Between the River and the Sea: Political Concepts from Israel/Palestine

This course will introduce some of the main aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict, its history, and the recurring patterns of the unending violence that permeates it by paying close attention to some of the key concepts used to grasp and explicate the reality and history shared by those who were engaged in it. Our concepts – e.g., nationalism, colonialism, statelessness – will be drawn from the writings of engaged scholars, ideologues, and other participants. These concepts will be problematized twice: first, by the actors involved in the ongoing conflict who question their capacity to capture, illuminate, and make sense of the complex reality at stake, and second by us, as critical observers inquiring how these concepts have been used not only to understand and explain but to construct and reconstruct reality.