Cultural Production and the Palestine Movement
2026-01-05 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join CODEPINK, Watermelon Pictures, and the Palestinian Youth Movement to talk about cultural production in the Palestine solidarity movement!
We’ll discuss how we can incorporate the fight for Palestinian liberation into our cultural spaces and filmmaker Cherien Dabis will give a short introduction and discuss her new film, All That’s Left of You.
🗓️ Monday, January 5th
🕔 5PM EST
💻 RSVP for Zoom link
codepink.org/wp105 (events calendar in bio)

Virtual Lecture: Ethical Stewardship of Palestinian Dress
2026-01-09 09:00 - 23:00 | Virtual
Ethical Stewardship of Palestinian Dress: Collecting, Cataloguing, and a Case Study
Date: Friday, January 9, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
Location: Online, Zoom link will be emailed at 10am EST on event day
Instructor: Wafa Ghnaim, Dress Historian, Researcher & Educator
Registration Fee: Sliding scale
Description: This lecture presents the research and findings of Wafa Ghnaim’s forthcoming article “Archiving the Thobe,” to be published in the Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice (JTDRP). It outlines a reparative framework for the identification, cataloguing, and stewardship of Palestinian dress in American museum collections. Drawing on oral history, regional provenance, and nearly a decade of sustained research with institutions alongside the development of the Tatreez Institute collection, the lecture examines how museum practices and fashion media produced misattribution, decontextualization, and exoticization. It traces how garments were extracted, anonymized, and reframed through biblical and Orientalist lenses, and how these interpretations continue in contemporary digital spaces, priming American and European audiences to adopt dehumanizing views of Palestinians today. The lecture introduces rematriation as a reparative paradigm grounded in Indigenous feminist ethics and matrilineal stewardship. The session invites scholars and cultural workers to cultivate accountable, community-centered practices that safeguard Palestinian cultural heritage in their museum and cultural work.

The World as Palestine: On Advocacy, Activism, and Justice
2026-01-23 09:00 - 19:00 | University of Washington – Thomson Hall, 1911 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States
Register here: forms.office.com/r/91zmnL3jYm
All morning sessions in Thomson Hall 317
9-9:30am | Welcome | Coffee/tea and light refreshments
9:30-11am | PANEL
Policing Dissent: Reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian Liberation Movement

Panelists:
Andrea Brower (formerly Gonzaga University)
Kathryn DePaolis (Eastern Washington University)
Majid Sharifi (Eastern Washington University)
This panel examines academic dissent, critical thought, and resistance with reflections from Eastern Washington’s Palestinian liberation movement.
11-11:30am | BREAK
11:30am-1pm | WORKSHOP
People’s Justice: Lessons from the Palestinian and Filipino Struggles for Liberation
Panelists: Anna Beyette and Troy Osaki, recent participants in the International People’s Tribunals
International People’s Tribunals (IPTs) are quasi-judicial forums convened to serve as a platform for victims and advocates and their organizations to present evidence and legal arguments related to international humanitarian law. Join this workshop to hear directly from delegates who traveled to participate both in the recent IPTs on genocide in Palestine and war crimes under former Philippine president Duterte and learn about the interconnections between people’s struggles for national liberation and more just futures.
Allen Auditorium
2:30-4:30pm | FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
The Palestine Exception
Filmmaker in attendance: Jan Haaken (Portland State University)
Join filmmaker Jan Haaken for a screening of The Palestine Exception. The film follows professors and students from across the country as they demand a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face crackdowns from administrators, the media, the police and politicians.
Thomson Hall 317
5-5:30pm | Light refreshments
5:30-7pm | WORKSHOP
Activism and Civic Engagement in Washington State
Facilitator: Laila Taji (Washington for Peace and Justice)
This workshop examines the vital role of state-level legislative advocacy in protecting civil liberties and ensuring access to truthful, accurate education. Participants will explore how state policies influence individual rights, public discourse, and the integrity of educational systems. Join Laila Taji from Washington for Peace and Justice to discuss current legislative challenges and the importance of civic engagement.

