the Director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program. He himself, as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, was both a Lang Scholar and the first Arab-American in the nation to receive a MMUF scholarship.

Dr. Atshan brings deep roots in Quaker life, having been educated at Ramallah Friends School (RFS), and with service now as an advisor to RFS, on the Corporation of Haverford College, and on the Board of the American Friends Service Committee. He has also served on the Board of Pendle Hill, the Multicultural Board of Westtown School, and as a spiritual nurturer for the Quaker Voluntary Service. Moreover, as he returns to the College, Dr. Atshan will lean into a new research project on African-American and Palestinian Quakers that will involve Swarthmore’s Peace Collection and Friends Historical Library

We hope you can tell why we are excited about Dr. Atshan’s rejoining our department. He brings outstanding experience in so many respects that fit seamlessly with Swarthmore’s and our department’s missions. 

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Sa’ed Atshan!

Cover of book, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique

Prof. Sa’ed Atshan’s Book, Queer Palestine, Awarded Honorable Mention for the 2021 Benedict Prize

The Ruth Benedict Prize Committee of the Association for Queer Anthropology has awarded Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, written by Peace and Conflict Studies Associate Professor Sa’ed Atshan, an honorable mention for the 2021 Benedict Prize.

The Association for Queer Anthropology (AQA) website provides more information about the prize: “The Ruth Benedict Prize is presented each year at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting to acknowledge excellence in a scholarly book written from an anthropological perspective about a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender topic. The Ruth Benedict Prize is awarded in each of two separate categories: one for a single-authored monograph and another for an edited volume. Submissions may be on any topic related to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, or other gender / sexual formations and categories from any world culture area. Topics may include the study of normativity, queer theory, and the social/historical construction of sexual and gender identities, discourses and categories. Authors may represent any scholarly discipline, but the material submitted must engage anthropological theories and methods.”

AQA commends Prof. Atshan’s monograph, writing, “This is a most timely and admirably courageous book that challenges the seeming gap between queer activism and anthropology. Atshan traces the rise of the global queer Palestinian solidarity movement from 2002 on, and explores why, since 2012, the movement plateaued — no longer growing nor receding. Drawing on longstanding conversations with queer activists in Israel/Palestine and the diaspora, the author shows how, in recent years, critiques of empire have ironically given rise to an “empire of critique”: an uneven (and often toxic) global field of debate, in which activists and academics based in the West can criticize Palestinian activists in ways that undermine their solidarity-building efforts and expand extant regimes of surveillance, suspicion, and control. An example in this regard are the so-called “radical purists” who believe that there is only one truth about any given oppressive situation and about how to practice liberation. In contrast, Atshan shows that anthropology has the potential to support local activist struggles against homophobia and imperialism by rigorously engaging with, rather than dismissing, the experiences and views of these activists—their simultaneous engagement with multiple axes of oppression.”

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Sa’ed Atshan (Stanford: 2020)

Israel/Palestine Film Series- Fall 2019

Israel/Palestine Film Series
Fall 2019
Please join us next week for the annual Israel/Palestine Film Series at Swarthmore. There will be screenings for the first six Wednesdays of the semester, and all are free and open to the public (including pizza and refreshments).

All screenings at 4:15PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema.
Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Sponsored by the Provost’s Office and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility

2019 film series poster

 

September 4
The Wanted 18  

September 11
The Settlers

September 18
Rock in the Red Zone

September 25
The War Around Us

October 2
Out in the Dark

October 9
The Other Son

Humanitarian Predicaments: Protracted Displacement and Palestinian Refugee Politics

Please join us on Wednesday, February 6th for a lecture by Ilana Feldman (Anthropology, George Washington University), who will be visiting campus as part of the “Contending Visions of the Middle East” series. Ilana’s lecture draws from her recently published book “Life Lived In Relief” (University of California Press, 2018).
life lived in reflief
February 6
4:30 – 6:00 PM | SCI 101
Humanitarian Predicaments: Protracted Displacement and Palestinian Refugee Politics
Ilana Feldman (George Washington University)

Palestinian refugees’ experience of protracted displacement is among the lengthiest in history. In her breathtaking new book, Ilana Feldman explores this community’s engagement with humanitarian assistance over a seventy-year period and their persistent efforts to alter their present and future conditions. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic field research, Life Lived in Relief offers a comprehensive account of the Palestinian refugee experience living with humanitarian assistance in many spaces and across multiple generations. By exploring the complex world constituted through humanitarianism, and how that world is experienced by the many people who inhabit it, Feldman asks pressing questions about what it means for a temporary status to become chronic. How do people in these conditions assert the value of their lives? What does the Palestinian situation tell us about the world? Life Lived in Relief is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and practice of humanitarianism today.

