Thea Renda Abu El-Haj
Biographic Data
| ID | 3829148 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thea Renda Abu El-Haj |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thea Renda Abu |
| FAMILY NAME | El-Haj |
| SIGNATURE | EL-HAJ T R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Limit of Academic Freedom is Palestine: Silencing through Censorship
We write this essay at a moment when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is about to enter a third year; Israel is escalating its violent attacks on Gaza; and, it has continued to withhold food to the p
Education without national consciousness is not education”: Palestinian teachers’ quiet revolution against the ongoing Nakba
Forum: Confronting the Genocide of Palestinians and Refusing Repression, edited by Lori Allen and Heidi Mogstad
Against Implications: Ethnographic Witnessing as Research Stance in the Lebanese Conflict Zone
Legacies of violence—and the exigencies of care that emerge in contexts of conflict—become visible in schools and yet often remain unacknowledged. These conflicts are often elided in educational policy making and research focused on developing best practices. I step back from research oriented toward problem solving to argue for a method (ethnography), a stance (witnessing), and a refusal (to draw implications for practice). Documenting the work …
Whose race problem? Tracking patterns of racial denial in US and European educational discourses on Muslim youth
In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators in schools in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the languages and practices of national belonging and citizenship. Comparing ethnographic case studies in the United S…
Toward an awareness of the “colonial present” in education: Focusing on interdependence and inequity in the context of global migration
Across the world, the number of displaced people has risen to unprecedented levels. In the United States, rightwing politicians call for closing borders to Muslims, refugees, and immigrants. These conditions lead the authors to ask how to educate with and for immigrant students who are positioned as enemy aliens – “impossible subjects” – within their new nation? We take a comparative approach, looking across our studies with Palestinian immigrant…
Confronting the Urban Civic Opportunity Gap: Integrating Youth Participatory Action Research Into Teacher Education
This article considers how youth participatory action research (YPAR) can be used to build the civic teaching capacities of preservice teachers working in urban settings. In the final semester of an urban-focused teacher education program, preservice teachers led YPAR programs in the urban schools in which they student-taught the previous semester. This article analyzes what preservice teachers learn through the process of YPAR. Specifically, we …
Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth after 9/11
Realizing the Equity-Minded Aspirations of Detracking and Inclusion: Toward a Capacity-Oriented Framework for Teacher Education
Inclusion and detracking policies seek to remedy the pervasive inequality of educational opportunities in U.S. schools by building classrooms that are integrated across the lines of race/ethnicity, class, and disability and that offer all students access to a rich and challenging curriculum. In practice, however, teachers often struggle with the implementation of these reforms. Drawing on ethnographic research in detracked and inclusion classroom…
Becoming Citizens in an Era of Globalization and Transnational Migration: Re-imagining Citizenship as Critical Practice
This article examines how the perspectives and experiences of Arab American youth from immigrant communities can help educators think about what it means to teach young people to become active participants in the social, civic, and political spheres within and across the boundaries of nation-states. Arab American youths' perspectives are reflective of the transnational nature of their life experiences, as well as the unfortunate ways they have be…
"I Was Born Here, but My Home, It's Not Here": Educating for Democratic Citizenship in an Era of Transnational Migration and Global Conflict
In this article, Thea Renda Abu El-Haj shares her research on how a group of Palestinian American high school youth understand themselves as members of the U.S. community, of the Palestinian American community, and of communities in Palestine. She argues that, for these youth, coming to terms with who they are has a great deal to do both with how they view themselves and how Palestinian Americans are viewed in the imagined community of the United…
Challenging the Inevitability of Difference: Young Women and Discourses about Gender Equity in the Classroom
Debates about achieving gender equity in education have largely been conducted along a single axis, swinging between two questions: Are girls and boys fundamentally the same or different? Consequently, should girls and boys be treated similarly or differently? This article grounds these theoretical debates about approaches to gender equity in the experiences of one group of female high school students’ struggle to achieve gender equity in their m…
Becoming Citizens in an Era of Globalization and Transnational Migration: Re-imagining Citizenship as Critical Practice
This article examines how the perspectives and experiences of Arab American youth from immigrant communities can help educators think about what it means to teach young people to become active participants in the social, civic, and political spheres within and across the boundaries of nation-states. Arab American youths' perspectives are reflective of the transnational nature of their life experiences, as well as the unfortunate ways they have be…
Whose race problem? Tracking patterns of racial denial in US and European educational discourses on Muslim youth
In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators in schools in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the languages and practices of national belonging and citizenship. Comparing ethnographic case studies in the United S…
Realizing the Equity-Minded Aspirations of Detracking and Inclusion: Toward a Capacity-Oriented Framework for Teacher Education
Inclusion and detracking policies seek to remedy the pervasive inequality of educational opportunities in U.S. schools by building classrooms that are integrated across the lines of race/ethnicity, class, and disability and that offer all students access to a rich and challenging curriculum. In practice, however, teachers often struggle with the implementation of these reforms. Drawing on ethnographic research in detracked and inclusion classroom…
Confronting the Urban Civic Opportunity Gap: Integrating Youth Participatory Action Research Into Teacher Education
