On Orientalist Genealogies: The Split Arab/Jew Figure Revisited

Community lecture with Ella Shohat of New York University.

This lecture will offer a genealogical reading of the gradual splitting of the once-linked Semitic figure into “Arab” and “Jew” and its ramifications for contemporary discourses about Jews and Muslims. Examining the shifting Orientalist imaginary in the wake of the Enlightenment and colonialism, the lecture traces contemporary assumptions about a longstanding Arab / Jewish divide — and the ambiguous position of the Arab-Jew within it — back to crucial shifts in 19th century representation, thus providing an historical lens which can help illuminate contemporary postcolonial tensions. Professor Ella Shohat teaches at the departments of Art & Public Policy and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies at New York University.

Professor Shohat is also leading a lunch seminar for faculty and grad students and visiting a classroom during her visit to Chapel Hill.

Ella Shohat is a Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University. Her Award-winning books include: On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings; Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices; Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation; Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age ; Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives; Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora; And with Robert Stam of Unthinking Eurocentrism; Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism; Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic; and Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media. Her writings have been translated into various languages, including: Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Italian, and German. Shohat has also served on the editorial board of several journals, such as Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; and Social Text. She is a recipient of such fellowships as Rockefeller; the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, where she also taught at The School of Criticism and Theory; the NYU Humanities Initiative fellowship; and Fulbright research / lectureship at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, for studying the cultural intersections between the Middle East and Latin America.