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Events

Open Jerusalem at the Labex Week Futurs Urbains

During the ‘Labex-Week 2017 Futurs Urbains’  (11-15 September 2017, Cité Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne), on Thursday 14 September Vincent Lemire (ACP, ERC OpenJerusalem director) will speak during the panel on ‘Usages de l’histoire et devenirs urbains’ [‘Uses of urban history and developments’] about ‘Décrire ou numériser les archives de la citadinité? Réflexions épistémologiques sur le projet ERC Open-Jerusalem’ [Describing or digitizing ‘citadinité’ archives? Epistemological Reflections on the ERC project Open Jerusalem]

Posts, Research

The Syriac Orthodox Diaspora in Jerusalem (1831-1948). Pilgrims, Refugees and Community Building in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine

by Antoinette Ferrand

In the very early centuries of the Christian era, the Syriac orthodox Christians – also called Jacobites – settled in Jerusalem, in the so-called house of Virgin Mary in the Armenian quarter: this monastery dedicated to St Mark the Evangelist became the headquarter of the Archbishopric which had never been one of the most important centers of the Jacobite church; its original location was indeed in the Tur ‘Abdin, in the Ottoman province of Diyarbakir (East Anatolia). But during the XIXth and XXth centuries, the small community had changed significantly moving from a handful of believers with a few pilgrims arrived from time to time in the Old City, to a refugees center welcoming the survivors of the Seyfo, the genocide committed in the Tur ‘Abdin during World War I. Besides, their dependency to Armenian authorities from which they failed to release, turned gradually into their marginalisation in Arab Palestine.
Thanks to Open Jerusalem team and Father Shimon, the librarian of Saint-Mark monastery, I have studied the baptismal register of the community, from 1831 to 1948. In fact, this document is a compilation of several census produced between the Tanzîmât period and the beginning of the British Mandate on Palestine: as it is explained in the opening text of the register, a Syriac orthodox of the community named Sulayman Jalma, began to collect all the papers related to baptized children in Jerusalem and Bethlehem in 1931 and ended his work in 1932. Then, the following monks continued to record the new baptized believers until today.

Opening text of the register, written in garshuni
Opening text of the register, written in garshuni
Headings in the first page of the register
Headings in the first page of the register

The register gathers hundreds of middle format pages, in which columns and headings are printed. The garshuni language used to complete the columns, is the transcription of the Arabic in Syriac letters; between 1831 and 1948 few filled lines are written in Arabic. The reverse of that trend is observed after World War II. The information completed in the register deal with the date of the registration, these of birth and baptism, the names and places of origin of the baptized children, of their parents and godfathers/mothers and of the priest who celebrated the baptism.

Extract of the register (1932-1933)
Extract of the register (1932-1933)

Because of the lack of others available archives, I have focused on this register and on the studies published by Andrew Palmer about the Syriac inscriptions of Saint-Mark monastery. Thanks to Flavia Ruani’s translation of the register from garshuni to English, I have first studied statistically the demography of the community at that period. I have also identified the social networks organized around godparenthood and kinship, which were indeed very efficient integration mechanisms. My field survey cargried out in Jerusalem with the cooperation of the community and with that of the CRFJ enabled me to overcome difficulties I encountered, like the unmentioned citizenship or the political involvement of the Syriac believers during the interwar period. Paying attention to the importance of spiritual identity and ritual behaviours, I have tried to better understand how these Christians succeeded in being a real community fitted in well in Jerusalem, despite the impact of political and social changes they went through.

Read Antoinette Ferrand’s full dissertation (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lyon): “La diaspora syriaque-orthodoxe de Jérusalem (1831-1948). Pèlerins, réfugiés et fabrique communautaire à l’époque ottomane et mandataire”

Research

From Paper Mill to Archives: The Jerusalem documents in the National Library of Bulgaria

by Orlin Sabev

After two prospections missions conducted at the National Library of Bulgaria (Sofia) by Louise Corvasier, Vincent Lemire and Yann Potin (December 2016; June 2017) and with the help and support of Milena Koleva-Zvancharova, Head of the Oriental Collections Department of the NLB, Open Jerusalem research collaborators Orlin Sabev and Stoyanka Kenderova completed the archival description of the two important fonds (283 and 283A) for the history of Ottoman Jerusalem.

