Invitation and Object: Reframing the Study of Palestine

"Welcome to Gaza:" On the Politics of Invitation and the Right to Tourism

Jenny Kelly, Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UCSC

In between Israeli military incursions, Palestinians in Gaza have described their colonial condition and navigated their cleavage from the rest of Palestine through virtual collaborative projects that rehearse, satirize, and reimagine tourism.  These projects refuse to position Gaza as solely a site of suffering, a site where tourism could never flourish; they instead ask what it would mean if Palestinians in Gaza could actually invite tourists, host their own tours, and control their own borders.  Through virtual tours that simultaneously describe suffering and create joy, Palestinians in Gaza are combating not only the siege but also the representations of Palestinians in Gaza as under siege and nothing more.

Revisiting the "Question of Palestine": The Epistemic Containment of Palestinian as Object

Noya Kansky, Graduate Student in Feminist Studies and affiliated with Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UCSC

In this paper, I revisit Edward Said's "Question of Palestine," with specific attention to the activation of Palestine as object of study in contemporary humanities-focused research agendas.  How are these research choices shaped by institutions and the left-leaning ethos of scholar activism, contemporary post-colonial and settler colonial studies and additionally political theory, and current debates on research ethics and epistemic production?  What violences does this practice reinscribe and in what ways does the contemporary university contain and re-direct questions that frame Palestine as a stable object - often exceptionalized as a research site that is productive to those thinking about oppression and violence?