Helga Tawil‐souri
Biographic Data
| ID | 4675598 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helga Tawil‐souri |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helga |
| FAMILY NAME | Tawil‐souri |
| SIGNATURE | SOURI H T |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 184 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
But I Do Not ♥ Genocide
A short and personal reflection on “liking” Instagram posts during the early months of the genocide in Gaza that addresses the platform limitations of social media. While the reasons for “liking” posts include attempting to inform the algorithm, combat shadow-banning, build a (limited) digital archive, and communicate support, doing so also demonstrates the built-in constraints of tech-platforms, shortcomings of digital resistance, and the inabil…
Speculation on infrastructural ecology: Pigeons, Gaza, and internet access
This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, it is a speculation for a community-organized, affordable, resilient internet infrastructure for the Gaza Strip that brings together different modes of building communication networks: one draws on millennia-long history of the pigeon post and the other on contemporary local WiFi and do-it-yourself networks. As a critique, it is a commentary on the pos…
Palestinian futures: Anticipation, imagination, embodiments. Introduction to special issue
In After the Last Sky, a text written more than three decades ago, Edward Said (1986:158) wondered how 'most of us [Palestinians]', though never 'tired enough to give up entirely', 'rally to our cause even through a mixture of scepticism and fatigue (after all, how long can you go on losing?) breaks whenever a new campaign gets under way'.To a contemporary reader, it is the question of how long that engenders incredulity: while Said's words embod…
Checkpoint Time
Surveillance Sublime: The Security State in Jerusalem
Response to Elia Zureik's Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit
Media, Globalization, and the (Un)Making of the Palestinian Cause
This article examines the Palestinian cause’s relationship to globalization: how it has been represented, mediated, and co-opted since the 1950s, and how it echoed rhetorically, politically, and ideologically by different groups; and how these resulted in both wider attention and obscurity. Particular moments of the Palestinian cause are highlighted, beginning with the movement’s circulation within third world liberation struggles and anti-imperi…
Cinema as the Space to Transgress Palestine’s Territorial Trap
In this article, Palestinian national cinema is interpreted through the lens of a ‘structure of feeling’ in order to address the theme of Palestinians reconstituting themselves in relation to changing geographies. Palestinians must constantly negotiate the tensions between mobility and immobility, whether in exile or diaspora, inside Israel, or within the Territories. Connecting these lived geographies to film, the article argues that analytic fr…
It’s Still About the Power of Place
Against the claim that the uprisings in Egypt were driven by social media, this article argues that territorial place continues to be a fundamentally important aspect of political change—even within the realm of media. Two key arguments are made: first, that territoriality and place are integral to media networks and infrastructures themselves; and second, that media studies needs to give greater importance to such a geography. The author argues …
Digital Occupation: Gaza's High-Tech Enclosure
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" hightechnology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Pa…
Mapping Israel-Palestine
Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities: ID Cards in Palestine/Israel
The Israeli state apparatus mandates differentiated IDs to Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The bureaucracy of Palestinian ID cards since 1948 has rendered Palestinians more legible for the security interests of Israel while simultaneously discriminating Palestinians from Jews as unequal citizens and non-citizens. The ID card regime, and less so the permit regime, …
Footnotes in Gaza
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine
By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is i…
Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Nonplace
This article analyzes checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories and how they function as both a unique anthropological space and a nondescript nonplace. First, the author describes the birth of modern-day checkpoints, their formations, variations, and functions. Then, based on ethnographic research at the Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the author shows how the checkpoint is an economic and social hub and argues that…
The Hi-Tech Enclosure of Gaza
Colored Identity
In Palestine/Israel, different colored identification cards are mandated by the Israeli state apparatus to Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and those who are citizens of Israel. The article traces the development of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian ID card since the establishment of Israel and suggests that modern-day ID cards in Palestine/Israel are physical and visible instruments of a widespread low-tech surveil…
Towards a Palestinian Cultural Studies
[, This article sheds light on poetry written by two of the most prominent leaders of Hamas, assassinated by Israel in 2003 and 2004, respectively: Ibrahim al-Maqadmah and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. Both leaders took part in the creation of Hamas and propagated its ideology in political, cultural and other fields. Poetry, being the premier form of artistic expression in the Arab world, is used by the leaders of Hamas to present their experiences in I…
New Palestinian centers: An ethnography of the `checkpoint economy
Based on an ethnography of Palestinian checkpoint workers, the author suggests that new and emerging `checkpoint economies' are transforming politically contested boundaries into important economic centers. Focusing on taxi drivers, porters, merchants and peddlers at the West Bank's Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the article tracks the growth of checkpoints and their ad hoc economy, and of Qalandia specifically, and …
Arab Television in Academic Scholarship
