IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
News Roundup
Stories and folktales are some of the oldest narrative forms in Arabic literature. There is no accurate history of their origin, but according to history studies this type of narration emerged in prehistoric times, when men communicated through signs and gestures, before acquiring a language.
on April 9, 2017
Op-Eds & Analysis
Earlier this August, Donald Trump dragged American political discourse to what most pundits agreed was a new low by suggesting that “Second Amendment people” would know what to do if Hillary Clinton were to impose rigorous controls on gun ownership...
on August 17, 2016
Op-Eds & Analysis
When Ben Ehrenreich started spending time in the West Bank in 2011—the award-winning writer even lived there between 2013 and 2014—he went, in part, on assignment for the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s. What he returned home with is The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (June 14), a collection of revelatory anecdotes offering a pragmatic, somber look…
on July 20, 2016
Op-Eds & Analysis
More than 150 literary figures, including nine Pulitzer Prize winners, are calling for Israel to free an Israeli-Arab poet charged with inciting violence through social media. The open letter announced Tuesday in support of Dareen Tatour, who has been under house arrest since October, was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and Adalah-NY (The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel)…
on July 13, 2016
News Roundup
Suad Amiry is a Palestinian architect and writer, and the founder of RIWAQ: Center of Architectural Conservation in Ramallah, Palestine. Amiry found her talent for writing after spending 42 days under curfew with her mother-in-law in Ramallah in 2002. The result was her acclaimed memoir “Sharon and My Mother-in-Law,” which was released by Random House in 2006.
on June 30, 2015
News Roundup
On April 14, 2015, Verso Books will release “Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and Occupation.” In this collection of essays and poems, American authors and Palestinian authors living in America offer their raw, unfiltered reactions to the relentless oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
on March 24, 2015
Palestinian-American Profiles
Professor and respected author Beshara Doumani focuses on "recovering the history of social groups, places, and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East." He has also played a leadership role in defending academic freedom since 9/11.
on October 14, 2014
Palestinian-American Profiles
For Palestinian-American poet and environmental scholar Sharif S. Elmusa, writing poetry is not just an art. It is what he describes as the "continuous exercise of an existential need." A self-described poet from birth and first-generation Palestinian refugee, Elmusa recently published the first collection of his poetic works, Flawed Landscape: Poems 1987-2008.
on September 24, 2014
Palestinian-American Profiles
Dr. Ibrahim Fawal is a retired filmmaker, film professor and author of the award-winning historic novel On the Hills of God. Fawal, born in 1933, has long been a driven man. Seared into his consciousness at the young age of 15 was the 1948 image of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes in the newly-declared state of Israel streaming into his hometown of Ramallah, in the West Bank.
on September 1, 2014