Stories from under Occupation: Performing the Palestinian Experience
A plethora of research has been done on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; however, few have ventured to investigate and theorize its subjects or the articulation of Palestinian culture. Theatre and drama in the Arab world are under-researched, and when cultural production is studied, Palestinian theatre is nowhere mentioned. The history of Palestinian theatre dates back to 1850 when it was in tune with the neighboring cultural centers of the Arab world, i.e. Beirut and Cairo. Occupation since 1967 has had a great impact on Palestinian theatre, which has become a vehicle for asserting Palestinian identity and collective memory in the face of cultural annihilation. Through the use of al-Hakawati (the traditional storyteller) combined with narratives of memories, current theatre aims to portray life in turmoil caused by the political situation and the frustrations of the peace process with Israel.
Ashtar’s Forum Theatre: Writing History in Palestine
Rania Jawad is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on Palestinian theatre, for which she has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and an NYU Torch Fellowship to conduct research in Israel/Palestine for the 2008-2009 academic year. She completed her Master’s in the German Department at NYU writing on popular education and the early theatre work of Bertolt Brecht. Ashtar’s Forum Theatre: Writing History in Palestine
Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948
In "Comrades and Enemies" Zachary Lockman explores the mutually formative interactions between the Arab and Jewish working classes, labor movements, and worker-oriented political parties in Palestine just before and during the period of British colonial rule. Unlike most of the historical and sociological literature on Palestine in this period, "Comrades and Enemies" avoids treating the Arab and Jewish communities as if they developed independently of each other. Instead of focusing on politics, diplomacy, or military history, Lockman draws on detailed archival research in both Arabic and Hebrew, and on interviews with activists, to delve into the country's social, economic, and cultural history, showing how Arab and Jewish societies in Palestine helped to shape each other in significant ways. "Comrades and Enemies" presents a narrative of Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine that extends and complicates the conventional story of primordial identities, total separation, and unremitting conflict while going beyond both Zionist and Palestinian nationalist mythologies and paradigms of interpretation.