The violence in Gaza, Israel, and the surrounding region has been devastating. We reject violence on civilians, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism, and we call for support, safety, freedom, and dignity for all. As staff members of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, we stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza, occupied Palestine, and its global diaspora and deplore collective, lethal aggression against anyone. Like other art and culture workers in New York City and around the world, VLC team members joined the culture strike on Friday, October 20, to spend time reflecting and learning about the Palestinian cause.

We have compiled a list of resources by artists and activists, weaving essays, films, poetry, programs, and sounds that draw on the VLC’s 30-year archive of critical conversations on Palestinian resistance—essays on BDS, co-resistance, allyship, and decolonization by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Yazan Khalili, Joshua Simon, Ann Stoler, and Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan in Assuming Boycott (2017); a selection of films by Emily Jacir and Khalil Rabah, both of whom are VLC Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice Fellows; a conversation with Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research on the “archive as a political space;” and a screening and conversation on Arab-Jewish cinema and memory with curator Rasha Salti and scholar Ella Shohat on deconstructing the Zionist imaginary.

The list expands to include the work of platforms in Palestine and beyond to both document the war and create shared knowledge spaces, from Learning Palestine Group’s “Learning Palestine_Until Liberation,” a 12-hour mixtape of lectures, storytelling, music, songs, and chants, to the Palestinian Film Institute’s “Unprovoked Narratives,” a series of films celebrating the beauty of Gaza, its people, its struggle, and its survival. We encourage you to visit buildpalestine.com, which has compiled a list of trusted organizations and campaigns, as well as volunteer opportunities. 

Here at The New School, we offer our support and free educational resources to all students through this resource guide and archive as well as printing services, meeting room reservations, and safe spaces for working. Please contact us at vlc@newschool.edu for any requests.

This list will be regularly updated. We invite artists, writers, scholars, and cultural workers globally and locally to add to it.

TO READ
• Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze, eds. Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022). Free ebook available.

• Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean, eds. Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2020). Free ebook available.

• Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, “Palestine: The Ruins Should Be Inhabited as Part of Process of Repair,” Jadaliyya (August 28, 2023).

• Omar Barghouti, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011). Free ebook available.

• Black Women Radicals, Solidarity with Palestine—A Radical Black Feminist Mandate: A Reading List.

• Kareem Estefan, Carin Kuoni, and Laura Raicovich, eds. Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (New York: OR Books in association with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, 2017).

•                      . Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, “‘We,’ Palestinians and Jewish Israelis: The Right Not to Be a Perpetrator.” 81–90.

•                      . Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan, “Extending Co-resistance.” 101–112.

•                      . Joshua Simon (2011–2013 VLC Fellow), “Neoliberal Politics, Protective Edge, and BDS.” 123–132.

•                      . Yazan Khalili, “The Utopian Conflict.” 133–135.

•                      . Ann Stoler, “By Colonial Design, or: Why we Say We Don’t Know Enough.” 173–182.

• Jewish Currents, Current Posts and Archives.

• Rashid I. Khalidi and Sherene Seikaly, “Gaza: Nearly Two Decades of Israeli Incursions, Siege, and Blockade.” Journal of Palestine Studies, October 16, 2023.

• Palestinian Youth Movement, “The First Week.” New Inquiry, October 14, 2023.

• Michael Rakowitz, “I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it’s in between I freeze,” 2009–ongoing. Letter written on Leonard Cohen’s Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter. Published in Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech (Amherst and New York: Amherst College Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, 2022).

• Adam Shatz, “Vengeful Pathologies. Adam Shatz on the war in Gaza,” London Review of Books 45, no. 20 (October 19, 2023).

• Morgan Bassichis, Jay Saper, and Rachel Valinsky, ed. “Learning from Palestine Free Download,” from Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah (New York: Wendy’s Subway, 2023).

TO WATCH
• Lawrence Abu Hamdan (2015–2017 VLC Fellow), Rubber Coated Steel, 2016.

• Emily Jacir, Letter to a Friend, 2019.

• Jadaliyya, Gaza in Context: A Collaborative Teach-In Series, October 20, 2023.

• Palestinian Film Institute, “Unprovoked Narratives.” A series of films celebrating the beauty of Gaza, its people, its struggle, and its survival.

TO LISTEN
• Jumana Emil Abboud, “The keepers and the thieves of water streams,” Aridity Lines, podcast audio (2021).

• Radio Alhara, Palestinian online radio station broadcasting from Bethlehem.

• Learning Palestine_Until Liberation, 12 hours of lectures, interviews, book presentation, talks, storytelling, music, songs, poetry, and chants aired on Radio Alhara, Roots Radio, Radio Raheem, Radio Tropiezo, Radio Flouka, Oroko Radio, and Radio Karantina.

• Reem Shadid and Eyal Weizman, “Violence, climate change, and shifting shorelines,” Aridity Lines, podcast audio (2022).

TO DONATE & SUPPORT
• Build Palestine, a list of trusted organizations and campaigns, as well as volunteer opportunities. Shared by our friends at Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research.

