Zainab Yusofi

New College D.G. Ivey Library Graphic Novel Collection Annual Lecture

With Artist and Writer Leila Abdelrazaq author of Baddawi

March 28, 2024 | 3:00pm – 5:00pm
D.G. Ivey Library, New College 20 Willcocks Street, Toronto

Refreshments will be served

With Panel discussants: Dr. Dina Georgis, WGSI; Dr. Rania Salem, Sociology, UTSC; Mariam El-Rayes, UTSG undergraduate student; Dr. Wafaa Hasan, WGSI We are thrilled to welcome Leila Abdelrazaq who will be joining us to discuss her past and contemporary work. Her graphic novel, Baddawi, tells the story of a young boy named Ahmed, raised in a refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, with thousands of others expelled from Palestine in 1948.

About the Author: Leila Abdelrazaq (b. 1992, Chicago) is Palestinian author and artist. Her debut graphic novel, Baddawi (Just World Books 2015) was shortlisted for the 2015 Palestine Book Awards and has been translated into three languages. Since then, she has created a number of other zines, comics, and writings. She has published, exhibited work, and given workshops around the world. Leila’s creative work primarily explores issues related to diaspora, refugeehood, history, memory, and borders. She earned her MA in Modern Middle Eastern & North African Studies from the University of Michigan in 2020, where her research focused on Palestinian futurist art and post-national imaginaries.

Hosted by the Women & Gender Studies Institute, Hearing Palestine, the D.G. Ivey Library at New College, and the generous librarianship of Jeff Newman. The annual lecture corresponds to WGS380, Feminist Graphic Novels, taught this year by Professor Judith Taylor at the WGSI.

Online via Zoom  |  February 2, 2024 | 2:00PM – 4:00PM

Attend Online

Azad Essa will discuss his 2023 book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel with Profs. Francis Cody and Alejandro Paz.

ABOUT THE TALK

Under Narendra Modi, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with its trajectory towards authoritarianism and a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ (Hindu State), little attention has been paid to the linkages between Modi’s India and the governments from which it has drawn inspiration, as well as military and technical support. India once called Zionism racism, but, as Azad Essa argues, the state of Israel has increasingly become a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy. Looking to replicate the ‘ethnic state’ in the image of Israel in policy and practice, the annexation of Kashmir increasingly resembles Israel’s settler-colonial project of the occupied West Bank. The ideological and political linkages between the two states are alarming; their brands of ethnonationalism deeply intertwined.

Hostile Homelands puts India’s relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of Zionism and Hindutva; India’s changing position on Palestine; and the countries’ growing military-industrial relationship from the 1990s. Lucid and persuasive, Essa demonstrates that the India-Israel alliance spells significant consequences for democracy, the rule of law and justice worldwide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Azad Essa is an award-winning journalist and author based between Johannesburg and New York City. He is currently a senior reporter for Middle East Eye covering American foreign policy, Islamophobia and race in the US. He is the author of The Moslems are Coming and Zuma’s Bastard and has written for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and the Guardian. Linah Alsaafin is a Palestinian journalist and writer whose work has appeared in OpenDemocracy, Al Monitor, Middle East Eye, the Times Literary Supplement, and Al Jazeera.

ABOUT THE PANEL

Francis Cody is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto, where he is the Director of the Dr. David Chu Program in Contemporary Asian Studies and the Centre for South Asian Studies. His research focuses on language, politics, and media in southern India. He first brought these interests to bear on a study of citizenship, literacy, and social movement politics in Tamil Nadu.

Alejandro Paz is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Co-chair of the Hearing Palestine Initiative. Professor Paz’s research addresses the role of language in globalization, transnationalism and diaspora. He is also interested in the relation between public communication, media, and citizenship with a regional focus on Israel and the Middle East.

Sponsor: Centre for South Asian Studies, Asian Institute

Co-Sponsor: the Hearing Palestine Initiative

February 23, 2024

A conversation with J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Amahl Bishara

Location: Innis Town Hall

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Doors Open: 5:30 PM

Register Here

Mask Wearing Strongly Recommended

This event is co-sponsored by the Urban Studies Program.

This event will feature creative works by students in CSE445, followed by a keynote lecture “Genocide and the Denial of Palestine” by Dr. Ussama Makdisi

6:-00pm – Gallery walk 

6:30pm – Program begins

7:00pm – Keynote Lecture by Dr. Makdisi

Dr. Ussama Makdisi is Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley. He was previously Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University in Houston. Dr. Makdisi is the author of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (2019), Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.- Arab Relations, 1820-2001 (2010), Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (2008), and The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (2000).

REGISTRATION DETAILS 

IN-PERSON

To attend in person, please register on the eventbrite for your ticket. 

Those that come in person will get an opportunity to see students’ creative works and listen to the lecture in person. Light snacks will be served. For accessibility needs please contact Prof Desai at ch.desai@utoronto.ca 

ONLINE

Folks online will only be able to view/hear Dr. Makdisi’s lecture. Please register for the Zoom webinar for lecture only. 

Friday, November 17, 2023 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST

William Doo Auditorium. 45 Willcocks street

Register Here 

Speakers 

1- Muhannad Ayyash, Mount Royal University, Calgary

2- Rana Baker, King’s College, London

3- Sarah Ihmoud, College of the Holy Cross

4- Munira Khayyat, NYU-Abu Dhabi 

5- Amahl Bishara, Tufts University

Description

This panel invites anthropologists who are participating in the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Toronto this year to a public event at the University of Toronto to share their perspectives on “decolonization” in relation to the war on Gaza. Examining the war on Gaza through resistance movements, international law, and the media, they reconsider the meaning of decolonization in the discourses and events that have unfolded since the latest war started. This event provides an opportunity to critically examine how we employ decolonization as a term in academic spheres. Most importantly, it offers a platform to listen to Palestinian voices, perspectives, and realities from researchers of Palestine.

Sponsors

Hearing Palestine

Department of Anthropology

Diversity and Decolonization Committee of the Department of Anthropology

Department of Geography & Planning

Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity