Dr Anna Bernard, ‘Resources for International Solidarity’, University of York, 25 February

Our very own co-investigator Dr Anna Bernard will be speaking at the University of York on Wednesday 25th February, on the topic of ‘Resources for International Solidarity: Palestine and South Africa on Camera’.

Anna is now based at King’s College London, but was previously a member of York’s Department of English and Related Literature, and we’re very pleased to welcome her back.

The talk is being hosted by York’s ‘Resistant Resources’ research strand, which developed from the Postcolonial Studies Association Postgraduate Conference held at York in July 2014.

Anna’s talk takes place in the Bowland Auditorium at 6pm. Attendance is free and all are welcome.

Her abstract is below:

Resources for International Solidarity: Palestine and South Africa on Camera

This paper compares the consciousness-raising strategies of anti-apartheid and Palestine solidarity documentaries released in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, including Some of the Palestinians (1976), You Have Struck a Rock! (1981), Occupied Palestine (1981), Who Are the Palestinians? (1983), and Witness to Apartheid (1986). These films emerge at a crucial juncture in the general shift, from the 1970s onward, from third-worldist and liberationist ideas of solidarity to civil society and humanitarian approaches. I argue that these films respond to the organizational needs of their particular moment by negotiating between these conflicting notions of what it means to be in solidarity, a strategy that remains in evidence in contemporary forms of international solidarity activism. They thus have important resonances with, and lessons for, cultural activism in our present moment.

If you’re unable to travel to York, Anna will be speaking on related themes at the University of Edinburgh Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies on Monday 2nd March, as part of their Lectures on Palestine 2015. The abstract for that talk can be found here.

Thanks to our network member Sarah Irving, who is part of a team curating the lectures, for this info.

The return of Jerusalem to Muslim rule: the Holy City in the time of Saladin and his family (1187-1250), Edinburgh, 23 March

A seminar in the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Edinburgh which may be of interest to our readers.
It takes place on Monday 23 March 2015, 5.30pm, at 19 George Square, Room G2.
Venue location: http://www.ed.ac.uk/maps?building=16-27-george-square

2015 IMES Lectures on Palestine

Professor Carole Hillenbrand, Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh

The return of Jerusalem to Muslim rule: the Holy City in the time of Saladin and his family (1187-1250)

This presentation unfolds the melancholy tale which traces the fate of Jerusalem from the glory days of Saladin to its sack by the Central Asian Khwarizmians some fifty years later and its conquest and restoration by the Mamluks in 1250. In particular, it contrasts the magnificent obsession of Saladin with Jerusalem as a symbol of Muslim devotion and successful jihad with the cynical opportunism of his descendants, for whom Jerusalem was sometimes a mere pawn in a power struggle engulfing the entire Middle East. This sorry tale of climax and anti-climax involves some of the key players in the politics of the time, including Saladin himself, Frederick II of Sicily and the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil.

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