The prevailing number of documents related to the history of Jerusalem in the Ottoman period, preserved at present in the Oriental Department of the National Library of Jerusalem in the Ottoman period, preserved at present in the Oriental Department of the National Library “Sts Cyril and Methodius” (Sofia, Bulgaria) established in 1878, are organized in two archival fonds: no. 283 (comprising 7 archival units) and no. 283A (comprising 469 archival units). The Oriental Department houses about 500,000 archival units (comprising about 1 million folios) dating from the Ottoman period. They are organized in several collections, the biggest of which is the collection of topographic funds organized according to the place with which the documents are related to.

As part of the documents preserved in Sofia are originating from the Bulgarian lands that were under Ottoman rule from the late fourteenth century to 1878, the history of most of the documents dates back to the early 1930s when the authorities of the recently proclaimed Republic of Turkey –  known for their rejection of the Sultan’s rule and the Ottoman legacy – sold large amount of Ottoman documents (being charged in several wagons) to a Bulgarian paper mill in order to be recycled for paper production. When the first wagons arrived the factory owners noticed that the cargo is consisted of Ottoman documents and asked expertise by the Oriental Department. After confirming their historical and archival value all the survived documents were transferred to Sofia to be preserved in the Oriental Department. Since the documents were sent from Constantinople and mostly from the depositories of the former Ottoman ministry of finances they deal mainly with financial issues and are related to all the former Ottoman provinces (in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Arabian peninsula, and North Africa). This explains why documents related to Ottoman Jerusalem (mainly dealing with financial issues) are now to be found in Sofia, Bulgaria.


Another point is the process of the organization of these documents into archival funds formed according to the previously existing Ottoman provinces. The organization was executed in two stages: at the first stage over 1,000 topographical funds have been organized in alphabetical order, while at the second stage funds with similar enumeration with attached “A” have been added, respectively. These funds include mainly documents written in Ottoman Turkish, while those in Arabic have been separated in a special collection of Arabic documents. Hence fonds 283 and 283A contain documents related to Ottoman Jerusalem. Since the key word used by the archivists in the distribution of the documents was the place name appearing in them, the fonds include both documents sent from Jerusalem to the Ottoman capital Constantinople, as well as drafts of documents sent from Constantinople to the local authorities in Jerusalem. Although most of the documents deal directly with Jerusalem proper some documents are related to other places located within the province of Jerusalem such as Jaffa, Hebron, Bethlehem, etc. Some documents are mistakenly distributed to the Jerusalem funds because of the similarity between the Arabic/Ottoman name of Jerusalem – Kuds/Kudüs, and the expression “Kuddise Sırruh” (“May God bless him”) used for the famous mystic Jalal ad-din Rumi (1207–1273) whose tomb is in Konya, Central Anatolia. The same is true also for some other documents in which the mosques and waqfs of Rumi are mentioned.


The documents of fonds 283A are distributed in 469 archival units (that is, folders), put in 7 boxes. Most of the folders contain just one document, but some contain two to three, in rare cases even more documents. Some of the documents are torn and therefore they are just fragments simply because the initial purpose of their transportation to Bulgaria was to be recycled in a paper mill as said above. Some other documents are in a poor condition, the edges being rotten and the text partly illegible. Therefore during the exploration of the fonds 283A some damaged documents had been already taken out for chemical restoration and hence I was unable to include them in the inventory.
The documents of fonds 283A are dating from the mid-16th to the early 20th century. The earliest document is dating from 1550 (fragment of a register of zeamets in the district of Doha), while the latest one is from 1908 (related to revenue collection), respectively. The 19th-century documents prevail, however the number of the 17th- and 18th-century documents is also considerable. In terms of content almost all of them deal with financial issues related mostly to incomes from taxes, expenses for the officers who guarded the fortress of Jerusalem, as well as some other minor fortresses in the region, and transfer of waqf posts with the respective salary from one holder (mostly because of his death) to another holder. Having this in mind, the documents of fonds “Jerusalem” preserved in the National Library in Sofia could be useful for studying the socio-economic history of Jerusalem and its province during the Ottoman period.

Bibliography
www.nationallibrary.bg/wp/?page_id=258 (only Bulgarian version is available)
İsmet Binark and Seyit Ali Kahraman, eds., Bulgaristan’daki Osmanlı Evrakı (İstanbul: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, 1994).

Summer School

Call for applications: Summer School ‘Reading and analysing Ottoman manuscript sources’

The French Institute of the Near East (Ifpo), the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB), the University of Balamand, the Lebanese University (Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences), the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Centralasian Studies (CETOBaC), the Ankara Sosyal Bilimler Üniversitesi, the İbn Haldun Üniversitesi, and the Japan Center for Middle Eastern Studies (JaCMES) with the support of the Open Jerusalem project are organising a summer school devoted to reading and analysing Ottoman manuscript sources. This is the second edition, following the summer school of 2016 in Amman, Jordan.

