2020-21 Academic Catalog

As a crossroads of diverse perspectives in such a multicultural, but fraught environment in the Middle East, Israeli and Palestinian fiction and film offer a kaleidoscopic socio-cultural introduction to Middle East Studies, in microcosm. We will focus on how mental pictures of home, self, and other have been created, perpetuated, and/or challenged in local fiction since the 1940s and in film since the 1990s, by authors and artists of Middle Eastern Jewish, European Jewish, and Palestinian backgrounds. We will also explore community, generational, and gender-relevant responses to their projections of post/colonial history and national life in Israel/ Palestine.