Browsing by Subject "Palestine"
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Item The Arab street : a photographic exploration(2009-12) Cheney, Clifford Sidney; Darling, Dennis Carlyle; Reed, EllisJournalists use the term Arab Street to describe what they often imply is a volatile Arabic public opinion. This photo story travels through four Arab areas or Jordan, Qatar, Israel/Palestine and Egypt in order to show the diversity and complexity of each. The media’s tendency to lump all Arabs into one political block is detrimental to a true sense of cultural understanding that is required for peace.Item Behind the Linguistic Landscape of Israel/Palestine : exploring the visual implications of expansionist policies(2014-05) Carey, Shaylyn Theresa; Brustad, KristenThe concept of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new and developing field, but it is already proving to illuminate significant trends in sociocultural boundaries and linguistic identities within heterogeneous areas. By examining types of signage displayed in public urban spaces such as street signs, billboards, advertisements, scholars have gained insight into the inter and intra-group relations that have manifested as a result of the present top-down and bottom-up language ideologies. This paper will apply LL theory to the current situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories through a discussion of the various policies that have shaped the Linguistic Landscape. It will begin by examining the Hebraicization of the toponymy after the creation of Israel, then discuss the conflict over the linguistic landscape, which can be seen in several photographs where the Arabic script has been marked out or covered. Moving forward, this work will address the grammatical errors on Arabic language signs, which reflect the low priority of Arabic education in Israel. Finally, this project will expand upon the LL framework by looking at the economic relationship between Israel and the Palestinian territories and how it is reflected in public places, such as supermarkets, which display an overwhelming presence of Hebrew. Through the use of photographic evidence of the LL from the region, which shows the prevalence of Hebrew place names, Israeli economic goods, and negative attitudes towards the use of Arabic on signage, this paper will take a multidisciplinary approach at examining the history and policies that shape the language used in public urban spaces. The relationship between the state and the Linguistic Landscape sheds light on the power dynamics of a multilingual space. As Hebrew is given preferential treatment, despite the official status of both Arabic and Hebrew, Israel continues to dominate the social space with the use of Hebrew in order to assert their claims to the land. In addition to investigating the power dynamics that are reflected on visual displays of language in this region, this work serves as a meaningful contribution to the Linguistic Landscape by expanding its methodology and units of analysis.Item Border fiction : fracture and contestation in post-Oslo Palestinian culture(2013-12) Paul, William Andrew; El-Ariss, Tarek; Grumberg, KarenThis dissertation delves into a body of Palestinian literature, film, and art from the past two decades in order theorize the relationship between borders and their representations. In Israel and Palestine, a region in which negotiating borders has become a way of life, I explore the ways in which ubiquitous boundaries have pervaded cultural production through a process that I term “bordering.” I draw on theoretical contributions from the fields of architecture, geography, anthropology, as well as literature and film studies to develop a conceptual framework for examining the ways in which authors, artists, and filmmakers engage with borders as a space to articulate possibilities of encounter, contestation, and transgression. I argue that in these works, the proliferation of borders has called into question the Palestinian cultural and political consensus that created a shared set of narratives, symbols, and places in Palestinian cultural production until the last decade of the 20th century. In its place has emerged a fragmented body of works that create what Jacques Rancière terms “dissensus,” or a disruption of a cultural, aesthetic, disciplinary, and spatial order. Read together, they constitute what I term a “border aesthetic,” in which literature, film, and art produce new types of spaces, narratives, and texts through the ruptures and fractures of the border. I trace the emergence of this aesthetic and the new genres and forms that distinguish it from earlier Palestinian literary, political, and intellectual projects through analyses of the works of Elia Suleiman, Sayed Kashua, Raba’i al-Madhoun, Emily Jacir, Yazid Anani, and Inass Yassin. In their attempts to grapple artistically with the region’s borders, these authors, directors, and artists create new codes, narratives, vernaculars, and spaces that reflect the fragmentation wrought by pervasive boundaries. These works, fluent in multiple mediums, genres, and languages, reveal both the possibilities and the limits of this aesthetic, as they seek to contest borders but nevertheless remain bound by them.Item Digging through time: psychogeographies of occupation(2015-12) Simblist, Noah Leon; Reynolds, Ann Morris; El-Ariss, Tarek; Mulder, Stephennie; Di-Capua, Yoav; Flaherty, GeorgeThis dissertation is about the relationship between contemporary art and politics in the case of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Specifically, I look at the ways that artists have dealt with the history of this region and its impact on the present, using four moments as the subject of the following chapters: ancient Palestine, the Holocaust, The nakba, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The historiographical impulse has a particular resonance for artists making work about the Middle East, a political space where competing historical narratives are the basis for disagreements about sovereignty. I focus on works by Avi Mograbi, Gilad Efrat, Ayreen Anastas, Amir Yatziv, Yael Bartana, Omer Fast, Khaled