This article considers how youth participatory action research (YPAR) can be used to build the civic teaching capacities of preservice teachers working in urban settings. In the final semester of an urban-focused teacher education program, preservice teachers led YPAR programs in the urban schools in which they student-taught the previous semester. This article analyzes what preservice teachers learn through the process of YPAR. Specifically, we …
Toward an awareness of the “colonial present” in education: Focusing on interdependence and inequity in the context of global migration
Across the world, the number of displaced people has risen to unprecedented levels. In the United States, rightwing politicians call for closing borders to Muslims, refugees, and immigrants. These conditions lead the authors to ask how to educate with and for immigrant students who are positioned as enemy aliens – “impossible subjects” – within their new nation? We take a comparative approach, looking across our studies with Palestinian immigrant…
Challenging the Inevitability of Difference: Young Women and Discourses about Gender Equity in the Classroom
Debates about achieving gender equity in education have largely been conducted along a single axis, swinging between two questions: Are girls and boys fundamentally the same or different? Consequently, should girls and boys be treated similarly or differently? This article grounds these theoretical debates about approaches to gender equity in the experiences of one group of female high school students’ struggle to achieve gender equity in their m…
Challenging the Inevitability of Difference: Young Women and Discourses about Gender Equity in the Classroom
Debates about achieving gender equity in education have largely been conducted along a single axis, swinging between two questions: Are girls and boys fundamentally the same or different? Consequently, should girls and boys be treated similarly or differently? This article grounds these theoretical debates about approaches to gender equity in the experiences of one group of female high school students’ struggle to achieve gender equity in their m…
"I Was Born Here, but My Home, It's Not Here": Educating for Democratic Citizenship in an Era of Transnational Migration and Global Conflict
In this article, Thea Renda Abu El-Haj shares her research on how a group of Palestinian American high school youth understand themselves as members of the U.S. community, of the Palestinian American community, and of communities in Palestine. She argues that, for these youth, coming to terms with who they are has a great deal to do both with how they view themselves and how Palestinian Americans are viewed in the imagined community of the United…
Realizing the Equity-Minded Aspirations of Detracking and Inclusion: Toward a Capacity-Oriented Framework for Teacher Education
Inclusion and detracking policies seek to remedy the pervasive inequality of educational opportunities in U.S. schools by building classrooms that are integrated across the lines of race/ethnicity, class, and disability and that offer all students access to a rich and challenging curriculum. In practice, however, teachers often struggle with the implementation of these reforms. Drawing on ethnographic research in detracked and inclusion classroom…
Becoming Citizens in an Era of Globalization and Transnational Migration: Re-imagining Citizenship as Critical Practice
This article examines how the perspectives and experiences of Arab American youth from immigrant communities can help educators think about what it means to teach young people to become active participants in the social, civic, and political spheres within and across the boundaries of nation-states. Arab American youths' perspectives are reflective of the transnational nature of their life experiences, as well as the unfortunate ways they have be…
Unsettled Belonging: Educating Palestinian American Youth after 9/11
Confronting the Urban Civic Opportunity Gap: Integrating Youth Participatory Action Research Into Teacher Education
This article considers how youth participatory action research (YPAR) can be used to build the civic teaching capacities of preservice teachers working in urban settings. In the final semester of an urban-focused teacher education program, preservice teachers led YPAR programs in the urban schools in which they student-taught the previous semester. This article analyzes what preservice teachers learn through the process of YPAR. Specifically, we …
Whose race problem? Tracking patterns of racial denial in US and European educational discourses on Muslim youth
In this paper, the authors focus on everyday narrations of the nation as they are taken up by educators in schools in the United States, Denmark and Spain. As the primary institutions within which children from im/migrant communities are incorporated into the nation-state, schools are the key sites within which young people learn the languages and practices of national belonging and citizenship. Comparing ethnographic case studies in the United S…
Toward an awareness of the “colonial present” in education: Focusing on interdependence and inequity in the context of global migration
Across the world, the number of displaced people has risen to unprecedented levels. In the United States, rightwing politicians call for closing borders to Muslims, refugees, and immigrants. These conditions lead the authors to ask how to educate with and for immigrant students who are positioned as enemy aliens – “impossible subjects” – within their new nation? We take a comparative approach, looking across our studies with Palestinian immigrant…
Against Implications: Ethnographic Witnessing as Research Stance in the Lebanese Conflict Zone
Legacies of violence—and the exigencies of care that emerge in contexts of conflict—become visible in schools and yet often remain unacknowledged. These conflicts are often elided in educational policy making and research focused on developing best practices. I step back from research oriented toward problem solving to argue for a method (ethnography), a stance (witnessing), and a refusal (to draw implications for practice). Documenting the work …
The Limit of Academic Freedom is Palestine: Silencing through Censorship
We write this essay at a moment when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is about to enter a third year; Israel is escalating its violent attacks on Gaza; and, it has continued to withhold food to the p
Education without national consciousness is not education”: Palestinian teachers’ quiet revolution against the ongoing Nakba
Forum: Confronting the Genocide of Palestinians and Refusing Repression, edited by Lori Allen and Heidi Mogstad
Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Citizenship (3 works) · Critical Race Theory in Education (3 works)