Sponsored by the President’s Office Andrew W. Mellon Grant, The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, and the Departments of Political Science, History, Sociology / Anthropology, and Peace and Conflict Studies. For a full schedule of spring events, please consult our website: https://contendingvisions.wixsite.com/mysite
Ferial Berjawi '19

Q&A with Lang Opportunity Scholar Ferial Berjawi ’19

Congratulations to Peace and Conflict Studies special major, Ferial Berjawi ’19!

From News and Events, October 17th, 2018
By Arthur Davis ’19

Ferial Berjawi '19

“I’ve always found myself surrounded by broken women who never received sufficient awareness to determine their own paths,” says Berjawi. “I developed the program to empower these girls to become the pioneers of change in their societies.”

For her Lang Opportunity Scholarship project over the summer, Ferial Berjawi ’19 designed and ran the BetterFly Camp, a six-week program that brought 30 young refugee girls in Lebanon together to discuss body image, legal rights, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health.

The program, which Berjawi discussed with the Arabic news source FutureTV and on Journal Post, targeted Syrian and Palestinian refugee girls in Lebanon between ages 10 and 15. It emerged from Berjawi’s personal experiences and motives.

“I’ve always found myself surrounded by broken women who never received sufficient awareness to determine their own paths,” says the economics and peace & conflict studies special major from Beirut. “I developed the program to empower these girls to become the pioneers of change in their societies.”

Berjawi took a research-based approach to the program and used an array of innovative methods piloted by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Danish Refugee Council and the Women’s Refugee Commission. The Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility, which awarded Berjawi the scholarship, lauded her project as a great example of the impact that students can have around the world through engaged scholarship.

Back at Swarthmore this fall, Berjawi discussed her experiences with and vision for the BetterFly Camp.

How would you describe the work you did this summer with the BetterFly Camp?

Basically, it was a series of psychosocial support sessions that had to do with early marriage, gender-based violence, positive body image–also legal rights, discrimination, power, and positionality. It was just basically addressing the different layers of these girls’ identities and helping them start thinking about who they are and who they want to be in the future. All of them have witnessed [gender-based violence]. All of them have seen it, or might have experienced it. That’s not their fault. They’re not to blame. They’re only the victims, even though they are victims with a lot of agency. So we made sure we were not taking that agency away from them. They should be allowed to find their own agency, look within themselves, and find their own power to rise above social constraint and determine their own paths for the future. So it was more inspiration and empowerment than it was about knowledge.

How did the idea for the project originate?

I grew up with everything that is going on. Just growing up and seeing it, living under the patriarchy, I experienced the sexism, the misogyny, the objectification, the dehumanization of women all the time. So that was part of it. But I never really knew how bad it was until I did an internship with the Danish Refugee Council the summer after my sophomore year. There, I worked closely with the gender-based violence program coordinator [on a large-scale empowerment/education program]. So I thought, “How about I do a similar initiative, but with a different approach?” I thought it would be more effective so the girls could open us up to even more, since it was a smaller group.

What was the Lang Center’s role in the project?

I got the Lang Opportunity Scholarship in December of my sophomore year, and they basically funded my internship that summer with the Danish Refugee Council. I don’t think I would have been able to do it otherwise. They’ve been there, backing me up, all the way. My context is very particular to Lebanon, and even though it may not be their area of expertise, bridging our knowledge together, we were able to make it work.

Is there anything that news excerpts or blurbs tend to miss when describing the big picture of your project? Moments or details that get left out?

There are little victory moments when you’re like, “Yes! This is working!” The final celebration is one example of that. We had our sessions and at the end, I was like, “You know what, girls? Let’s have a final celebration where you present something.” I thought it’d just be an hour. They’d come, they’d get their certificates, and that’d be it. But they wanted to perform. So in a matter of three weeks, we were able to choreograph a dance—two dances, actually—and a play. The parents loved it. After the celebration, they came up to me thanking me for the project. And the girls—five of them were crying their eyes out, so I just started crying, too. It’s one of those moments that are very genuine and very real. I learned more from them than they learned from me, I think.