Over the past 10 years, there has been an exponential increase in satellite television in the Arab world, with programming ranging from music videos to news, from reality TV programs to Islamic talk shows. Concurrent with this development has been the growth of academic scholarship on understanding the relationship between Arab television and social and political transformations in the Middle East. This article provides an overview of Arab televi…
Digital Occupation: Gaza's High-Tech Enclosure
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" hightechnology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Pa…
Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Nonplace
This article analyzes checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories and how they function as both a unique anthropological space and a nondescript nonplace. First, the author describes the birth of modern-day checkpoints, their formations, variations, and functions. Then, based on ethnographic research at the Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the author shows how the checkpoint is an economic and social hub and argues that…
New Palestinian centers: An ethnography of the `checkpoint economy
Based on an ethnography of Palestinian checkpoint workers, the author suggests that new and emerging `checkpoint economies' are transforming politically contested boundaries into important economic centers. Focusing on taxi drivers, porters, merchants and peddlers at the West Bank's Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the article tracks the growth of checkpoints and their ad hoc economy, and of Qalandia specifically, and …
Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities: ID Cards in Palestine/Israel
The Israeli state apparatus mandates differentiated IDs to Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The bureaucracy of Palestinian ID cards since 1948 has rendered Palestinians more legible for the security interests of Israel while simultaneously discriminating Palestinians from Jews as unequal citizens and non-citizens. The ID card regime, and less so the permit regime, …
Colored Identity
In Palestine/Israel, different colored identification cards are mandated by the Israeli state apparatus to Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and those who are citizens of Israel. The article traces the development of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian ID card since the establishment of Israel and suggests that modern-day ID cards in Palestine/Israel are physical and visible instruments of a widespread low-tech surveil…
Palestinian futures: Anticipation, imagination, embodiments. Introduction to special issue
In After the Last Sky, a text written more than three decades ago, Edward Said (1986:158) wondered how 'most of us [Palestinians]', though never 'tired enough to give up entirely', 'rally to our cause even through a mixture of scepticism and fatigue (after all, how long can you go on losing?) breaks whenever a new campaign gets under way'.To a contemporary reader, it is the question of how long that engenders incredulity: while Said's words embod…
It’s Still About the Power of Place
Against the claim that the uprisings in Egypt were driven by social media, this article argues that territorial place continues to be a fundamentally important aspect of political change—even within the realm of media. Two key arguments are made: first, that territoriality and place are integral to media networks and infrastructures themselves; and second, that media studies needs to give greater importance to such a geography. The author argues …
Cinema as the Space to Transgress Palestine’s Territorial Trap
In this article, Palestinian national cinema is interpreted through the lens of a ‘structure of feeling’ in order to address the theme of Palestinians reconstituting themselves in relation to changing geographies. Palestinians must constantly negotiate the tensions between mobility and immobility, whether in exile or diaspora, inside Israel, or within the Territories. Connecting these lived geographies to film, the article argues that analytic fr…
Mapping Israel-Palestine
Speculation on infrastructural ecology: Pigeons, Gaza, and internet access
This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, it is a speculation for a community-organized, affordable, resilient internet infrastructure for the Gaza Strip that brings together different modes of building communication networks: one draws on millennia-long history of the pigeon post and the other on contemporary local WiFi and do-it-yourself networks. As a critique, it is a commentary on the pos…
Media, Globalization, and the (Un)Making of the Palestinian Cause
This article examines the Palestinian cause’s relationship to globalization: how it has been represented, mediated, and co-opted since the 1950s, and how it echoed rhetorically, politically, and ideologically by different groups; and how these resulted in both wider attention and obscurity. Particular moments of the Palestinian cause are highlighted, beginning with the movement’s circulation within third world liberation struggles and anti-imperi…
Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine
By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is i…
Arab Television in Academic Scholarship
Over the past 10 years, there has been an exponential increase in satellite television in the Arab world, with programming ranging from music videos to news, from reality TV programs to Islamic talk shows. Concurrent with this development has been the growth of academic scholarship on understanding the relationship between Arab television and social and political transformations in the Middle East. This article provides an overview of Arab televi…
But I Do Not ♥ Genocide
A short and personal reflection on “liking” Instagram posts during the early months of the genocide in Gaza that addresses the platform limitations of social media. While the reasons for “liking” posts include attempting to inform the algorithm, combat shadow-banning, build a (limited) digital archive, and communicate support, doing so also demonstrates the built-in constraints of tech-platforms, shortcomings of digital resistance, and the inabil…
Towards a Palestinian Cultural Studies
[, This article sheds light on poetry written by two of the most prominent leaders of Hamas, assassinated by Israel in 2003 and 2004, respectively: Ibrahim al-Maqadmah and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. Both leaders took part in the creation of Hamas and propagated its ideology in political, cultural and other fields. Poetry, being the premier form of artistic expression in the Arab world, is used by the leaders of Hamas to present their experiences in I…
Arab Television in Academic Scholarship
