November 1 | 3:30 – 5:00 PM
WGS Seminar Series: Palestinian Feminisms
Register
Location: Virtual
Please join Boston University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program for Palestinian Feminisms, featuring talks by scholars Lila Sharif and Jennifer Mogannam.
Lila Sharif
“Feminism without bread: foremothers, hearths, and survival during the genocide in Gaza”
This talk will address the concept of reproductive genocide in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza at the hands of the state of Israel. Reflecting on the conditions that deprive life for all living beings, this presentation reflects on the ways in which the people of Gaza defy settler state violence. As Gazans continue to struggle for basic life, they affirm Indigenous knowledge, recalling teachings of survival from their foremothers.
Dra. Lila Sharif (she/hers) is a Palestinian feminist creative writer, researcher, and educator based in the Phoenix area. Her research focuses on Indigenous ontologies, race/ethnicity, Arab and Muslim experiences in the United States, food studies, and global, decolonial feminisms. She is a co-founding member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective as well as the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. She has published poetry, books, academic articles, and public essays. She is currently co-editing A Decolonial Guidebook of Historic Palestine forthcoming with Duke, and is completing a book on the decolonial politics embedded in Palestine’s ancestral olive traditions forthcoming with the University of Minnesota Press. Sharif holds a Dual Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies and Sociology.
Jennifer Mogannam
“Feminist Intifada: Palestinian Women in Movement”
This talk chronicles over a century of Palestinian feminist trajectories. It locates and analyzes the active organizing and struggles of Palestinian women and Palestinian feminism on the path to liberation, of land and people. This talk delineates the centrality of Palestinian women in liberation struggle and offers an analysis of the question of feminism in Palestinian movement struggle. It will situate an anticolonial gendered framework, contextualizing the escalatory violence faced by Palestinians in both everyday and accelerated moments of erasure and genocide.
Jennifer Mogannam is an Assistant Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz where she is a UC-Mellon Humanities Early Faculty Fellow. She is a longtime community organizer, currently as a founding and active member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective. She also serves as a collective member for the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council. She is working on a book project about the coalitional work of the Palestinian revolution and the Lebanese opposition organizations during the Lebanese civil war, a work that offers deep contextualization for the current moment we are witnessing. Her work, while often historical, is also forward looking, toward possibilities of decolonization and building a new future.
Co-sponsored by: BU Diversity & Inclusion Learn More Series, BU Center on Forced Displacement, BU Students for Justice in Palestine, BU Young Democratic Socialists, BU SHADES, BU Organization of Pakistani students, BU Queer Activist Collective, PERIOD at BU, BU World Languages & Literatures Asso.
