From the Blog

A New Generation is Emerging, and Gaza is their Compass

December 10, 2024 - By Noura Kamal

Let me tell you a story about how working on knowledge production about Palestine in Austria is walking on a minefield. You can (and will) encounter a wave of ignorance and hatred that may explode your academic future, if you are not careful enough—and even if you are. The whole time I have lived in Vienna, and even before then, Palestinians in Gaza have faced continuous aggressions by the Israeli army—in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2019, 2021, and 2022. The most recent, horrifying attack started in October 2023. Of course, Palestinians outside Gaza—in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Hebron, and elsewhere—also encounter violence every day, at the hands of the Israeli colonial army.

I have been surprised to see how most academics in Austria detach themselves from the...

10 Questions for Marguerite Sheffer

December 9, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Russ Brings all the wrong books to my hospital room, which is tucked into a corner of the birthing center. How was he to know I’d already finished that novel? Back at our house, all my books flounder in inscrutable piles. I hadn’t arranged them to be legible to anyone else. Of course, no one predicts a car accident; we didn’t expect to be T-boned on the way home from Costco, trunk full of perishables.
—from "Wire Nanosecond" Volume 65, Issue 3 (Fall 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Ever?! One of the very first pieces I wrote, in 5th grade, was a historical fiction story about a girl in, I think, vaguely the 1500s. She was a peasant who worked in a winery and I remember I made her walk...

Introducing The View from Gaza

December 8, 2024 - By Jim Hicks and Britt Rusert, for the editors

Every evening, in times like these, there are tough choices to be made, a great number of commitments to honor, and multiple places where one ought to be. So, of course, not even all our local supporters were able to join us last Friday at UMass’s Old Chapel for our meditation and celebration of this year’s very special issue, The View from Gaza, featuring a video presentation from some contributors as well as a live reading by Amherst College poet-in-residence George Abraham and a performance by the Arabic music ensemble Layaali.

On the blog this week, we will bring you special moments from that celebration as well as other features related to the new issue, including an essay from Noura Kamal, titled “A New Generation is Emerging, and Gaza is their...

susan abulhawa: Address to the Oxford Union

December 3, 2024 - By susan abulhawa

Editor’s note: On November 28, 2024, the Oxford Union debated the resolution: "This house believes that Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide."

Israeli academic Gerald Steinberg, invited to oppose the motion, published a diatribe against the Oxford Union for considering such a debate. Israeli historian Benny Morris agreed to speak in opposition, then withdrew at the last moment. The opposing team threatened to cancel the debate unless they were allowed to add a fourth speaker, Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former Palestinian spy. The final team opposing the proposition consisted of UK Lawyers For Israel Charitable Trust...

10 Questions for Yuemin He

December 2, 2024 - By Staff

Your mouth feels bitter if you haven’t spoken for long
Not speaking for a long time, this bitterness
occurs, like a gallbladder
full of darkness and in darkness trembling
—from "Bitterness in the Mouth" by Zhang Zhihao, Translated by Yuemin He

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Valdmir Nabokov for his penetrating thinking, erudition, and beautiful language command from reading Lolita, Pale Fire, etc.

Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji for its simplicity

Works by Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Wang Wei, and other traditional Chinese poets for their sheer beauty

Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and T. S. Eliot for helping me dwelling in the...