Projects

Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula
Edited by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner

Despite the sophisticated, critical, and oft-politically engaged literature emerging from and about the Arabian Peninsula the region remains marginalized, in multiple ways, within academic and popular analyses. Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula addresses the ways in which frameworks of knowledge production have not only obscured social realities there, but also contributed to their construction. While our roundtable contributors--activists, journalists, artists, and scholars such as Toby Jones, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, and others--approach this project from a number of different disciplinary perspectives and theoretical standpoints, several key themes surface from their critical engagements. The challenge for us, here, is to reconceptualize our objects of analysis to illuminate these power relations and the multiple ways in which they have effected far-reaching transformations of the political, cultural, and material infrastructures of  everyday life in the Arabian Peninsula. Approaching knowledge, space, identity, economy, and the political as contested and historically constituted—as the contributors to this roundtable urge us to—thus serves to relocate the peninsula within broader circuits of power, capital, labor, migration, and religion, from which they have long been analytically severed.


Beyond Dominant Narratives on the Western Sahara
Edited by Samia Errazzouki and Allison L. McManus

Since the mid-twentieth century, the Western Sahara conflict has witnessed the brutal repression of activists and numerous other human rights violations against the Sahrawi people. As a result, it has caused the disruption of untold families while incurring extremely high costs for the UN in attempts to maintain stability through humanitarian aid, peace-keeping missions, and facilitating numerous failed dialogues between the parties. To make better sense of the long, complex, and largely marginalized conflict, this pedagogy publication offers a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of the Western Saharan conflict and the discourses surrounding it. Contributors include Stephen Zunes who sheds light on Morocco’s policies towards the territory and its people, including human rights abuses and policies of settlement; John Entelis who explores the Western Sahara’s significance for the region; Aboubakr Jamaï and Ali Anouzla who underscore the intensification of the call for self-determination; Allison L. McManus who places the conflict in a global context, examining the role of the United Nations;  Samia Errazzouki who examines the discourse surrounding the conflict as a political tool that comes at the expense of the Sahrawi population; and Andrew McConnell whose photo-essay offers a unique perspective of  life in the refugee camps.
 

Gaza Revisited
Edited by Noura Erakat

In November 2012, Israel began an aerial bombing campaign against the Gaza Strip that lasted eight gruesome days. Even in its first hours, and before its full magnitude was known, the military campaign sparked urgency amongst observers because of the memory it evoked. In the winter 2008/09, Israel conducted a twenty-two day military offensive against the besieged territory. The offensive, infamously known as Operation Cast Lead, killed some 1,300 Palestinians including 280 children, and destroyed twenty-nine schools, sixty police stations, thirty mosques, and 2,400 homes. Thirteen Israelis were killed during the offensive including three civilians, and four soldiers who were killed by friendly fire. Israel’s military attack unleashed an unprecedented amount of lethal force that raised a slew of moral, political, and legal controversies. Four years later, observers braced themselves for a similar campaign. Operation Pillar of Cloud was not as devastating or long-lasting as its most recent predecessor, but it marked an equally significant juncture in the history of the Palestinian-Israel Conflict. This pedagogy publication examines the November 2012 military offensive and unpacks historical legacies, legal questions, media portrayals, and political considerations. In doing so, the publication helps create a context for the attack and considers possibilities for the future of the conflict and the balance of power in the Middle East more generally. 


“Resistance Everywhere:” The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey
Edited by Anthony Alessandrini, Nazan Üstündağ, and Emrah Yildiz 

This collection focuses on the Gezi Park protests, which erupted in late May and led to ongoing nation-wide resistance in opposition to the majority government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This volume, designed specifically for use in the classroom, features articles from Jadaliyya’s coverage of this summer’s events in Turkey, plus a selection of pieces from the previous three years that provide background and context. It provides an introduction to recent events in Turkey, which have already made history. It also works to situate these events in their global and local contexts, contributing to ongoing debates about state-citizen relations, regimes of state control, and forms of dissident and collective political action that continue to generate tectonic transformations throughout the region.