Despite Obfuscation and Orientalism: Palestine in Modern History

Let’s Talk about Palestine: A UC Berkeley Teach-in Series

Moderated by Samera Esmeir, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley

This talk explores the relationship between modern philozionism, or the love of Zionism in the West, and the denialism of the Palestinians. The nineteenth-century European Zionist idea of implanting and sustaining an exclusively Jewish nationalist state in multireligious Palestine was a response to European racial antisemitism. But it was also premised, from the outset, on the erasure of native Palestinian history and the political significance of their centuries-old belonging on their own land.

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.  Professor Makdisi is the author of multiple award-winning books, the most recent being Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (2019). He has published widely on Ottoman and Arab history as well as on U.S.-Arab relations and U.S. missionary work in the Middle East.  Among his major articles are “Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History” which appeared in the Journal of American History and “Ottoman Orientalism” and “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity” both of which appeared in the American Historical Review.

Samera Esmeir is associate professor in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (2012) and the senior editor of Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory. She is currently completing a book on Palestine’s revolutions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

All events in the  Let’s Talk about Palestine: A UC Berkeley Teach-in Series are open to the public and will be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/@UCBMELC.

Coordinated by the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC). Co-sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Department of Rhetoric, the Program in Critical Theory, the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

315 Wheeler Hall (Maude Fife Room) is wheelchair accessible. Please view this website for more details about accessing Wheeler Hall. If you require an accommodation for effective communication or information about campus mobility access features to fully participate in this event, please contact bmelc@berkeley.edu.