Browsing by Subject "Palestine"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Between Trepidation and Hope: A Study of Palestinian Christians after the Arab Conquests, ca. 630-797
    (2024-05) Hansen, Benjamin
    This study examines the lives of Palestinian Christians in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Though current scholarship sheds much light on political, theological, and other intellectual responses to the rise of Islam, it has little to say on local society, especially the impact of religious and political change on so-called “simple believers.” Responding to the neglect of this important topic, my study highlights the social-historical experiences of Christians in Umayyad and early Abbasid Palestine. Recent scholarship on the early medieval Middle East has come to eschew the notion of a common cultural and historical experience under the first Islamic caliphates. Regional and micro-regional studies have shown that distinct communities throughout the Levant were faced with unique experiences and challenges. My study offers the first treatment of the experiences and challenges of these Palestinian communities, from their center in Jerusalem to the peripheries of Galilee and the Negev. Evidence for this Palestinian “micro-Christendom” exists in a variety of texts and objects. These include hagiographies, correspondence, homilies, inscriptions, travelogues, papyri, and the remains of material culture, both urban and rural. In considering this evidence as a whole, this study assesses the changes which Palestinian Christian communities underwent in this period (alongside remarkable continuities). What emerges from this analysis are the contours of a community struggling to shape a deliberate future while claiming a sacred and immutable past. Such a paradoxical struggle overflowed into everyday life, touching on questions of food, dress, labor, family, and language. Though focused on the particulars of this Palestinian community, my study also contributes to a broader scholarly discussion of the interconnected worlds and religious and ethical values of medieval Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
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    Ethics of Public Intellectual Work
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Beard, David
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    I'm Not Yelling
    (2024-04-06) Polikoff, Whalen
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    In-Class History Simulation: Mid-1940s Middle East Conference Among the Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and the United Nations
    (2018) Arendale, David
    Students are to seek agreements so that the Jews and Palestinian Arabs have a home. This history simulation takes place before the modern nations of Israel and Jordan were created and recognized by the United Nations. Discard everything known about the conflict in Middle East for the past fifty years. This region had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire until 1922 and then the British managed the area as a “mandate” until the Jews and Palestinian people could create one, two, or more new countries. Students are members of the Middle East Conference negotiation teams representing leaders from the Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and the United Nations. To provide three parties for negotiations, the United Nations was added to avoid deadlock between the groups representing the Jews and Palestinians. Also, it was decided to add the U.N. since their priorities are not always the same for either or both of the other groups in real life. Students know the decisions made will be important for cultural harmony in the region. Students are to focus on the needs of their group. The timeframe for this negotiating session is in the mid-1940s before the Jewish people declare formation of the nation of Israel. A major issue for the simulation is that students must discard their current knowledge of the situation of the Middle East and place them in a different time period when decisions could be made before war was near constant in the region. The simulation receives high approval by the students, often listed as their top learning experience. As noted above, an evaluation form is completed by the students. It is partially a reflection on what they learned and partially an evaluation with suggestions to change. Often, those changes are reflected in the curriculum which is updated annually. This simulation has been used each semester for over seven years. It has been effectively used in classes of 95 to 25.
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    Online History Simulation: Mid-1940s Middle East Conference among the Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and the United Nations
    (2018) Arendale, David
    Students are to seek agreements so that the Jews and Palestinian Arabs have a home. This history simulation takes place before the modern nations of Israel and Jordan were created and recognized by the United Nations. Discard everything known about the conflict in Middle East for the past fifty years. This region had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire until 1922 and then the British managed the area as a “mandate” until the Jews and Palestinian people could create one, two, or more new countries. A major learning objective is to understand the point-of-view of a world leader based on their group’s history. While leaders have their own personalities that impact their style of communication, understanding their country’s history provides deeper influences on their desires for their homeland. The United Nations was added to this simulation to avoid a deadlock between the Jews and Palestinians. The U.N. does have its own agenda which is not necessarily aligned with the desires by individual countries or ethnic groups in this simulation with the Jews and Palestinians. While students share a common Google document among the four or five, a student’s grade is solely depended on their own work. Students are placed into a small group so it is easier to see what other students are doing and perhaps receive some encouragement and ideas. The other small group Google documents are open to view as well. Students write interactive dialogue among the three conference negotiators.
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    Palestine and the Middle East in the Popular Filmic Imaginary: Historical Memory, Grievable Lives, and Encountering the Other in Film
    (2022-07) Bennett, Stephen
    This study explores how American audiences encounter Palestine and the wider Middle East through popular films, and how our collective memories of conflicts in the Arab world are constructed in media. Taking into account how the discourse of film critics often prime audiences to understand films as realistic and historically accurate, this project takes an incisive critical look at how films that are framed as sympathetic and progressive actually deny Palestinians and Arabs agency, and render their lives as disposable and ungrievable. In framing films as a motivated public memory project and analyzing the textual elements and narratives of popular movies, this study also uncovers how the cities and spaces of the Middle East are presented merely as sites of danger and trauma for American and Israeli protagonists. It also delves into the work these films do regarding the malleability of collective national memory and how they rewrite conflicts of the past to help maintain senses of militaristic masculinity and the ideology of exceptionalism. This study also expands on the concept of the Israeli ‘Shoot and Cry’ narratives to demonstrate how that same effect is prominent in American war films and displaces the audiences’ sympathy from the victim to the aggressor. The project closes with an analysis of two films, Amreeka and Forget Baghdad, both of which complicate notions of memory, place, and Palestinian and Arab identity, in stark contrast with what is seen in most mainstream films portraying the peoples and places of the Middle East.