EUME Berliner Seminar
Wed 03 Feb 2021 | 17:00–18:30

The Kafr Qasem Trilogy: The Story of an Untold Massacre

Amal Eqeiq (Williams College / EUME Fellow 2019-21) in conversation with Refqa Abu-Remaileh (FU Berlin / EUME Fellow)

Abdal Tamam Taha, Kafr Qasem (1996). (c) Abdal Tamam Taha
Abdal Tamam Taha, Kafr Qasem (1996). (c) Abdal Tamam Taha

Exploring the intersection of literature, oral history and anthropology as an axis of Indigenous documentary narrative, this presentation investigates the untold story of the Kafr Qasem Massacre (1956) in Palestinian literature. In addition to a close reading in a series of creative non-fiction texts penned by major Palestinian writers, such as Tawfiq Zayyad (1970), Mahmoud Darwish (1973) and Emile Habiby (1976), this presentation examines the small books of Kafr Qasem: a repertoire of literary ethnographies, pamphlets, oral testimonies, and local guidebooks that archive, document and commemorate the massacre. Through a critical and a comparative engagement with the concept of small books in Kafr Qasem and beyond, Eqeiq reflects on the reconceptualization of state-sanctioned colonial violence in Palestinian resistance literature and emerging decolonial methodological approaches to subaltern literary histories of minoritized Indigenous literatures. 

Amal Eqeiq is Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College. She is currently working on her manuscript, Indigenous Affinities: Comparative Study in Mayan and Palestinian Narratives. Her interdisciplinary research includes modern Arab literature, popular culture, Palestine Studies, feminism(s), performance studies, translation, indigenous studies in the Americas, the Global South, literary history, hip-hop, critical border studies, and decoloniality. She has contributed to the Contemporary Levant Journal, The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History, Journal of Palestine Studies, Transmotion: An Online Journal of Postmodern Indigenous Studies, MadaMasr, Jadaliyya, and Kohl among others. She has received several awards, including a writing residency at Hedgebrook, the Dean’s Medal in Humanities from the University of Washington, and PARC NEH/FPIRI research fellowship. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington (2013). Amal Eqeiq also keeps a Facebook blog called “Diaries of a Hedgehog Feminist.” She is currently an affiliated EUME Fellow associated with the Lateinamerika‐Institut of Freie Universität Berlin.


Refqa Abu-Remaileh is professor of Modern Arabic Literature & Film at the Freie Universität Berlin. She is also the director of the European Research Council (ERC) project PalREAD-Country of Words which focuses on Palestinian literature.
 

In accordance with the measures against the spread of the coronavirus, this seminar session will be held virtually via ZOOM. Please register in advance via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de to receive the login details. Depending on approval by the speakers, the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available via the account of the Forum Transregionale Studien on SoundCloud.

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