In conversation with Professor Beshara Doumani, the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University. Professor Doumani gives us critical historical context for what's happening now in Palestine. Explaining why and how pre-colonial Palestinian history is relevant today, he draws a stark contrast between pre-WW1 Gaza and the besieged Gaza of the present-day. 

This episode was recorded on October 24 at 20:44 Palestine time. 

Please note, we are dedicating all the afikra podcast programming to special podcast episodes relevant to understanding historical context to what is happening in Palestine. Each episode will be recorded in real time and uploaded to YouTube and anywhere you get your podcasts. 

About Beshara Doumani: 

Beshara Doumani is the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies, the first chair of its kind dedicated to this field of study. He is also the founding director (2012-2018) of Brown's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES), and founder of New Directions for Palestinian Studies, a CMES initiative since 2012. From 2012-2020 he was the Joukowsky Family Distinguished Professor of Modern Middle East History. 

Doumani's research focuses on groups, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East, with a focus on the social, economic, and legal history of Eastern Mediterranean. He also writes on the topics of academic freedom, and the Palestinian condition. 

His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, and Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History. He is currently working on the modern history of the Palestinians through the social life of stone. Doumani is the editor of a book series on Palestinian Studies published by the University of California Press, co-editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly and editorial committee member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. From 2009-2011, Doumani led a team that produced a strategic plan for the establishment of the Palestinian Museum. In 2015, Doumani and received the Sawyer Seminar award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the proposal, Displacement and the Making of the Modern World: Histories, Ecologies, and Subjectivities.

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ABOUT AFIKRA
afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region – past, present and future – through conversations driven by curiosity.
📍 Local events in 40+ locations worldwide http://afikra.com/chapters
🎧 New podcasts + videos weekly http://afikra.com/podcasts
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