Teaching the Occupation through Film and Literature

• In Event: Teaching After Palestine: Speaking about the Occupation and Palestinian Culture in the U.S. Academy

Abstract

After an academic tour of universities and NGOs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in May 2011, I felt deeply motivated to teach about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by presenting literary, graphic and filmic representations of the occupation and the impact it has on everyday encounters for Palestinians and between Israelis and Palestinians. Rather than exclusively focusing on one point of view, my goal was to suggest that by merely depicting the Occupation and its effects as recorded by a number of writers, filmmakers, and journalists, we could explore the absence of the Palestinian narrative from our understanding of this conflict and how absent it is from the discursive landscape of American students engaged with any study of "the global" whether in Political Science, History, Humanities, or Geography. This presentation will explore how use of film, graphic journalistic depictions and literary texts authored by Israelis and Palestinians can be employed in a university classroom to address what Edward Said pointed to in his seminal essay, "Permission to Narrate": namely, the denial of the opportunity for Palestinians to air their painful experiences of the "Nakba" (the catastrophe) of 1948. Building on Said's essay, this presentation explores the necessity of narrating the occupation and the effects of occupation and the direct impact of settler movement on the everyday existence of Palestinians. By addressing pedagogical strategies, the paper will demonstrate how the simple act of teaching the Palestinian narrative has been in itself challenged and perceived as a threat. Sources for teaching include Israeli writer Savyon Liebrecht's "A Room on the Roof," Israeli filmmaker, Erin Riklis's feature-length film, "Lemon Tree," Palestinian writer Raja Shehadah's memoir, Palestinian Walks, and American journalist, Joe Sacco's Palestine."

Author

• Persis Karim, San Jose State University (CA)