Hourani, Dor Guez, Campus in Camps, and Akram Zaatari. A number of patterns emerge when we look at how these artists approach history. One is the tendency for artists to act like historians. As a subset of this tendency is the archival impulse, wherein artists use found photographs, film or documents to intervene in normative representations of history. Another is for artists to act like archaeologists, digging up repressed histories. Another is to commemorate a traumatic event in a way that rejects traditional forms of memorialization such as monuments. At the core of each chapter are examples of artistic practices that use conversation as a medium. I analyze these conversations about history as a dialogical practice and argue that this methodology offers a uniquely productive opportunity to work through the ideologies embedded within the psychogeographies of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Within these conversations and other aesthetic structures, I argue that these artists emphasize the all too common challenge in producing new forms of civic imagination – the tendency to address historical trauma though repetition compulsion and melancholia. They react to this challenge by engaging collective memory, producing counter-memories and, in some cases, produce counterpublics.Item Digital intifada : a discourse analysis of the Palestine solidarity groups in social media(2016-08) Almahmoud, Meshaal Abdullah; Atkinson, Lucinda; Love, BradfordThis thesis investigates the discourse adopted by Palestine solidarity groups utilizing Facebook. Three pro-Palestine groups were highlighted as a case study for this thesis: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, International Solidarity Movement and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. The research questions address the methods of discourse Palestinian solidarity groups' employ, utilization of different contents and themes, level of engagement, selection of format, news resources, and impact of 2014 Gaza war. This study analyzes variations among the three groups and components influencing differentiations. The literature review highlights transformation in both individual and collective communication and social media's changing social and political structures. Research includes the usage of social media to frame social movements’ platform and social media benefits for collective action and how framing is achieved and collective identity developed. Lastly, it illuminates the trend of connective action and personalization. The discourse analysis approach was applied to investigate the set of selected Facebook posts in 2014. The results show that the three solidarity groups generally applied resource mobilization theory. Posts reporting some form of a violation contained the most correlating content. Human rights theme rose to the majority of the total number of posts. The most used contents in the posts aim for audience sympathy, responsibility and being connected, as for a shared pursuit to occur. Reporting a violation, the most used content, triggers sympathy. Responsibility is motivated by calling followers for action, which is the second most used content by all groups. Reporting news as applied to many types of top used contents, resulted in the group member's feeling connected. The total average engagement for the three groups multiplied highly during the war in Gaza, but sank considerably after termination of the war. However, the average engagement subsequent to the war remains markedly higher than pre-war levels. The patterns of posting revealed tendencies not to post only text, without attaching another format. Posts with links or photo account for a higher proportion. The majority of the three solidarity groups' news resources come from five pro-Palestinian major news websites. Yet, numerous international sources, either mainstream or independent media, were utilized as well.Item Ecstatic feedback : toward an ethics of audition in the contemporary literary arts of the Mediterranean(2014-12) Raizen, Michal; Grumberg, Karen; El-Ariss, Tarek; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Seeman, Sonia; Atwood, BlakeEcstatic Feedback explores narrative and thematic engagements with the concept of “audition” in works from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Morocco. My use of the term audition encompasses the act of listening, the trials and tribulations of hearing, and the performative aspects of lending an ear. The locale of Ecstatic Feedback is the contemporary Mediterranean, a designation that reflects both the geographical and linguistic orientation of the works discussed and the emergent disciplinary interest in Mediterranean Studies. The regional specificity of this project is framed by my discussion of ṭarab, a musical phenomenon akin to ecstasy. I argue that ṭarab, as a musical form with a culturally-specific contextual base and a sui generis communicative mode capable of producing context, points to an acoustic geography that predates current sociopolitical mappings of the Mediterranean. In its literary and cinematic iterations, ṭarab presents a challenge to compartmentalized geopolitical and cultural visions of a Mediterranean structured around divisions such as secular/sacred, premodern/modern, or Mashriq/Maghreb. The works discussed in Ecstatic Feedback use ṭarab as a narrative structure, casting it at the same time as a way of rethinking the historical traumas of the twentieth and twenty-first century Mediterranean. Emile Habibi’s vignettes The Sextet of the Six Days (1968); Hoda Barakat’s novel Disciples of Passion (1993) and her series of essays The Stranger’s Letters (2004); Eran Kolirin’s film The Band’s Visit (2007); and Elia Suleiman’s film The Time That Remains (2009) all make explicit references to the world of ṭarab and its practitioners. Edmond El Maleh’s A Thousand Years, One Day (1986) situates ṭarab more abstractly, as a concept with tremendous performative and communicative potential in both its popular and mystical iterations. With a focus on Arab Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and exiles of the Lebanese Civil War, my project attends to the processes