Middle Eastern Studies Program, Human Rights Project, Human Rights Program, Historical Studies Program, and Environmental and Urban Studies Program Present
Nature Reserves, Territory, and the Question of Palestinian
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium
Bard College’s Human Rights Project, Middle Eastern Studies , EUS, History Departments Present:Omar Tesdell: Nature Reserves, Territory, and the Question of Palestinian Cultivation
TUESDAY, 14 April, 5-7pm. Olin 304.
Beginning mid-nineteenth century, first French and Ottoman officials, and later British officials set aside significant tracts of land for environmental conservation in the Arab world. The convention was continued under subsequent Jordanian administration of the West Bank. In fact, nature areas remain one of the largest classifications of land in the Palestinian West Bank today, covering more than 30 official reserves, or about 5 percent of the land area. This little-known legacy reveals the enduring and contested status of protected conservation areas in Historic Palestine. Recent scholarship on the topic has elucidated the establishment of forest and nature reserves in Palestine and connections with other British colonial sites. However, little is known about the relationship between conservation programs and affected Palestinians. This paper explores the contested status of protected areas through the articulation of official conservation programs and Palestinian cultivation practice in the West Bank.
Overview of Omar Tesdell’s Work and Achievements:
Annoucing the fourth recipient of the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Award in Palestine Studies, Omar Imseeh Tesdell
The Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University is pleased to announce the fourth recipient of the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Award in Palestine Studies, Omar Imseeh Tesdell . The award recognizes and seeks to foster innovative and ground-breaking scholarship on issues related to Palestine and Palestinians.Omar Imseeh Tesdell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Birzeit University. He will spend Spring 2015 at Columbia working on a book project based on his dissertation, Shadow Spaces: Territory, Sovereignty, and the Question of Palestinian Cultivation . A spatial history of Palestinian environmental and agricultural practice, the book explores the relationship between the work of cultivation and claims to land. Cultivation in the conventional sense is understood to be an abstract concept that allows institutions like the state to deploy technologies of control, whether through law, coercion, or agricultural development. Yet generally overlooked is an understanding of cultivation as the longstanding concrete practice of farmers to uphold collective claims to land. In contrast to a self-evident concept of cultivation, the practice of cultivation thus emerges as a flashpoint to consider the question of territory and sovereignty. As such, the book offers a spatial history of cultivation in Palestine and develops a theoretical understanding of it as constituted by both colonialism and oppositional political community arrayed around it.Two works emerging from his research are forthcoming in edited volumes, one entitled “Land and the Question of Palestinian Cultivation” in New Directions in Palestinian Studies , and another entitled “On Naming and Being” in Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora from Edinburgh University Press. Tesdell completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota in 2013. His research has been supported by the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS), Social Science Research Council (SSRC), an NEH-funded grant from the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), and the University of Minnesota.
This award has been made possible by the generosity of Abdel Mohsin Al-Qattan, through the A.M. Qattan Foundation, in honor of his friend, the Palestinian scholar and intellectual, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (1929-2001). Their close friendship began in the aftermath of the Nakbah of 1948 and evolved into a shared commitment to justice for Palestinians to be realized in part through support for excellence in higher education and scholarship.
Omar Tesdell, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Birzeit University and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Post-doctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-7201, e-mail [email protected],
or visit http://http://hrp.bard.edu/event/omar-tesdell-nature-reserves-territory-and-the-question-of-palestinian-cultivation/.
Location: Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium