Dr Bashir Abu-Manneh, Reader in Postcolonial Literature in the School of English, will give a talk as part of the PalREAD project at Freie Universität Berlin, entitled ‘War and Palestinian Writing’ on Tuesday 23 June 2020 at 2pm.
The PalREAD project aims to tell the story of Palestinian literature by tracing, collecting, mapping and analyzing the development and evolution of Palestinian literary and cultural production and practices from 1948 to the present across various Arab, European, American, and Latin American & Caribbean countries.
Bashir’s talk will explore how Palestinian writers, including Najwan Darwish and Atef Abu Saif, have grappled with tracing Israel’s “war on terror,” launched in 2000. ‘What does it mean for an occupying power to launch wars against those it occupies in the context of the Oslo peace process?’, Bashir asks. ‘For this talk in particular, I’m interested in the wars launched by Israel after 2000 in occupied Palestine: West Bank 2002, Gaza 2008-9, 2012, and 2014’.
Bashir’s talk is part of a series of lectures, public readings and workshops on Palestinian literature of the past and present entitled ‘Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present’. Through their research (Dr Bashir Abu-Manneh and Dr Lindsey Moore) and public readings of their works (Ghayath Almadhoun and Nemat Khaled), the events will explore what, how and why Palestinian writers write experiences of displacement, exile and alternative belongings from various critical and creative perspectives. By showcasing creative practices and scholarship on Palestinian literature, the talks will invite new questions on trends and developments of Palestinian writing in past and recent times. This series also situates why Palestinian writing gives us vital sources of insight into the wider dynamics of diasporic, migrant and exilic literatures.
A summary of the lectures, public readings and workshops can be found here:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/palestine-literature-map-books-reimagined-authors-talks
The full programme of events can be found on the PalREAD project’s website, here:
https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/dhc/nachwuchs/djhp/hosts-and-guests-2020/index.html