that underwrite a literary and cinematic intervention into the regional soundscape, with its attendant silences and elisions. By foregrounding instances of ṭarab and exploring the intersubjectivity inherent in the dynamic between muṭrib (a performer who elicits ṭarab) and listener, these diverse texts combine to highlight a line of cultural-regional poetics based on audition.Item Impartial allies : American policy in Palestine during the Truman administration(2015-05) Stewart, James Clyde; Suri, Jeremi; Di-Capua, YoavAmerican policy toward Palestine during the Truman administration was influenced by a number of factors, but none carried greater weight than the unfolding cold war. Because the Middle East carried so much strategic weight, American leaders were determined to ensure that the entire region remained allied with the United States. As a result, the Truman administration strove to maintain good relations with both Arabs and Israelis throughout the period. American policy did not, as many allege, favor Israel, but in fact pursued the middle-of-the-road.Item Inside-outside : practice between the private and the social(2016-05) Chelben, Roni Alexandra; Williams, Jeff, M.F.A.; Clarke, JohnIn the course of the last few years, the work I have been making was very eclectic in terms of methodology and form. My practice ranged from studio practice pieces, to a socially engaged workshop based work. I tend to see the relationship between the different works as dialectical, at least to some degree, while each work is pushing forward a different parameter that was not fully realized in the prior work. These back and forth movements have left me with some questions regarding gallery aesthetics versus socially engaged projects, and my position on the scale between them. The largest question I have, however, is whether I need to choose one practice or another, and if so to which degree the ethics and aesthetics of the different practices can or should be distinguished from one another. In this report I do not attempt to answer those vast questions, which will probably stay with me as part of my practice, but rather to raise four core issues that I find crucial to their exploration, and to which I dedicate four separate sections. Those issues are the gallery as a socially isolated site, questions about the relevancy of socially engaged art change to studio art practice, guilt as motivation for art making, and lastly, relationship between action and documentation in art.Item Iranian-Israeli relations in light of the Iranian Revolution(2010-12) Vessali, Behrang Vameghi; Aghaie, Kamran Scot; Pedahzur, AmiThis thesis considers the transformation of Iranian-Israeli ties following the 1979 Iranian Revolution from a Western-allied relationship to a covert, scandalous relationship, specifically in the context of the Iran-Iraq War. I also look at the Iranian and Israeli narratives and compare the religious, historical, ideological and psycho-political underpinnings that reveal significant similarities between these two superficially diametrically opposed states, and ultimately shaped the complex and misunderstood relationship between the two countries.Item Managing the waters within area A : water allocation in Jericho as a case study for Palestinian water management(2012-05) Baker, Lauren Marie; Eaton, David J.; Di-Capua, YoavThis thesis examines the case study of Jericho as an example of the unique challenges of intra-Palestinian water allocation. Over the past hundred years, Jericho has been under the control of five ruling governments: Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian. This study begins with an investigation of local water allocation under foreign control. Throughout each period of rule, legislation about water was inherently connected with land control, and Jericho’s history as an agricultural city dictated how water was classified. Despite many of the nominal changes in law from one government to the next, local practice changed relatively little, as the community allocated resources in a fairly consistent way among community members. Jericho’s sustained level of agriculture has been possible because of the consistently high output of a large spring, Ein Sultan, just north of the contemporary city. The second chapter examines the transition from Israeli to Palestinian control of Jericho in 1994, which is now considered an Area A zone in the West Bank, and examines the relationship of nascent Palestinian water institutions with previous informal networks. The last section addresses the challenges facing Jericho today, referencing and analyzing the recently written Master Plan for Jericho’s water system undertaken by a Palestinian nongovernmental organization. The Plan effectively highlights problems within the system of allocation, including: poor water quality, inefficient domestic and irrigation networks, conspicuous local consumption, ineffective pricing systems, and lack of wastewater treatment. However, the plan does not provide long-term suggestions to address the underlying systematic problems with the allocation system. Although Jericho is theoretically a Palestinian controlled municipality, it faces serious obstacles to effective governance of its resources. The informal institutions dominated by the agricultural sector that sustained the community for such a long time, may not be able to adjust in the face of necessary water reform for the city. The local government may need to consider politically unpopular decisions, reform tariffs, and decrease reliance upon foreign aid if it hopes to continue maintain and manage Ein Sultan and other water sources for the growing city into the future.Item Palestine Media Watch and the U.S. news media : strategies for change and resistance(2010-05) Handley, Robert Lyle; Reese, Stephen D.; Jensen, Robert; Harp, Dustin; Wilkins, Karin; Henry, ClementToward the start of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, activists formed a media watchdog group called Palestine Media Watch (PMW) to challenge U.S. news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tired of coverage that blamed the conflict on Palestinian terrorism, PMW monitored news