Palestine, Art, and Dissent

This winter session course offers an opportunity for students to join a creative weeklong crash course in the history, politics, and activism of Palestine that preceded the violence of October 7th and the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the current war on Gaza. Through films, readings, art work, music, religious texts, and food we will gain context and understanding of the diverse people who inhabit the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and why it has become a site of such violence and conflict. The class will define and critically engage some of the terms that have become central to understanding the situation of Palestinians: nakba, Zionism, settler colonialism, apartheid, ethnonationalism, sovereignty, statehood, occupation, genocide, terrorism, intifada, war profiteering, and the security state. We will explore the connection between Palestine and other decolonial, indigenous rights, anti-apartheid, and abolition movements around the world. In a time when academic and artistic freedom are under threat and islamophobia and anti-semitism are on the rise, we will reflect on how we as artists on a college campus can individually and collectively affect social change.

The week-long (.5 unit) course will be team-taught by faculty from Critical Studies and guest artists. Throughout the course we will create and uphold community guidelines that ensure the space for all members of the class to be learners and to ask questions. We will insist that students show patience and tolerance for hearing ideas they may disagree with and maintain the class as a space for all to learn and increase their understanding of a deeply complex and longstanding conflict.