1948: To De-Nakbafy Sanat al-Iḥtilāl, “The Year of Occupation”

Keynote talk by Anton Shammas

In a series of personal reflections, this talk argues that, unlike a Nakbah, an occupation can, theoretically speaking, be undone. Iḥtilāl/occupation marks a concrete manner: de-Nakbafying 1948 and connecting it to 1967 means to cross the bar into Israeli consciousness and place Palestinians back into time and history.

A Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, since 1997, Anton Shammas is a Palestinian writer and translator of Arabic, Hebrew and English. His publications include a novel in Hebrew (translated into 9 languages), two collections of poems and a book for children in Hebrew; a collection of poems in Arabic; and many articles, essays and translations in the three languages. He is currently working on a book manuscript: Blind Spots and other essays on translation.

This event co-sponsored by UMass Amherst Department of History, the UMass Amherst Program in Comparative Literature, and the UMass Amherst Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies.