What is a Palestinian and Arab feminist approach to academic freedom in the context of acute violence and global repression? This panel brings together Palestinian and Arab feminist scholars in the US academy at various stages in their careers to address the concern over academic freedom and the erasure of knowledge in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Speakers consider how Israel’s genocide matriculates to the realm of knowledge production and repression and how feminists in the US diaspora name and work against these forms of erasure.
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Activist scholar and Professor at Portland State University’s School of Social Work.
Stéphanie Wahab is an activist scholar and Professor at Portland State University’s School of Social Work. Her teaching, research and scholarship tend to occur at the intersections of individual and state sanctioned violence including but not limited to intimate partner violence, sex trades, systemic racism, militarization, and occupation.
Creative writer, researcher, and assistant professor at Arizona State University.
Dr. Lila Adib Sharif is a creative writer, researcher, and assistant professor at the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is currently writing a book about the decolonial significance of the olive tree, which has been harvested by Palestinians for over 6,000 years. She teaches Indigenous education and global feminisms.
Radical educator, activist, author, and PhD student.
Amanda Najib is a radical educator, activist, author, and PhD student. Her work centers on issues of race, politics, and education in Palestinian communities in the diaspora. She is currently exploring the structural, institutional, and systemic discrimination Palestinian Americans face in an attempt to theorize a Palestinian Critical Race Theory.
Postdoctoral Fellow of Indigenous studies at Washington University.
Eman Ghanayem is a postdoctoral fellow of Indigenous studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her work examines questions of displacement, settlement, and belonging in Palestine and Indigenous North America within literary practices and through a framework of interconnected settler colonialisms and comparative Indigeneities.
Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at San Diego State University.
Amira Jarmakani (she/they) is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty with the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies and LGBTQ+ studies at San Diego State University. Her most recent book,An Imperialist Love Story: Desert Romances and the War on Terror (NYU Press 2015), explores the crucial role of desire in understanding how the war on terror works and how it perseveres. She also authoredImagining Arab Womanhood: The Cultural Mythology of Veils, Harems, and Belly Dancers in the U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), which won the National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa book prize.
