Palestine Solidarity and Resistances to Empire: Diasporic Cultural Production as Decolonial Praxis

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

This panel positions Palestinian diasporic cultural production from Turtle Island as a site of decolonial possibility within late-stage American Empire. Through the prism of diaspora/exile, it advances the notion that Palestinian cultural production is a practice of meaning-making wherein alternative forms of being and belonging can be imagined and deployed and critical resources are fashioned and wielded. Advancing an understanding of diaspora Palestinian cultural work as integral to wider liberation struggles, each panelist approaches different sites of cultural production and dissemination, from classrooms to concerts, poetry collections, anthologies, and posters. Detailing her experience teaching both a multiethnic American literature course and a Palestinian diaspora literature course during the genocidal Zionist assault on Gaza, Ruba Akkad frames Al-Aqsa Flood as a pedagogical rupture. Reading experiences in the classroom alongside theories of recognition and rupture, she argues that a psychological and epistemological rupture has transformed also into a pedagogical rupture through forming a new conscientização in the wake of this flood. Julie Feng examines the 2024 Seattle-based Year in Poetry Subscription Service as a site of articulation between the material and literary, discussing how the curation of tatreez bookmarks with works of poetry further reveals the themes, aesthetics, and political commitments of these works. Robin Gabriel examines the Palestinian Youth Movement’s fourth annual Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology, Knocking on the Doors of Jerusalem, as a site of anti-colonial struggle that challenges the progressive and linear temporalities of empire. Arguing that the jury of cultural workers, scholars, and artists who curate the anthology as well as the contributions to the anthology itself constitute counter-temporalities of survival, resistance, and hope, she highlights how the past is a living, ongoing project that is being adapted for the purposes of a changing liberation struggle. Next, using the Palestine Poster Project as an archive through which to trace the shifting relationship between aesthetics and politics in the Palestinian liberation struggle, Salah Hassan discusses the work of Palestinian artist Samia Halaby between This panel positions Palestinian diasporic cultural production from Turtle Island as a site of decolonial possibility within late-stage American Empire. Through the prism of diaspora/exile, it advances the notion that Palestinian cultural production is a practice of meaning-making wherein alternative forms of being and belonging can be imagined and deployed and critical resources are fashioned and wielded. Advancing an understanding of diaspora Palestinian cultural work as integral to wider liberation struggles, each panelist approaches different sites of cultural production and dissemination, from classrooms to concerts, poetry collections, anthologies, and posters. Detailing her experience teaching both a multiethnic American literature course and a Palestinian diaspora literature course during the genocidal Zionist assault on Gaza, Ruba Akkad frames Al-Aqsa Flood as a pedagogical rupture. Reading experiences in the classroom alongside theories of recognition and rupture, she argues that a psychological and epistemological rupture has transformed also into a pedagogical rupture through forming a new conscientização in the wake of this flood. Julie Feng examines the 2024 Seattle-based Year in Poetry Subscription Service as a site of articulation between the material and literary, discussing how the curation of tatreez bookmarks with works of poetry further reveals the themes, aesthetics, and political commitments of these works. Robin Gabriel examines the Palestinian Youth Movement’s fourth annual Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology, Knocking on the Doors of Jerusalem, as a site of anti-colonial struggle that challenges the progressive and linear temporalities of empire. Arguing that the jury of cultural workers, scholars, and artists who curate the anthology as well as the contributions to the anthology itself constitute counter-temporalities of survival, resistance, and hope, she highlights how the past is a living, ongoing project that is being adapted for the purposes of a changing liberation struggle. Next, using the Palestine Poster Project as an archive through which to trace the shifting relationship between aesthetics and politics in the Palestinian liberation struggle, Salah Hassan discusses the work of Palestinian artist Samia Halaby between 1970 to 1990. Hassan interrogates the transition in modes of representation over time, juxtaposing her more abstract art pieces with her solidarity posters. Finally, Leah Woehr and Tara Di Cassio analyze Palestinian musician Saint Levant’s U.S. and European tour through the framework of sonic geography, foregrounding engagement with decolonial nostalgia, diaspora, and futurities. Together, these panelists further a notion of Palestinian cultures of resistance as flexible, adaptive, and central to the Palestinian liberation struggle and broader liberation movements worldwide.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• Al-Aqsa Flood as Pedagogical Rupture: Teaching Palestinian Diaspora Literature in the Wake of the Flood - Ruba Akkad, Austin College

