2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

In much U.S. women’s studies discourse, Palestine and the lived experience of Palestinian women have been absent or explored through an Israel-centric lens. This panel foregrounds the perspectives of Indigenous, Black, Asian and Latinx feminists and highlights their transnational solidarities with Palestinian women. Dispossession is not unique to Palestinians but has been experienced by many communities throughout history and currently, including indigenous populations, African Americans, Puerto Ricans and many others.

While the post September 11, 2001, world saw a consolidation in xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and Palestinian bashing, a combination of factors began to challenge the old order and give rise to a more connected humanity linked by a sense of the indivisibility of justice. This plenary brings together public intellectuals (activists/scholars) whose relationship to and engagement with justice for/in Palestine is grounded in their activism in shared experiences of dispossession, marginalization and resistance. As we mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1967 Israeli occupation, plenary speakers will address multiple historical experiences and debates that have existed at and animated the margins of U.S. women’s studies/women’s movement--spaces that are broader than Jewish and Palestinian circles and that address head on the indivisibility of justice on Indigeneity, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab discrimination.