Event Details

Dominant contemporary discourses about Palestine/Israel regularly present a singular, polarized, and flattened narrative perspective - "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestinian" - as if it is the only way to understand the current crisis, what preceded it, and what possible futures might emerge. Nevertheless, recognizing the interlinked historical traumas, cultural imaginaries, and asymmetrical power relations that underlie this conflict can point towards alternative ways of articulating the past and the future. In this panel, we will explore multiple voices that have offered ways of seeing self and other that Edward Said identifies as the “contrapuntal imagination.” Please join us to listen to, learn from, and ask questions of our panelists, Drs. Shir Alon (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota), Joe Farag (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota), and Noam Sienna (Scholar of Jewish Culture in the Islamic World, University of Toronto), facilitated by Dr. Khaldoun Samman (Department of Sociology, Macalester).