EUME
2011/ 2012

Ihab Saloul

The Rhetoric of National Belonging: Contested Memories in Palestinian and Israeli Third-Generations’ Narratives, 2001-2014

Ihab Saloul is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Media at Maastricht University, and a Researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. He studied English Literature and Political Science (BA, 1997) at Birzeit University, Palestine, English Literature and Political Communication (MA, 2001), Cultural Analysis (MPhil, 2002), Cultural Analysis and Comparative Literature (PhD, 2009) at the University of Amsterdam. Saloul's research and teaching areas include the study of cultural memory and identity politics, diaspora and migration, literary theory and visual analysis as well as cultural thought in the Middle East with a focus on contemporary Palestinian and Israeli societies.

The Rhetoric of National Belonging: Contested Memories in Palestinian and Israeli Third-Generations’ Narratives, 2001-2014

During his fellowship with EUME, Saloul will work on a book project that deals with the aesthetics of displacement in Palestinian and Israeli cultural memories and their effects on the making of social imaginations and political orders in the Middle East. Provisionally entitled "The Rhetoric of National Belonging: Contested Memories in Palestinian and Israeli Third Generations' Narratives, 2001–2014", this comparative study explores the ways in which diverse experiences of exile and travel generate conflicted understandings of collective memory, and how those memories circulate in wider social worlds, helping to shape and reshape national and territorial claims in Palestine and Israel today.