During the four-day programme we will introduce young researchers (mostly MA and PhD candidates, but postdocs may also apply) to reading, combining and analysing manuscript sources from various archives of the Ottoman era, produced at local, provincial and imperial levels. We concentrate mainly on materials from the 16th and 20th centuries, but welcome also explorations into earlier archives. Our summer school offers future researchers introductory presentations of the archival situation, various types of sources and basic research tools and workshops with a focus on the actual work with texts. The aim is to overcome the initial difficulties researchers often face when working with archival material from the Ottoman period, one of which is an administrative terminology no longer in use today.

Our programme emerged from several observations. First, young historians often feel helpless when faced with difficult Ottoman archival material in Ottoman Turkish or other languages used in the Empire if they have not had proper training in palaeography and philology. Moreover, there is not enough dialogue and exchange between the different schools of Ottoman history, particularly between those focusing on the analysis of imperial dynamics (who are generally specialists in the Ottoman language) and those who concentrate on the provinces of the Empire and who therefore work on sources produced in local languages. Our summer school will focus on the study of archives in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, in case also in Armenian and other languages, so as to provide future historians with the skills necessary to use such sources within the framework of their research projects.

The objective of including these three languages of the empire in one summer school is two-fold: firstly, to foster an exchange around theory and methodology among specialists of different regions of the empire. Secondly, the three languages are important for a comprehensive analysis of local dynamics in various provinces, either for administrative, economic and social dynamics or more specifically in religious studies and belles-lettres. An additional aim is to encourage the use of source materials in different languages by facilitating the identification and understanding of diverse archival holdings. Bringing together specialists of different regions and subjects will encourage the exchange of information on archival holdings, their history, catalogues and finding aids.

How?

This summer school is an initiative of the Ifpo, the OIB, the University of Balamand, the Lebanese University (Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences), Ankara Sosyal Bilimler Üniversitesi, İbn Haldun Üniversitesi, the CETOBaC, the JaCMES and other Lebanese partners to be defined.

The focus of the summer school are practical workshops in small groups allowing trainees to read and discuss archival documents with specialists familiar with different types of documents. These workshops will make up more than half of the training, the other part including visits of archives in and around Beirut, presentations of Ottoman archives and research aids in palaeography, and discussions about methodology.

In a workshop, the students will be asked to read and analyse a document of their choice.

The summer school will accept up to 20 students. About ten researchers and professors from Arab, Turkish, German and French universities will attend the summer school as instructors.

The main working language of the summer school is English.

Who?

Students enrolled in a Master or Ph.D. programme as well as researchers in an early post-doctoral stage, regardless of nationality, can apply for this summer school, provided that his or her research project necessitates the use of Ottoman source materials in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic or Armenian (or other relevant languages).

The students selected for the summer school will be offered the following free of charge:

  • summer school fees
  • lunch and dormitory accommodation during the summer school
  • round-trip air transportation from their country of residence
  • excursions and visits.

In order to be considered, the applications must include:

  • a proposal outlining the candidate’s research project and archival sources (two pages maximum)
  • a curriculum vitae, mentioning language skills (two pages maximum)
  • name and contact of 2 referees that may be contacted for a recommendation

Around fifteen students will be selected for participation in this summer school. The applications must be submitted in English and sent to this address: ottomansummerschool2016@gmail.com

When?

The applications must be submitted before 15 June 2017 (midnight Beirut time).

You will receive a reply by 25 June 2017.

The summer school will take place from 27 to 30 August 2017. Arrival day in Beirut is 26 August, departure is foreseen for 31 August at the earliest.

Where?

The summer school will take place in Beirut and Balamand, Lebanon.

List of potential instructors

Simon Abdel Massih (Lebanese University), Metin Atmaca (Ankara Sosyal Bilimler Üniversitesi), Marc Aymes (CETOBaC), Fatih Çalısır (Ibn Haldun University), Antranig Dakessian (Haigazian University Beirut), Aylin De Tapia (IFEA), Vanessa Guéno (Ifpo), Mahmoud Haddad (University Balamand), Astrid Meier (OIB), Serife Memis Eroglu (Hacettepe University), Falestin Naili (Ifpo), Norig Neveu (Ifpo), Abdallah Said (Lebanese University), Souad Slim (University of Balamand), Faruk Yaslıçimen (Ibn Haldun University) and others.