• Text and Textile: On Palestinian Poetry, Tatreez, and Projects of Solidarity - Julie Feng, University of Washington Seattle

• Contesting Temporalities of Empire: Palestinian Youth Movement’s Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology - Robin Gabriel, University of California Santa Cruz

• How to Take Refuge in a Seed: Metaphors of Survival and Becoming in Palestinian Seed Work - Jacob Sirhan, University of California-Santa Cruz

Chair

• Lila A Sharif, Arizona State University-Tempe

Biographical Information

Ruba Akkad
Ruba Akkad is a Palestinian-Syrian Assistant Professor of English and Gender Studies at Austin College, where she teaches courses focused on contemporary multiethnic American literature, anticolonial resistance, diaspora, third world feminisms, and Palestinian and Arab life and literature. Ruba’s current research explores different forms of what she calls occupied joy, a decolonial form of toothed joy, entangled with grief and rage, an anticolonial way of being (resisting, surviving, and healing) modeled by Palestinians and other communities resisting coloniality. Ruba’s work has been published in American Quarterly, Mondoweiss, and Across the Disciplines, and she has participated in projects such as the Radical Philosophy Association’s “Question of Palestine” syllabus.

Tara Di Cassio
Tara Di Cassio is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in Political Geography, decolonial art practices, and the politics of space/space making in the Middle East. Her dissertation examines Palestinian graffiti/street art in Jordan and the West Bank, exploring how artists use graffiti/street use walls as a medium and resource to perform a decolonial aesthetic practice. Tara’s research draws on Indigenous and Black Geographic methods to understand how these practices assert territorial rights, indigenous sovereignty, and envision/create liberatory futures across fragmented geographies. Taking cue from the archival practices of Palestinian artists and community members of this ephemeral work on social media, she is creating a digital archive of Palestinian-authored street art over time in both locations. Tara is also a Lecturer of Arabic Language and Culture at North Carolina State University.

Julie Feng
Julie Feng is a doctoral candidate in communication at the University of Washington. As a community-engaged scholar, she studies cultural resistance with a focus on art, decoloniality, and social movements. She holds a BA in English/Creative Writing and a MA in Cultural Studies.
Robin Gabriel
Robin Gabriel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies departments at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her research is at the axis of critical SWANA studies, critical refugee studies, and cultural studies. Her dissertation, “Palestine in Exile: Archiving Youth Art and Activism in Diaspora,” centers the Palestine Youth Movement’s annual Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology to explore how contemporary Palestinian youth located in Turtle Island assemble a Palestine in exile through literature.

Salah Hassan
Salah D. Hassan is a professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University and is currently the Director of the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program. His work focuses on anticolonialism, literatures of empire, and Arab American culture. Hassan’s recent research addresses images of Arabs and Muslims in the media and projects of Muslim and Arab American self-representation. He recently published a book titled Portraits of Sam Hallick: Modern Arab Presence in 20th century North America (Embassy Cultural House 2023).

Lila Sharif
Lila Sharif (she/her/hers) is assistant professor at the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is a Palestinian writer, educator, researcher, poet and scholar based in the Phoenix area. Her research is located at the intersection of critical refugee studies, global feminism, and Palestinian Indigenous studies, with a focus on food, land, culture, and culture epistemologies. Sharif won the ASA’s best essay prize in 2024 for her essay “On Sophicide”. She has co-authored Departures (UC Press, 2021) with the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. Her recent publications include a comparative study of Palestinian and Vietnamese cinema (with Lan Duong), an analysis of Gazan food as a site of feminist struggle during genocide, the afterlives of the War on Terror, and a global intersectional approach to analyzing race and the environment. Most recently, Sharif co-edited Detours: A Decolonial Guidebook of Palestine with Jennifer Kelly and Somdeep Sen, which is forthcoming with Duke University Press. Her forthcoming book Olive Skins (University of Minnesota Press) analyzes the ways in which erasure and recognition inform Palestinian life, and how Palestinian women continue to mediate the relationship between the Palestinian people and their homeland, through everyday food practices, the transmission of memory, and the everyday work of Return.


Leah Woehr
Leah Woehr is a scholar-artist specializing in performance studies and cultural studies. Her research focuses on Chinese transnational adoption, exploring how citizenship, interculturality, and familial identity are performed among Chinese adoptees. Leah’s work is informed by decolonial frameworks and integrates artistic practice to illuminate the complexities of identity and belonging within this community.

Jacob Sirhan
Doctoral Student
History of Art & Visual Culture Department
University of California, Santa Cruz