What are your future plans—for the project or yourself?

Someone actually reached out to me from an American NGO. The director learned about my work from social media, and they want to do another project cycle over winter break. They’re completely funding a new cycle, and I’m going to partner with them on it. And for the future, I’m looking into social impact consulting and nonprofit work. Last summer was super rewarding, but you can do all these interventions and do all this nonprofit work, but their lives will ultimately be shaped by the socioeconomic and political circumstances that they live in. So I want to be working on a more policy level to change the framework itself.

film series poster

Israel/Palestine Film Series – Fall 2018

Israel/Palestine Film Series
Fall 2018

Please join us next month for the annual Israel/Palestine Film Series at Swarthmore. There will be screenings for the first six Wednesdays of the semester, and all are free and open to the public (including pizza and refreshments).

All screenings at 4:15PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema.

film series poster

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Sponsored by the Provost’s Office and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility


September 5
Frontiers of Dreams and Fears


September 12
Foxtrot


September 19
The War Around Us


September 26
Rock in the Red Zone


October 3
Omar


October 10
The Women’s Balcony

 

 

 

Existence is Resistance: A Performance by Palestinian Drag Queen Madam Tayoush

Existence is Resistance: Palestinian Drag Queen Madam Tayoush

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2018,  7 – 9PM
SCHEUER ROOM

Elias Portrait

Photograph by Joni Sternbach

Download a flyer here: Madam Tayoush Poster

Performance Artist Elias Wakeem, also known as Madam Tayoush, is a queer Arab Palestinian artist living and working in Palestine. Through performance they/she examines the reaction of the audience to their/her personal story of the place they/she grew up in with its geographical, historical and political situations. Madam Tayoush has created a series of monthly radical queer drag ball parties in Jerusalem called “Jerusalem is Burning”.

Sponsored by Peace & Conflict Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, the Lang Center, and the Sager Fund.

The Sager Fund of Swarthmore College was established in 1988 by alumnus Richard Sager ’74, a leader in San Diego’s gay community.
The fund sponsors Events focused on concerns of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities.

Open to the public.

Human Rights Hummus: A Podcast Produced by Peace and Conflict Studies Alumni

Screen Shot 2017-09-18 at 9.53.56 AM

Swarthmore Peace and Conflict Studies recent graduates Lily Tyson and Marissa Cohen have already produced three episodes of their new podcast, “Human Rights Hummus: Voices of the Holy Land.”

Screen Shot 2017-09-18 at 9.41.51 AM

 

Lily and Marissa interview Israelis and Palestinians and record their stories, teaching listeners “what their lives are like and about what is going on with this occupation today, as they experience it.”

Swarthmore College, the Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility,  and Prof. Sa’ed Atshan of the Peace and Conflict Studies program all proudly support Lily and Marissa on this project!

Check out their website here.

films series poster 2017-2018

Israel/Palestine Film Series – Fall 2017

films series poster 2017-2018

Please join us next month for the annual Israel/Palestine Film Series at Swarthmore. There will be screenings for the first six Wednesdays of the semester, and all are free and open to the public (including pizza and refreshments).

All screenings at at 4:15PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema.

September 6: The Wanted 18

Palestinian stop-motion artist collaborates with filmmakers and activists to document one of the strangest chapters in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

https://youtu.be/hlKZ8daLtOo

September 13: Disturbing the Peace

This film reveals the transformational journeys from combatants (both Palestinian and Israeli) committed to armed battle to nonviolent peace activists.

September 20: The Settlers

Israeli filmmaker explores the controversial communities of Israeli settlers occupying the West Bank through a series of interviews.

September 27: Out In The Dark

Israeli filmmaker creates a gay love story between a Palestinian man and his Israeli partner.

October 4: Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

Israeli filmmaker produces this emotional drama of an Israeli woman fighting for her independence from religious-based marriage laws.

October 11: Speed Sisters

Canadian director and producer illuminates the world of the Palestinian women who comprise the first all-women race car driving team in the Middle East.