Anaheed Al-Hardan, “Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities”

Date
Nov 9, 2016, 4:30 pm6:00 pm

Details

Event Description

poster for event with image of shattered pieces

Free and open to the public, a public lecture with Anaheed Al-Hardan, faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. Professor Al-Hardan will discuss the findings from her latest book “Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities” (Columbia University Press, 2016).

One hundred thousand Palestinians fled to Syria after being expelled from Palestine upon the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Integrating into Syrian society over time, their experience stands in stark contrast to the plight of Palestinian refugees in other Arab countries, leading to different ways through which to understand the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, in their popular memory.

Conducting interviews with first-, second-, and third-generation members of Syria’s Palestinian community, Anaheed Al-Hardan follows the evolution of the Nakba—the central signifier of the Palestinian refugee past and present—in Arab intellectual discourses, Syria’s Palestinian politics, and the community’s memorialization. Al-Hardan’s sophisticated research sheds light on the enduring relevance of the Nakba among the communities it helped create, while challenging the nationalist and patriotic idea that memories of the Nakba are static and universally shared among Palestinians. Her study also critically tracks the Nakba’s changing meaning in light of Syria’s twenty-first-century civil war.

This public lecture is supported by the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice and the American University of Beirut Collaborative Initiative.