Below are brief descriptions of programs dedicated to the Palestinian Israeli conflict that the VLC has presented over the years, as well as links to their video documentations. Many other and often earlier events were not documented but are described here and, we hope, may provide additional context and information.

September 10, 2011
United States of Palestine-Israel: Here and Elsewhere
Film screening and discussion

Alluding to Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville’s film Here and Elsewhere (Ici et Ailleurs, 1976), this day of screenings presented contemporary and historical, documentary and fictional films to suggest correspondences in the contested land of Palestine/Israel. It was curated by 2011–2013 Vera List Center Fellow Joshua Simon, and proposed affinities rather than belonging, addition rather than opposition.

DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS
Udi Aloni, filmmaker, writer, activist, and cinema coach, the Freedom Theatre, Jenin refugee camp, West Bank (via Skype)
Reem Fadda, Associate Curator, Middle Eastern Art, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Sam Ishii-Gonzales, Assistant Professor of Film Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
Joshua Simon, curator; 2011–2013 Vera List Center Fellow

FILMS
Excerpts from:
Local Angel, Udi Aloni, dir. (Israel, 2002, 70 minutes)
The Jewish-Arab State, Yossi Atia and Itamar Rose, dir. (Israel, 2007, 4:30 minutes)
Notre Musique, Jean-Luc Godard, dir. (Switzerland & France, 2004, 80 minutes)
Here And Elsewhere (Ici et Ailleurs), Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, dir. (France, 1976, 53 minutes)
General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait, Barbet Schroeder, dir. (France & Switzerland, 1974, 90 minutes)
Struggle in Jerash, Eileen Simpson and Ben White, dir. (Jordan, 2009, 63 minutes)
The Truth, Scandar Copti and Rabih Boukhary, 2003 (Israel, 2003, 15 minutes)

October 3, 2011
Israeli and Palestinian Cinema: Shaping Memory and Imagining the Future
Discussion and film screening

This discussion was based on Shohat’s seminal book Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation, which examines new paradigms for critical discussion of national cinema and the Zionist master-narrative when it first appeared in 1989. The conversation between Salti and Shohat was punctuated by brief excerpts of Palestinian films produced within Israel, and diasporic films that address the contested geography of Israel/Palestine. Presented in collaboration with ArteEast.

PARTICIPANTS
Sumita Chakravarty, Associate Dean, School of Media Studies, The New School for Social Engagement
Rasha Salti, former Creative Director and Film Programmer, Arte East
Ella Habiba Shohat, Professor, Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, New York University

October 6, 2012
The Jewish-American Relationship with Israel at the Crossroads
Discussion

Leading commentators on the Israel/Palestine conflict discussed the possibility that increasing awareness of the conflict among the American Jewish community is creating a more critical stance towards Israel, and considered how such separation between traditional allies could give new impetus to resolving a conflict that has, for many years, seemed intractable.

PARTICIPANTS
Anna Baltzer, participant, International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank, and Fulbright scholar
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT (unable to join because of illness but sent remarks)

Norman G. Finkelstein, activist, writer, and independent scholar
Adam Shatz, contributing editor, London Review of Books

February 7, 2015
Considering Palestine/Israel. What Does the Boycott Mean?
VLC Seminar

Cultural production opens avenues for new ways of thinking. But how can withdrawal and boycott be productive or conducive to politically oriented artistic practices? This VLC Seminar was part of a series that considered boycott and withdrawal as special conditions for discourse and artmaking. Co-organized with Cabinet magazine.

PARTICIPANTS
Ariella Azoulay, Department of Modern Culture and Media; Department of Comparative Literature, Brown University
Adi Ophir, Professor, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, The Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University, and Visiting Professor, The Cogut Center for the Humanities, and the Middle East Studies Program, Brown University
Jack Persekian, Director and Head Curator, Palestinian Museum, Birzeit, Palestine
Ann Stoler, Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies, The New School for Social Research

RESOURCE GUIDE
Primary documents, secondary literature, and responses to boycott.

April 11, 2015
Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production
VLC Seminar

This seminar is one of several programs on boycotts as a political and cultural strategy that eventually resulted in the publication Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (Estefan, Kuoni, Raicovich, eds. OR Books/VLC 2017). It looked at how “withdrawal” or “disengagement” in fact often results in pointed engagement around a specific issue or question.

PARTICIPANTS
I. Dis/engagement from Afar
Maria Lind, curator
Ahmet Öğüt, artist
Radhika Subramaniam, writer; Ass. Professor of Anthropology, The New School
Carin Kuoni, moderator

II. Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Against Israel
Noura Erakat
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Chen Tamir, curator
Akram Elia, moderator

III. Freedom of Speech
Joslyn Barnes
Pato Hebert
Dread Scott, artist
Laura Raicovich, moderator

October 26, 2019
Global Voices: Conversations with the Jane Lombard Fellows
VLC Forum 2019

A series of conversations held at the Vera List Center Forum 2019: If Art Is Politics on the “archive as a political space.”