Conferences

Normes et territorialité entre Orient et Occident : invention, partage et mémoire des espaces sacrés (IXe-XIXe siècle)

Jérusalem, 29-31 mai 2017

Programme Normes et pratiques du religieux entre Orient et Occident

École française de Rome, École française d’Athènes, Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem

CéSor, CERCEC, Université catholique de Louvain, CRHIA-Université de Nantes

On 29-31 May, 2017 Vincent Lemire and Stéphane Ancel (director and member of the core team of Open Jerusalem) will intervene at the conference “Normes et territorialité entre Orient et Occident : invention, partage et mémoire des espaces sacrés (IXe – XXe s.)”. Their presentation will discuss the role of the Ethiopian Orthodox community in late-Ottoman Jerusalem: “Construire un récit pour justifier une présence : une histoire-palimpseste de la communauté éthiopienne orthodoxe de Jérusalem (vers 1905)”

La géographie du « fait religieux » renvoie à une définition plurielle du territoire entendu comme un espace rattaché à une communauté de croyants. L’évolution de l’Église latine et l’institutionnalisation progressive de ses pratiques a mis en avant les cadres spatiaux de l’administration cultuelle, perçus à travers les frontières entre les juridictions. Pourtant, si ces principes se référaient en apparence aux règles déjà énoncées dans les premiers conciles chrétiens, la tradition issue des christianismes orientaux a continué bien plus longtemps à concevoir les territoires de l’Église comme le produit de phénomènes éminemment sociaux. Dans cette perspective, les espaces sacrés prenaient la forme d’empreintes façonnées par les divers liens entre les lieux de culte ou les sièges de l’autorité cléricale et les rassemblements locaux des fidèles. Ce contraste s’observe notamment dans la nature des structures paroissiales, présentées précocement, dans l’usage latin, comme des unités territoriales et, dans les communautés orientales, confondues avec les implantations de l’administration princière puis désignées comme des « lieux d’affluence » des croyants – ainsi le приход dans les communautés slaves. Enfin, la topographie sacrée emprunte autant au réel qu’au symbolique, dans un échange constant entre les écrits du religieux – Écritures saintes, hagiographie, récits de pèlerinage – les pratiques liturgiques, les usages sociaux et les itinéraires arpentés par les fidèles et les religieux qui participent à la définition d’un « territoire sacré » à partir de lieux sanctifiés. Cette géographie se complique encore par les concurrences entre les Églises et les communautés autour de lieux communs d’une part et par les cadres normatifs, relevant des espaces chrétiens et islamiques, qui définissent l’usage des lieux cultuels d’autre part. Notre rencontre souhaite aborder chacun de ces trois domaines sur le temps long (entre IXe et XIXe siècles) à travers l’étude de cas concrets choisis dans les zones de contact entre les christianismes d’Occident et d’Orient, depuis le sud de la péninsule Italienne jusqu’aux régions de la Méditerranée orientale, en passant par les régions de l’Europe orientale et balkanique.

Voir le programme ici: Programme_Jérusalem_29_31_mai_2017 et les résumés là: Normes et territorialité_Résumés

Conferences

International Conference on the History of the Bilâd al Shâm

The Center for Documents and Manuscripts and the Study of the Bilâd al Shâm of the University of Jordan (Amman) will host the 10th International Conference about the history of the Bilâd al Shâm from the 2nd to the 4th of April 2017.

The event is organised by the University of Jordan and the University of Yarmouk.

Among the speakers, Open Jerusalem researcher Falestin Naili will give a lecture about “The Ottoman municipality of Jerusalem and the application of the Tanzîmât reforms in Jerusalem”.

Read the full program here.