Free Film Screening: Israelism
2026-02-01 12:15 - 14:00 | Quest Church, 1401 NW Leary Wy, Seattle, WA, 98107
Two young American Jews travel to Israel seeking a deeper understanding of the country they were raised to love. What they encounter profoundly impacts them, leading them to join a growing movement to redefine their community’s relationship with Israel in this challenging and emotional journey. Join us for the free screening of this film.
About the film
Two young American Jews – Simone Zimmerman and Eitan – are raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs. Eitan joins the Israeli military. Simone supports Israel on ‘the other battlefield:’ America’s college campuses. When they witness Israel‘s mistreatment of the Palestinian people with their own eyes, they are horrified and heartbroken.
They join the movement of young American Jews battling the old guard over Israel’s centrality in American Judaism, and demanding freedom for the Palestinian people. Their stories reveal a generational divide in the American Jewish community as more young Jews question the narratives their synagogues and Hebrew school teachers fed them as children.
The film also features voices like Jacqui, a Jewish educator who says “Judaism is Israel and Israel is Judaism”, and former Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman, who claims voices like Simone and Eitan’s represent a small minority. Thought leaders like Peter Beinart, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Noura Erakat, Cornel West, and Noam Chomsky also weigh in.
Directed by two first-time Jewish filmmakers who share a similar story to the film’s protagonists, Israelism is produced by Peabody-winner and 4-time Emmy-nominee Daniel J. Chalfen (Loudmouth, Boycott), executive produced by two-time Emmy-winner Brian A. Kates (Marvelous Ms. Maisel, Succession) and edited by Emmy-winner Tony Hale (The Story of Plastic), Israelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.

Static Forms: Writing the Present in the Modern Middle East,
2026-02-06 13:00 - 15:00 | Denny Hall, Klickitat Lane, Seattle, WA, 98105
The UW’s Middle East Center invites you to a book talk and discussion by Shir Alon, visiting from the University of Minnesota. In Static Forms: Writing the Present in the Modern Middle East, Shir Alon develops an alternative model for reading Arabic and Hebrew literatures, as two literary systems sharing a remarkably similar narrative of modernization and developing parallel literary forms to address it. In this talk, Alon will discuss the potentials of a paradigm grounded in formal and affective analysis for new understandings of transnational modernism, Middle Eastern literatures, and comparative literary studies at large. She will also explore the limits of this approach, when parallel readings of Hebrew and Arabic literatures obfuscate rather than clarify the conditions of the present.
Shir Alon | On not sharing a present tense: Reading Arabic and Hebrew Literatures together
Friday, February 6
1-3pm
Denny 211
More info: https://jsis.washington.edu/middleeast/events/?trumbaEmbed=eventid%3D192847224%26seotitle%3DOn-not-sharing-a-present-tense-Reading-Arabic-and-Hebrew-Literatures-together%26view%3Devent%26-childview%3D

UW Public Lectures: Palestine to Iraq with Adam Hanieh
2026-03-06 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual
While World War I is often framed as a European conflict, its most far-reaching consequences were profoundly felt far beyond Europe’s borders. In the Middle East, the war sparked a sweeping political crisis that ultimately led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In its wake, the European victors imposed new borders and mandates, carving the region into fragmented zones of imperial control and influence.
But this was not merely a story of unchecked colonial dominance. In the postwar moment, a spectrum of fluid, intersecting anti-colonial movements emerged. Palestine became a key site in these struggles, as a racialized order of settler-colonial capitalism took shape under British rule. This talk locates those movements within the broader transition from British to American imperial ascendancy, contending that the political history of the region must be understood as integral to the global history of fossil capitalism.
Moving beyond frameworks centered solely on empire, the talk examines how anti-colonial actors envisioned their futures within a rapidly transforming global system—even as new hierarchies of race, empire, and capital were being redefined.

Material Identities: Regional Dress in Late Ottoman Syria
2026-03-13 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
Virtual Lecture Registration

Material Identities: Regional Dress in Late Ottoman Syria
Date: Friday, March 13, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
Location: Online, Zoom link will be emailed at 10am EST on event day
Instructor: Wafa Ghnaim, Dress Historian, Researcher & Educator
Registration Fee: Sliding scale
Description: This lecture examines the regional styles of embroidered traditional dress produced within the geographic boundaries of present-day Syria during the late Ottoman period, roughly 1850–1922. It centers on historical garments from various villages, towns, and desert regions across Syria, as well as the textile traditions that shaped them. Participants will learn about Syria’s role as a major center of textile production, including the rise and decline of its fabric industries and the historic cloth types most commonly used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lecture surveys distinctive village and regional styles, with attention to materials, structure, and surface design, beginning in the Northern Galilee and extending into southern Syria and beyond.
The presentation draws on surviving garments, visual documentation, and the work of leading scholars in the field of Syrian dress history. This research is informed by the expertise of Aida Dalati, Anne Marie Weiss-Armush, Hanan Munayyer, and other leading collectors and historians in the field. Through this focused visual and historical review, the lecture situates Syrian dress within its social, economic, and cultural contexts, highlighting how regional identity was expressed as a broad regional tradition shared by communities of the eastern Mediterranean over centuries. While many have argued that the cultural knowledge of Syrian dress styles is extinct, Wafa argues that new digital archives led by a new generation are ensuring its survival and revival.
