ECPS Webinar: Imagining Palestine

The European Centre for Palestine Studies (ECPS) would like to invite you to a webinar workshop on the award-winning book Imagining Palestine by Tahrir Hamdi. The webinar will be led by Prof. Tahrir Hamdi, with Prof. Christina Philips as the discussant.

The event will take place on Wednesday, 12 March 2025 - 16:15 – 17:30 (UK Time)

The talk will explore key themes from Imagining Palestine and address some of the most recent developments in Gaza, the future of occupied Palestine, and the necessary solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation.

Imagining Palestine offers a profound examination of Palestine through the lenses of literature, memory, and resistance, illuminating its ethical, cultural, and political significance on a global scale. It delves into how Palestinian intellectuals, artists, activists, and ordinary citizens envision their homeland examining the works of key Palestinian and other thinkers and writers such as Edward Said, Ghassan Kanafani, Naji Al Ali, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Radwa Ashour, Suheir Hammad, and Susan Abulhawa.

Format:  Online Webinar (with an in-person broadcast at LT1, IAIS) – While Dr. Hamdi will join us online, we are also offering an in-person broadcast at LT1 (IAIS), where participants can attend and engage directly in discussions.

We recommend reading the introductory chapter, Chapter 4, and the conclusion before the workshop. The book is available through the University of Exeter Library.

To attend the webinar, please register via the following link:

https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WrQ9-_GwTAKnR72pt-WcSg

If you plan to join us in person at LT1- IAIS, kindly accept the separate invite so we can estimate the number of attendees in the Institute.

We look forward to your participation. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr Rama Sahtout: r.sahtout2@exeter.ac.uk

Tahrir Hamdi Bio:

Tahrir Hamdi is a professor of anti-colonial and resistance literature and President of Arab Open University/Jordan. Prof. Hamdi recently won the international Palestine Book Award 2023 in the “Counter Current” category for her book Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity. In 2020, Prof. Hamdi won the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation’s Arab Researchers’ Award in the Humanities. She has also published research articles in reputable international journals, such as Race & Class, Interventions: the International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Arab Studies Quarterly, which is a journal founded by Edward Said in 1979. She is an assistant editor with the journal Arab Studies Quarterly. Prof. Hamdi is also an associate editor in the new journal Janus Unbound. Moreover, she is on the editorial board of the journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies published by Edinburgh University Press. Prof. Hamdi has co-edited a new book on Ghassan Kanafani’s political writings entitled Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings (2024), published by Pluto Press.

Her research work revolves around resistance literature, anti-colonial theory and the importance of place and space in literature. She published articles on Edward Said, William Butler Yeats, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Saadi Yousef, Ghassan Kanafani, Naji Al Ali, Palestine, Ireland and Iraq. Her current research interests include the complexities of space—historical/temporal, geographical and imaginative—within the anti-colonial and resistance spheres.

Rama Sahtout, PhD

Law department & Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies

Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 

University of Exeter