Matar Family Lecture 2024

The Matar Family Lecture 2024 Presents:

"Gaza on Screen in a Time of Genocide" in 412 Pillsbury Hall, 4:00 PM

It has been repeatedly said that we are for the first time witnessing a genocide unfolding in real time. How are we to treat the images genocide that have flooded the screens since October 7? This talk will address this question by discussing the circulation of these images in the wake of a long history of variously documented Palestinian disasters and Palestinian creative responses to those disasters, framed around two axes: the potential danger and efficacy of the humanitarian image and the ongoing practice of Palestinians to strive to share agential images of their lives even under conditions of extreme violence and consider what might the absence of such images mean for Palestinians and their allies around the world.

Lecture followed by a reception and film screening of two short films from Gaza that focus on the question of sound, curated and introduced by Nadia Yaqub; Vibrations from Gaza Rehab Nazzal (2023) and The Offing by Oraib Toukan (2021) in 10 Church St. Room 100, UMN Campus. 

Nadia Yaqub's research has treated Arab cultural texts ranging from medieval literature and contemporary oral poetry to modern prose fiction and visual culture. Her recent publications include Bad Girls of the Arab World (University of Texas Press 2017), a volume of essays co-edited with Rula Quawas;  Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution (University of Texas Press, 2018), a monograph about Palestinian cinema of the long 1970s; and Gaza on Screen (Duke University Press, 2023), an edited volume about film and media from and about the Gaza Strip.

Co-sponsored by Mizna, the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, and the Department of English.