coverage, met with newsworkers, and bombarded news organizations with complaints in an attempt to root the conflict’s cause in Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. I study PMW’s efforts to produce change in coverage, and examine its campaigns’ effects. Most critical research examines the news system’s production of “propaganda” and news models suggest that media monitoring is one mechanism through which an entire “ideological air” is supported. “Guardian watchdogs,” like the Israel lobby, guard the ideological boundaries around news content that are erected by others. This study considers PMW’s efforts in terms articulated by the dialogic and dialectical models, which gives agency to dissident movements and requires study of the strategic interactions between media and movements to understand framing struggles. These models suggest that “dissident watchdogs,” like PMW, can affect news coverage. What is not clear is the extent to which dissident watchdogs can affect news content when they can make appeals that resonate with professional journalism but that do not resonate with the country’s ideological air. I examine PMW’s strategies to produce content changes between 2000 and 2004, detail the group’s interactions with newsworkers, and document the outcomes of those interactions to understand the struggle to affect media framing. The watchdog, when it systematically monitored coverage and individually critiqued news staff, produced substantive changes in content and practice but these were limited in number. When the watchdog bombarded news organizations with complaints it was able to produce several superficial changes, but these changes resulted in no meaningful impact on the news frame. These findings indicate that the dominant narrative is incorporative enough to accommodate “journalistically useful” points without resulting in a fundamental or substantive change in the frames that inform newswork. Thus, the emergence of dissident media monitors to “neutralize” guardian monitors is only one step toward affecting the entire “ideological air” that informs newswork of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues.Item 'Revenge of the virtuous women' : framing of gender and violence by Palestinian militant organizations(2011-05) Zarrugh, Amina Riad; Young, Michael P.From 2002 to 2006, ten Palestinian women committed suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and military personnel, resulting in more fatalities and wounded noncombatants on average than attacks by male perpetrators. Rather than examining individual women’s motivations to become a suicide bomber, this research endeavor seeks to shift focus from this prevailing analytical approach to a sociological analysis of how militant organizations frame female participation to the public. Social movement perspectives and an extension of Erving Goffman’s work on frame analysis theoretically inform an examination of media produced by the two non-secular militant organizations of Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. Organizations attempt to mitigate the “broken frame” introduced by female incorporation into an overwhelmingly male enterprise by strategically creating new frames that exalt and reinterpret extant social norms. Organizations frame female perpetrators as un-feminine individuals prior to their actions but, through the act of martyrdom, frame them as feminized symbols of the threat posed to Palestinian society, and its gender order, by Israeli military presence in the occupied territories. Martyrdom is framed, physically and symbolically, as a transformative experience. An application of frame analysis to violent social movements offers researchers the opportunity to understand how groups attempt to garner support and advance their interests within their populations and abroad.Item The sociopolitical foundations of Palestinian Resistance, 1948-1970(2012-05) McCormack, Nathan Eddington; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-; Brower, BenjaminMuch of the research on the Palestinian Resistance Movement focuses on the period of its most active international terrorism, roughly between the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and October 1977. These studies focus largely on the violent acts of the movement’s operatives and the movement’s Marxist political theory during this time. Less has been written, however, about the movement’s development prior to 1967, or the relationship between traditional forms of anti-colonial resistance and tribal violence in Palestinian society and the forms of resistance that manifested within the Palestinian Resistance Movement. This thesis analyzes the development of political critiques and theories on the use of political violence within the organizations of Palestinian Resistance between the nakba in 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, tracing them back to the traditional sociopolitical structures that regulated authority and tribal violence in Palestine prior to the twentieth century. Due to a variety of economic and political forces at work in the region, political authority among Arab Palestinians shifted from rural kinship-based networks to urban patronage-based networks between roughly 1858 and 1922. This resulted in a disconnection between those wielding political and economic influence and the population’s center of mass, which remained in the rural hinterlands. This dual structure, which ultimately contributed to the failure of nationalist Palestinian leaders to effectively harness peasant anticolonial resistance during the British Mandate to strategic ends, was a central element in the critique of mid-century Palestinian Resistance Movement thinkers, and informed the theories they generated during this time. As an illustration of Palestinian resistance thought during this period, I analyze the content and editorial perspective of Filasṭīn, a newspaper published by the Arab Nationalist Movement from 1964 to 1967. Through this newspaper, the ANM clearly articulated a position on Arab government and the use of violence for political ends which remained a major influence in the theories of the movement after 1967.