Reading Palestine
We are grateful to our colleagues at the Barnard College Library for their work compiling the reading list, Palestinian Voices. This is an incredible resource to think with Palestinian writers about Palestinian history, memory, and survival. You will find novels, poetry, non-fiction, scholarly examinations, graphic novels, visual art, and zines, with writers spanning the generations from Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, and Edward Said, to Naomi Shihab Nye and Rabab Abdulhadi, to Mohammed El-Kurd, Randa Jarrar, Adania Shibli, Leila Abdelrazaq, and Zaina Arafat.
The reading list also includes two of our colleagues. 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 and Chair of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, and author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001), which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2002, and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (2012). We are eager to engage with her latest work in a conversation with her and journalist Anjali Kamat at an event on April 15 where the two will discuss Abu El-Haj’s forthcoming book, Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America (forthcoming, 2022). Event details coming soon.
Thea Abu El-Haj is Professor and Program Director in the Department of Education, Barnard College. Her works include Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth (2015) and Elusive justice: Wrestling with Difference and Dducational Equity in Everyday Practice (2006), and, as co-author, “Fifi the Punishing Cat and Other Civic Lessons from a Lebanese Public Kindergarten,” in the Journal of Education in Emergencies (2018), and “Civic reasoning and discourse amid structural inequality, migration and conflict” in a report for the National Academy entitled Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse (2021).
Zaina Arafat is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Barnard College. She is the author if You Exist Too Much (2020), a novel that woman a 2021 Lambda Literary Award and was named Roxane Gay’s favorite book of 2020. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, VICE, BuzzFeed, Granta, Guernica, The Believer, Harper’s Bazaar and Virginia Quarterly Review.
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University, Editor of the Journal for Palestine Studies, and Co-Director at the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University. His books are many and include The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917- 2017 (2020); Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013); Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009);The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1996); Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (1986); and British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980).
The Palestinian Voices reading list is accessible to all. If you’re a Barnard or Columbia student or employee, we encourage you to check out the books and visit the digital display in the Milstein Center.
