Hearing Palestine

Palestine Studies at University of Toronto

Zainab Yusofi

[October 16, 2024] Palestine and Lebanon: Between Catastrophe and Liberation

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Date and time

Wednesday, October 16 · 6 PM – 8 PM EDT

Doors Open: 6 PM

Start: 6:30 PM

Location

Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street

Room: JHI 100B

About this event

Hearing Palestine and Toronto Palestine Film Festival are honoured to host two speakers who will reflect on this moment in the history of Palestine and Lebanon:

Prof. Ahmed Abu-Shaban

Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at Al-Azhar University – Gaza Visiting Professor of Environment and Urban Change, York University

Prof. Sumayya Kassamali

Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto

Another Story Bookshop Presents […] by Fady Joudah

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We are organizing a book launch & interview/talk with Fady Joudah, Griffin Award winning Palestinians poet.

Another Story Bookshop presents the Toronto launch for Fady Joudah’s new book of poetry, [….]. Fady Joudah’s powerful sixth collection of poems opens with, “I am unfinished business,” articulating the ongoing pathos of the Palestinian people. A rendering of Joudah’s survivance, […] speaks to Palestine’s daily and historic erasure and insists on presence inside and outside the ancestral land. 

The event will take place on April 24th at the Theatre Centre, and will feature a conversation with acclaimed journalist Pacinthe Mattar.

Fady Joudah is the author of […]. He has also published six collections of poems: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine. 

The Strength of Solidarity: South Africa, Palestine and the Politics of the Present Event Invite

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The Strength of Solidarity: South Africa, Palestine and the Politics of the Present

Friday, April 19, 2024
5-7 PM (doors open at 4:30 PM) William Doo Auditorium, New College 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto

The African Studies Centre and The Caribbean Studies Centre, University of Toronto, invite you to a panel discussion with speakers Rieaz Shaik, High Commissioner, Republic of South Africa; Professor Atif Kubursi, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Canadian Arab Federation; Dr. Melissa Levin, Jewish Faculty Network.

Moderated by Dr. Nisrin Elamin, Anthropology and African Studies, University of Toronto with opening remarks by Dr. Dickson Eyoh, Interim Principal, New College. ASL provided. Refreshments provided.

The Strength of Solidarity: South Africa, Palestine and the Politics of the Present Event Invite Speakers: or visit: uoft.me/the-strength-of-solidarity

Rieaz Shaik, High Commissioner, Republic of South Africa

Mr Shaik was an anti-apartheid activist, a former student leader, and an active member of African National Congress’s (ANC). He was also a negotiator in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), the Multi-Party Talks, and played a significant role in shaping the intelligence dispensation for democratic South Africa. High Commissioner, Rieaz Shaik, known as ‘Moe, has been South Africa’s envoy to Canada, for just over two years. Mr Shaik has a deep knowledge on government policy, negotiations, geopolitical issues, infrastructure finance, the political and working environments of African governments and their institutions. He is the author of “The ANC Spy Bible: Surviving Across Enemy Lines” a memoir published in 2020.

Atif Kubursi, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Canadian Arab Federation

Atif Kubursi is Emeritus Professor of Economics at McMaster University, Canada. He taught economics at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, was Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University, UK, Fellow of the Harvard Institute of Economic and Social Policy at JFK School of Government, and Adjunct Professor with the Faculty of the Environment and Urban Studies at York University. Dr., Kubursi has also served as Senior Development Officer at UNIDO in Vienna Austria, and as the Executive Secretary, and Undersecretary General of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and Chief of the Economic Analysis Division. He is chair of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Dr. Melissa Levin, Jewish Faculty Network

Melissa Levin is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the African Studies Centre and New College at the University of Toronto. She has a PhD in Political Science from the U of T, an African Studies MSc from Edinburgh University and an Honours in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research focuses on questions of coloniality, nationalism, state transformation and the politics of memorializtion with a view to understanding political change, institutions and social solidarities. She is currently the co-chair of the human rights cluster and the teaching, training and mentoring cluster of a SSHRC-funded crowd-sourcing democratic innovations platform, Participedia and a board member of Friends of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, a South African foundation focused on deepening democracy and building non-racialism.

Graphic Novel Collection Annual Lecture

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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.

Book Talk – Azad Essa’s “Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between indian and Israel”

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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

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