On Thursday, February 12th, staff and students of the anthropology department of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, will host another seminar in the What About Palestine series titled "What about affirming Palestinian identities?", with Shadi Al-Tabatibi, and Tarek Ghanem.
Shadi Al-Tabatibi is a Palestinian photographer from Gaza whose work bridges documentary and artistic practice, and has received local and international recognition, and in 2024 and 2025, he collaborated with the Picturing Scholasticide collective at Leiden University. Drawing from his practice, in his talk, Shadi Al-Tabatiby will reflect on photography as an act of testimony, resistance, and care, that challenges erasure while affirming Palestinian identities in all their plurality, with the aim of inviting collective reflection on the power of images to document violence, preserve memory, and insist on presence where disappearance is imposed.
Tarek Ghanem is a lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Theology, at the VU. In his talk, entitled, “Arabic Literature staring into (or squinting at) the eye of Israel’s Genocide”, Tarek Ghanem will give an overview of how Arabic literature and literati wrestled with the genocide, with a focus on the themes of loss, displacement, and the question of why--and how to--write literature altogether. It will include and engage with representative literary examples and translations from the genres of novel, poetry, literary essay, and correspondence, both from established literary figures and up-and-coming voices, Palestinian and non-Palestinian, and from inside and outside Palestine.
To sign up, please write an e-mail to Wiebe Ruijtenberg, assistant professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology: w.d.ruijtenberg@vu.nl