Seminars

Jerusalem through the Hebrew Press

Ifpo & IFJ

are pleased to invite you to a public lecture by
  تقدم محاضرة لـ 
Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali (Ifpo, Research Associate, Department of Medieval and Modern Arabic Studies / Open Jerusalem)
عبد الحميد الكيالي- المعهد الفرنسي للشرق الأدنى- عمّان
Hassan Ahmad Hassan (University of Jordan, Faculty of Foreign Languages)
حسن أحمد حسن- الجامعة الأردنية- كلية اللغات الأجنبية
 القدس نهاية الفترة العثمانية في عيون الصحافة العبرية: مقاربة نقدية
Late Ottoman Jerusalem Through the Eyes of the Hebrew Press : A Critical Approach
Lecture in Arabic / المحاضرة بالعربية
     (في المعهد الفرنسي (عمان، جبل الويبدة
    الثلاثاء، 14 آذار/ مارس 2017 في الساعة السادسة مساءً
Tuesday, March 14th 2017 at 6 pm – Institut français (Amman,  Jabal al-Weibdeh)
عمومًا، تُعد الصحافة المحلية مصدرًا أوليًا للتاريخ المحلي والمدني، وفي سياق الحقبة العثمانية المتأخرة برزت هذه الصحافة كأداة فاعلة في شرعنة المدينة بوصفها فضاءً تشاركيًا في المجتمع. في ضوء هذه الفكرة الأساسية وغيرها، يتناول الباحثان، وبشكل نقدي، جوانب محددة من المجال العام للقدس كما تعرضه أحد أبرز الصحف العبرية في فلسطين العثمانية. 
It is widely held that local press is an important primary source for local and urban history. In the context of late Ottoman Jerusalem this press emerged as an active tool in legitimating the city as shared unit of society. In the light of this idea and others, the two researchers critically address certain aspects of Jerusalem’s public sphere as portrayed in one of the most prominent Hebrew newspapers in Ottoman Palestine.
 
Al-Kayyali, historian, holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Aix-Marseille in the “Studies of Arab and Muslim World”. He focuses in his research on the question of “cultural and religious interrelations” that includes: Arab Jews​ ​in general and​ Jerusalemite Jews in late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine.
عبد الحميد الكيالي: باحث في مجال التاريخ، يحمل درجة الدكتوراة في “دراسات العالم العربي والإسلامي” من جامعة إكس- مرسيليا، ويركز في أبحاثه على العلاقات المتبادلة في بعديْها الثقافي والديني، والتي تتضمن اليهود العرب بشكل عام، ويهود القدس في نهاية الفترة العثمانية والانتداب البريطاني في فلسطين.
Hassan, historian and linguist, holds a master degree from University of Jordan in “Jewish Studies”. He focuses in his research on the question of Hebrew press in late Ottoman and mandatory Palestine.
حسن أحمد: باحث في مجاليْ التاريخ واللغة، يحمل درجة الماجستير في الدراسات اليهودية من الجامعة الأردنية، ويركز في أبحاثه على الصحافة العبرية في نهاية الفترة العثمانية والانتداب البريطاني في فلسطين.
Seminars

The Politics of Archives and the Practices of Memory

Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street, Providence, RI 02912

Thursday, Mar. 2
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Critical Conversations Panel “Palestine-Israel in the Trump Era”
with Rashid Khalidi, Sherene Seikaly,  and Brown Faculty J. Brian Atwood and Omer Bartov. Moderator: Beshara Doumani
Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street

7:45 p.m.               
Dinner for Critical Conversations panel speakers and workshop presenters at Brown Faculty Club

9:30 P.M.
Shuttle Faculty Club to Biltmore hotel, 11 Dorrance Street, Providence

WORKSHOP PROGRAM

Friday, March 3
8:15 and 8:25 a.m.
Transfers for presenters from Biltmore hotel to Watson Institute

8:30-9:00 a.m.
Registration and continental breakfast

9:00–9:30 a.m. Welcoming Remarks

9:30 -11:15 a.m.
Panel 1: Archival Landscapes

Salim Tamari: The 1948 War: New Trends in Palestinian Historiography

Vincent Lemire: Opening Jerusalem’s Memories : for a Transnational, Open and Bottom-up Database of Primary Archives of the Holy City (1840-1940)

Sherene Seikaly: Autobiography, the Archive, and the Question of Palestine

Commentator: Rashid Khalidi

11:15 – 11:30 a.m. Coffee Break 

11:30 a.m.–1:15 p.m.
Panel 2: Archives, Diaries, and Colonial Appropriation

Areej Sabbagh-Khoury:  Memory, Settler Colonial Archive and the Representation of Palestinian Villages

Alex Winder: Police Diaries/Personal Diaries: Using the Notebooks of a Mandate-Era Policeman to Write Palestinian History

Gadi al-Gazi: Profits of Military Rule

Commentator: Caroline Elkins

1:15 – 2:45 p.m. Lunch for workshop presenters at the Sharpe Refectory

2:30-2:45 p.m.
Group photograph Sharpe Refectory Steps

3:00 – 4:45 p.m.:
Panel 3: Literature, the Body, and the Politics of Memory

Ibtisam Azem: “The Book of Disappearance”: The Memory of Place and Its Oral History

