Survey Documents

Controversial Course Offered at UC Berkeley

September 2002

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/45

"The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance"

Offered at University of California - Berkeley

Course Number: English R1A LEC 4 Units
Semester and Year: Fall 2002
Location and Time: 204 Wheeler TuTh 2:00-3:30
Instructor: Shingavi, Snehal
Course Control Number: 28448
Final Exam Number: TBA

Booklist: (tentative)

• Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories, Ghassan Kanafani;
• Born Black, Suheir Hammad;
• Drops of This Story, Suheir Hammad;
• Enemey of the Sun, Naseer Hasan Aruri;
• The Adam of Two Edens : Selected Poems, Mahmud Darwish;
• Memory for Forgetfulness : August, Beirut, 1982, Mahmud Darwish;
• Victims of a Map : A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry, Mahmud Darwish;
• Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Norman G. Finkelstein;
• The Question of Palestine, Edward W. Said;
• Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Edward W. Said;
• The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994, Edward W. Said;
• Intifada, Phil Marshall.

Course Description:

Since the inception of the Intifada in September of 2000, Palestinians have been fighting for their right to exist. The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, an occupation that has been ongoing since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance.

This class will examine the history of the Palestinian resistance and the way that it is narrated by Palestinians in order to produce an understanding of the Intifada and to develop a coherent political analysis of the situation. This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination. [Originally, the following phrase was included: Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections. -- Campus Watch]

Discussions about the literature will focus on several intersecting themes: how are Palestinian artists able to imagine art under the occupation; what consequences does resistance have on the character of the art that is produced (i.e. why are there so few Palestinian epics and plays and comedies); can one represent the Israeli occupation in art; what is the difference between political art and propaganda and how do the debates about those terms inflect the production of literature; how do poems represent the desire to escape and the longing for home simultaneously (alternatively, how do poems represent the nation without a state); what consequence do political debates have on formal innovations and their reproduction; and what are the obligations of artists in representing the occupation.

Note: Postings in "Survey" do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch.

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