Mediating Palestine: Representation, Mobilization, Experimentation, and Play

Guest Editors: Amahl Bishara and Diana Allan

Palestinian media have emerged as a vibrant field of inquiry in recent decades, having expanded from film, photography, political cartoons, and news narratives to include video, digital, and social media. Many Palestinians are involved in media production, entwined as it is with political struggle, cultural preservation, human rights documentation, family histories and artistic expression. Even as some emerging Palestinian media makers set themselves in oblique relation to the nation, eschewing representational politics in favor of formal experimentation and singular experience, production remains intrinsically political—as well as dangerous—for the subjects of an intensely militarized settler-colonial project as well as for exiled refugees. This special issue is indeed inspired by the life and death of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and by the vision of knowledge production in service of liberation she embodied.

We invite papers on media practices that represent, animate, or mobilize Palestinian worlds today, in areas including but not limited to documentary, journalism, advocacy, social media, artistic practice, and filmmaking, both fiction and experimental. We aim to investigate how media, broadly conceived, may amplify or diminish forms of Palestinian diversity in terms of class, political status, gender and sexuality, location, religiosity, and more. How do media intersect with other social, political, and technical practices, or reflect militarized life? We welcome papers that trace forms of media as they move between public and private settings, shaping belonging, memory, kin-making, and play. In anticipation of a collection presenting multidisciplinary voices and addressing the present challenges and future potential of media production in Palestine, we invite creative, critical, and multimedia submissions alike.

Please submit abstracts through this form by May 20, 2023, with the expectation of completing the full article by September 1, 2023.

Please direct any questions to jps@palestine-studies.org