Diana Allen: What bodies remember: Sensorium as historical counterpoint in the Nakba archive

Sinan Antoon: Absence, Memory, and Return in Darwish’s Work

Commentator: Emily Drumsta

4:45 – 5:00 p.m.  Coffee Break 

5:00-6:00 p.m. Open Discussion

6:00-6:15 p.m.    Walk to the Pembroke Center, 172 Meeting Street, Providence, RI 02912

6:15 p.m.      Opening reception for Exhibition
Curated by Issam Nassar and Ariella Azoulay
Time Machine: Stereoscopic Views from Palestine 1900

7:35 and 7:45 p.m.
Transfers for workshop presenters to Biltmore hotel, 11 Dorrance Street, Providence, RI

8:15-10:00 p.m.
Private dinner for workshop presenters at Biltmore Hotel,  11 Dorrance Street, Providence, RI

Saturday, March 4

8:25 and 8:35 a.m. Transfers for presenters from hotel to Watson Institute

8:45-9:15 a.m. Continental breakfast 

9:15-11:00 a.m.
Panel 4: Oral history and the Politics of Decolonization

Yara Hawari and Francesco Amoruso:  Including Palestine in Indigenous Studies: Oral History and its Relevance for Decolonisation

Hana Sleiman and Kaoukab Chebaro (presented by Sleiman): The Palestinian Oral History Archive at AUB

Abdel Razzaq Takriti : Digital Histories of the Underground: Teaching the Palestinian Revolution

Commentator: Marianne Hirsch

11:00-11:15 a.m. Coffee break 

11:15 a.m.-1:00 p.m:
Panel 5: Rethinking Archives

Ann Stoler: On archiving as dissensus

Ariella Azoulay:  No Archival Turn

Brinkley Messick: Sharīʿa, Property, Nakba

Commentator: Beshara Doumani

1:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.:
Working lunch for presenters

End of Formal Program and Departures

2:45 p.m. Transfers for presenters from workshop venue to hotel

Publications

De-Municipalising Jerusalem

Les municipalités proche-orientales datent de la fin de l’époque ottomane et sont ainsi des témoins et des acteurs importants des changements qu’a connus la région au cours des 150 dernières années. L’échelon municipal permet d’appréhender les questions liées à l’espace social et politique des villes sur la longue durée. Ainsi, pour le cas de Jérusalem, l’analyse de la gouvernance urbaine (entre la fin de l’époque ottomane et la période mandataire) pointe la centralité de cet échelon afin de comprendre de manière plus nuancée les changements politiques impulsés par l’arrivée de la puissance mandataire.

READ THE ARTICLE: F. Naili, La dé-municipalisation de la gouvernance urbaine et de l’espace politique post-ottoman : le cas de Jérusalem, Les Carnets de l’IFPO

Seminars

Annual Congress of French Society of Urban History

Vincent Lemire will join next Annual Congress of the French Society of Urban History (19-20 January 2017) with a presentation about “Gouverner Jérusalem, entre souverainetés impériales, réformes municipales et revendications nationales (1867-1967)”.

The full program is available here.

 

Conferences

The politics of archives and the practices of memory

“The Politics of Archives and the Practices of Memory,” is the theme of the fourth annual meeting of NDPS, to be held March 3-4, 2017, at the Watson Institute, Brown University.

New Directions in Palestinian Studies (NDPS) provides a platform for rigorous intellectual exchange on new directions in research and writing about Palestine and the Palestinians, supports the work of emerging scholars, and promotes the integration Palestinian studies into the larger streams of critical intellectual inquiry.

The central question of the fourth annual meeting is: What does it mean for the colonized, the disenfranchised, and the displaced to produce narratives through archival and memorial practices? Other theoretical, empirical, and comparative questions follow. How are archives and memories produced, assembled, and mobilized in settler colonial contexts? In what ways are archives and memories sites of struggle and appropriation, and looting? How can we theorize archives and memory from perspectives critical of state-centric political configurations and conventional concepts of sovereignty?

An archive fever has been coursing through the Palestinian body politic for two decades now. What explains this phenomenon and how has it been shaped by the information technology revolution? How have artistic and social media interventions reconstructed the archival and the memorial as sites for research? In what ways can one analyze novels, poetry, and other forms of literature as forms of memory and archives without instrumentalizing these literary genres?

Vincent Lemire, director of the Open Jerusalem project, will present the work conducted by OJ on Jerusalem history throughout dozens of archives in Jerusalem and around the world.