PARTICIPANTS
Archive As Political Space
Tiffany Chung, artist and Jane Lombard Fellow, in conversation with nominator Bala Starr
Artists, filmmakers and Jane Lombard Fellows Emily and Annemarie Jacir with Hassan Muamer (Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research) in conversation with nominator Kaelen Wilson Goldie
Photographers Liz Johnson Artur (Jane Lombard Fellow) in conversation with David Hartt

KEYNOTE: Archiving an Anti-Colonial Avant-Garde: Elsewhere and Otherwise
Ann Laura Stoler, Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies, The New School for Social Research, on “Archiving an Anti-Colonial Avant-Garde: Elsewhere and Otherwise.”

October 12, 2023
Impossible Structures with Khalil Rabah
Film screening

2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellow Khalil Rabah founded the semi-fictional Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind, a roving museum dedicated to generating interest in the natural and cultural history of Palestine, while also recognizing the futility of this gesture. Originally planned as a conversation about the museum with curator Fawz Kabra, Rabah’s program Impossible Structures, presented at the Vera List Center Forum 2023: Correction* was halted in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel and the latter’s military response. Kabra provides an introduction to a series of four films by Rabah and discusses the material art making under the conditions of occupation.

FILMS BY KHALIL RABAH

I want to be with you, 1998
Body and Sole, 1995
Critical Interrogations [Renewed belief], 1999
A this and a that, 1997

November 13, 2023
Correction* Seminar 8: “Hader Halal” (With Regard to Presence)
Seminar

Co-presented with OSUN Center for Human Rights & The Arts at Bard, Fehras Publishing Practices’s Sami Rustom and Kenan Darwich share their research into the history and presence of publishing and its entanglement in the sociopolitical and cultural sphere in the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora.

February 22, 2024
Revisiting Studies into Darkness Part I: Conversation with Amar Kanwar
Conversation

This program is part of a three-part conversation series presented by the Brooklyn Rail in partnership with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics revisits the VLC’s 2022 publication Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech (co-published with Amherst College Press). Curator and historian Rattanamol Singh Johal joins artist Amar Kanwar, whose work prompted Studies into Darkness with the question: “Is there an idea, concept, or social construct that would benefit from a retreat ‘into darkness’—into a space of profound reconsideration and rethinking?” In this dialogue, Kanwar and Johal discuss the potentiality of darkness as a mode of reconsideration and the role of text and image in Kanwar’s work.

March 4, 2024
Correction* Seminar 11: Many Returns
Seminar

Palestinian artist Vivien Sansour shares the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library project, which seeks to preserve and restore heritage and threatened seed varieties. Indigenous Yaqui and Jewish multidisciplinary artist Tehila speaks to her artistic practice as a Water Protector and Land Guardian. Krystal Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne), Honor the Earth Executive Director, speaks to her organizing and activist work protecting environmental rights and lands of Indigenous people through Land Back and educational initiatives. This seminar is co-sponsored by The Tishman Environment and Design Center and the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management program at The New School.

May 9, 2024
Revisiting Studies into Darkness Part II: Open Letter in the Dark
Conversation

Part II of Revisiting Studies into Darkness brings together artist Emily Jacir and Studies into Darkness contributor Michael Rakowitz in a dialogue hosted by Rail contributor Jill H. Casid. The program explores the genre of letter writing, centering on the particularities of the open letter as “a space of radical exposure.”

May 29, 2024
Phantom Territory
Publication

Lebanese writer and artist Lara Atallah’s essay “Phantom Territory” in the spring 2024 edition of the VLC’s digital publishing series Post/doc reflects on a series of roadtrips she took from Beirut to the southern border of Lebanon, connecting them to similar trips that her Palestinian great-grandmother would take from the south of Lebanon to her natal Akka. Navigating, photographing, and documenting a landscape that has undergone many transformations in the decades since the 1948 Nakba, Atallah pieces together a personal and collective history of severed connections to land, while considering the ways in which these connections persist in spite of the presence of manmade borders.

May 29, 2024
Revisiting Studies into Darkness Part III: Aberrating the Image, Archives as Surveillance
Conversation

Part III of Revisiting Studies into Darkness brings together artist Maya Jeffereis and Brooklyn Rail contributor Ayanna Dozier. The conversation explores the aberrant image’s potential to unlock a surveillance “sight-based” discourse, connect related histories of exploitation and resistance, and contend with questions of sovereignty, solidarity, and criminality.

June 3, 2024
Correction* Seminar 12: Strike That
Seminar

From neologisms to reclaiming outdated terminology, the twelfth and final installment in the Correction* Seminar Series reflects on the poetic and political stakes in word choice as speech and speech acts are censored, criminalized, and the speaker silenced. Participants include Native American artist, poet, and activist Demian DinéYazhi’, Palestinian-American performance artist and writer Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, and transmedia storyteller, multi-instrumentalist, critical theorist, and educator SA Smythe. This program is co-presented with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, Ontario.