Tuesday, December 5, 2023

6:00-8:00 p.m. ET

Carmichael Auditorium, 85 Waterman Street, Room 130

Join the Center for Middle East Studies for a conversation about “The Hamas Attack and Israel’s War in Gaza: Historical Context, Significance and Future Scenarios.” The event will feature panelists Omer Bartov, Beshara Doumani, and Katharina Galor. Nadje Al-Ali will moderate. This event is the latest in our ongoing series, Community Conversations.

About the Panelists

Omer Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. His early research concerned war crimes in World War II and the links between war and genocide. He has also written on modern representations of antisemitism. More recently he has focused on interethnic relations, violence, and population displacement in Europe and Palestine. His latest books include the edited volume Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples (2021) and Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023). He is currently writing a book tentatively titled “The Broken Promise: A Personal-Political History of Israel and Palestine,” which investigates the first generation of Jews and Palestinians in Israel, a generation to which he also belongs.

Beshara Doumani is the Mahmoud Darwish Chair for Palestinian Studies at Brown University and the former President of Birzeit University in Palestine. His research focuses on the social histories of peoples, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East, as well as on academic freedom and the Palestinian condition. His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (University of California Press, 1995), and Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Doumani is the editor of a book series on Palestinian Studies published by the University of California Press, co-editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly and editorial committee member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. He is currently working on a history of the Palestinians through the social life of stone.

Katharina Galor is the Hirschfeld Senior Lecturer in Judaic Studies at Brown, and an affiliate member of the Center of Middle East Studies and Urban Studies. She is currently a fellow at the Herbert Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published widely on Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian visual and material culture, from antiquity through present times. Among her books are Finding Jerusalem: Archaeology between Science and Ideology (University of California Press, 2017), The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2000; co-authored with Sa’ed Atshan) which also appeared in German: Israelis, Plästinenser und Deutsche in Berlin. Geschichten einer komplexen Beziehung (De Gruyter, 2021), and Jewish Women: Between Conformity and Agency (Routledge, release date December 15, 2023). She is currently writing Out of Gaza: A Story of Love and Friendship together with Dima Mansour.

About the Moderator 

Nadje Al-Ali is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies, Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, mainly with reference to Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009, University of California Press, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (2007, Zed Books), Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press 2000) and more recently a co-edited book with Deniz Kandiyoti and Kathryn Spellman entitled Gender, Governance and Islam (University of Edinburgh Press, 2020). Her co-edited book with Deborah al-Najjar entitled We are Iraqis: Aesthetics & Politics in a Time of War (Syracuse University Press) won the 2014 Arab-American book prize for non-fiction. Professor Al-Ali is on the advisory board of kohl: a journal of body and gender research and has been involved in several feminist organizations and campaigns transnationally.

The Brown University Chapter of the AAUP invites all interested faculty members to attend the AAUP Commons that we will host over Zoom on Tuesday, April 25th at 6:00 p.m. At this inaugural AAUP Commons, we aim to create a forum for faculty to discuss the implications of Prof. Bunsis's report, as well as the broader concerns that it raises. We will have the slides from his presentation available at this meeting. 

Please register by using the e-mail form below or by writing to aaupbrownchapter@gmail.com. A Zoom link will be sent to all registered participants on the day of the event.

Please join us for a presentation by Professor Howard Bunsis, leading expert in university budget analysis and Ex-Officio Chair of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress. His thorough analysis of the finances of Brown University will address questions concerning the financial health of our institution, the ways in which resources are being spent, as well as the further implications of financial data from recent years. His presentation will be followed by a faculty-driven discussion of the finances and priorities of our institution.

This event will be hosted over Zoom. Please register using the e-mail form below.