MENU

Unruly Fringes of the Empire

October 14, 2022

About the Exhibit:

On display will be a small collection of artifacts from Palestine's Ottoman and mandate eras. For our attendees, we hope that these pieces will bring to life the social, political and economic reality of a Palestine that existed before the nakba.

About the Lecture:

"Armed opposition to European occupation emerged immediately in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere. Men from what had been the unruly fringes of Empire led resistance movements everywhere." (Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt)

This is their story.

As the Middle East emerged from the ashes of the first World War, millions of people were forced to contend with their new status as the colonial subjects of Europe's Great Powers. The League of Nations asserted that the people of the Middle East were not yet fit for self rule.

The people disagreed.

Join us as we explore the faces behind the anti-colonial resistance of the interwar period, and their struggle for liberation.

Speaker

Bassam Abun-Nadi is an educator, researcher, and community activist with over 7 years of experience creating and delivering learning content. He is the Director of RECLAIM, a grassroots organization that works with schools, school districts, post-secondary institutions, and student groups to address and combat manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry at the curricular and pedagogical levels. RECLAIM deploys narrative identity as a tool for the deconstruction of the Muslim experience, with the end goal of transforming Muslims into the protagonists of their own stories (rather than the antagonists or peripheral extras in somebody else’s story). He has a B.A in Political Science from SFU and completed his MEd at UBC in 2017, where he specialized in the impact of globalization on education reforms in the Middle East.

He is also the host of the podcast PreOccupation: A Not-So-Brief History of Palestine. The podcast is a deep dive into the social, economic, and political histories of Palestine (and the post-Ottoman mashriq as a whole).

He the son of Palestinian parents, and a father to Palestinian children.

Venue: Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue - ICBC Concourse (580 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3)