Over the past 10 years, there has been an exponential increase in satellite television in the Arab world, with programming ranging from music videos to news, from reality TV programs to Islamic talk shows. Concurrent with this development has been the growth of academic scholarship on understanding the relationship between Arab television and social and political transformations in the Middle East. This article provides an overview of Arab televi…
Towards a Palestinian Cultural Studies
[, This article sheds light on poetry written by two of the most prominent leaders of Hamas, assassinated by Israel in 2003 and 2004, respectively: Ibrahim al-Maqadmah and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. Both leaders took part in the creation of Hamas and propagated its ideology in political, cultural and other fields. Poetry, being the premier form of artistic expression in the Arab world, is used by the leaders of Hamas to present their experiences in I…
New Palestinian centers: An ethnography of the `checkpoint economy
Based on an ethnography of Palestinian checkpoint workers, the author suggests that new and emerging `checkpoint economies' are transforming politically contested boundaries into important economic centers. Focusing on taxi drivers, porters, merchants and peddlers at the West Bank's Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, the article tracks the growth of checkpoints and their ad hoc economy, and of Qalandia specifically, and …
Footnotes in Gaza
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine
By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is i…
Qalandia Checkpoint as Space and Nonplace
This article analyzes checkpoints in the Palestinian Territories and how they function as both a unique anthropological space and a nondescript nonplace. First, the author describes the birth of modern-day checkpoints, their formations, variations, and functions. Then, based on ethnographic research at the Qalandia checkpoint, halfway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, the author shows how the checkpoint is an economic and social hub and argues that…
The Hi-Tech Enclosure of Gaza
Colored Identity
In Palestine/Israel, different colored identification cards are mandated by the Israeli state apparatus to Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and those who are citizens of Israel. The article traces the development of the bureaucracy of the Palestinian ID card since the establishment of Israel and suggests that modern-day ID cards in Palestine/Israel are physical and visible instruments of a widespread low-tech surveil…
It’s Still About the Power of Place
Against the claim that the uprisings in Egypt were driven by social media, this article argues that territorial place continues to be a fundamentally important aspect of political change—even within the realm of media. Two key arguments are made: first, that territoriality and place are integral to media networks and infrastructures themselves; and second, that media studies needs to give greater importance to such a geography. The author argues …
Digital Occupation: Gaza's High-Tech Enclosure
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" hightechnology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Pa…
Mapping Israel-Palestine
Uneven Borders, Coloured (Im)mobilities: ID Cards in Palestine/Israel
The Israeli state apparatus mandates differentiated IDs to Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The bureaucracy of Palestinian ID cards since 1948 has rendered Palestinians more legible for the security interests of Israel while simultaneously discriminating Palestinians from Jews as unequal citizens and non-citizens. The ID card regime, and less so the permit regime, …
Cinema as the Space to Transgress Palestine’s Territorial Trap
In this article, Palestinian national cinema is interpreted through the lens of a ‘structure of feeling’ in order to address the theme of Palestinians reconstituting themselves in relation to changing geographies. Palestinians must constantly negotiate the tensions between mobility and immobility, whether in exile or diaspora, inside Israel, or within the Territories. Connecting these lived geographies to film, the article argues that analytic fr…
Media, Globalization, and the (Un)Making of the Palestinian Cause
This article examines the Palestinian cause’s relationship to globalization: how it has been represented, mediated, and co-opted since the 1950s, and how it echoed rhetorically, politically, and ideologically by different groups; and how these resulted in both wider attention and obscurity. Particular moments of the Palestinian cause are highlighted, beginning with the movement’s circulation within third world liberation struggles and anti-imperi…
Surveillance Sublime: The Security State in Jerusalem
Response to Elia Zureik's Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit
Checkpoint Time
Palestinian futures: Anticipation, imagination, embodiments. Introduction to special issue
In After the Last Sky, a text written more than three decades ago, Edward Said (1986:158) wondered how 'most of us [Palestinians]', though never 'tired enough to give up entirely', 'rally to our cause even through a mixture of scepticism and fatigue (after all, how long can you go on losing?) breaks whenever a new campaign gets under way'.To a contemporary reader, it is the question of how long that engenders incredulity: while Said's words embod…
Speculation on infrastructural ecology: Pigeons, Gaza, and internet access
This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, it is a speculation for a community-organized, affordable, resilient internet infrastructure for the Gaza Strip that brings together different modes of building communication networks: one draws on millennia-long history of the pigeon post and the other on contemporary local WiFi and do-it-yourself networks. As a critique, it is a commentary on the pos…
But I Do Not ♥ Genocide
A short and personal reflection on “liking” Instagram posts during the early months of the genocide in Gaza that addresses the platform limitations of social media. While the reasons for “liking” posts include attempting to inform the algorithm, combat shadow-banning, build a (limited) digital archive, and communicate support, doing so also demonstrates the built-in constraints of tech-platforms, shortcomings of digital resistance, and the inabil…
Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · History (10 works) · History (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Middle East Politics and Society (8 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · Law (7 works)