Great seeing this in print! This paper on sperm smuggling as a form of embodied resistance theorizes the body as a foundational site for settler colonial rule and foregrounds the many and varied (and often non-violent) ways of Palestinian resistance
@TCSjournalSAGE
I defended my PhD this time a year ago (3rd dec) and because I didn't have a job lined up and felt like the biggest imposter, I never celebrated or took any time off. This is why I celebrate 1 yr of Dr. Rexer this week :)))))🤠
I just opened a chapter of my PhD for the first time in 2 yrs and I can only now see its full potential and all the work I've put into my writing - the academic job market and finishing a PhD (during Covid) wrecked my self-worth so deeply. Hugs to everyone doing that now💗
I had the immense pleasure to talk to Françoise Vergès
@phamthikang
for the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast series. We discuss women’s rights and the carceral state, the importance of comrade & friendship, revolutionary love, and inter-generational feminist thought ...
My article “The Materiality of Power and Bodily Matter(ing): Embodied Resistance in Palestine” has been accepted for publication in Body and Society! Based on fieldwork with Palestinian women who got pregnant with smuggled sperm from their incarcerated husbands it argues 1/2
Friends, colleagues, girlies, and queers! I still can't quite believe it myself, but I was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for my project "Entangled Reproduction: Life in the Wastelands of Racial Capitalism" at
@SocioWarwick
Some texts I find helpful to share with ppl who want to learn more about settler colonialism, imperialism, Arab radicalism/anti-colonial thought. I *highly* recommend reading Isabella Hammad's The Parisian while listening to
@thedigradio
's Thawra series 1/
Happy to invite you all to my first series of events organised since moving to London! “Perspectives on Racialisation, Gender & Feminist Methodologies”
@UCL_SPRC
discourse in germany has reached its lowest point?? “we killed 6 million jews but luckily hamas is worse because nazis felt bad about mass extermination” - the affective and racial politics of this outsourcing are so convenient and exemplary for the german psyche
I swapped flats with Marina Vishmidt when I moved to London two years ago and she had curated me a selection of books from her vast library 💔 she was someone I wanted to ask so many more questions
"The Materiality of Power and Bodily Matter(ing): Embodied Resistance in Palestine" was published last week. This is the saddest publication date I could have imagined for this work, but I believe its argument and methodology are more relevant than ever
I felt so much despair about our academic institutions this week - from NYC to Jerusalem. But I also felt so connected with my discipline (maybe for the first time?), seeing so many sociologists coming out in solidarity with Palestine
@Soc4Pal
@socispal
🫶🏻 🇵🇸
My new article for the
@TheSocReview
Magazine is out! "Words failed us: Repairing sociology’s haunted past means finding new language to write about the social world" is my first attempt to articulate the outlines of a sociology of refusal and repair 1/3
Hello
#britsoc23
! I’ll be on the theory stream first thing tomorrow morning. I’m thinking through a sociological framework of refusal and repair by reading Saidiya Hartman’s work, asking what to do with sociology’s violent past & present
Important piece by
@v_e_thompson
and Pinar Tuzcu on Germany's authoritarian (re)turn, the history of German anti-Palestinian racism, and how Germany's antisemitic past and present folds into and is articulated in the context of Palestinian liberation
Solidarity with Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, one of the most important scholars on gender, race, and Israeli settler colonialism, and a generous colleague I learned a lot from
In another blow to academic freedom in Israel, the Hebrew University suspends internationally renowned Palestinian professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian for denouncing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Suspension from teaching is justified in order to “preserve a safe climate on campus.”
Tomorrow I'm speaking with Jemima Repo and
@AshjanAjour
at the
#ECPG2024
plenary roundtable on "Gendering the Question of Palestine," and on June 18th, I'm giving a lecture on my research for
@cgslancaster
's "Palestine as a Feminist Issue" seminar series
Not me submitting the most anti-sociology paper to a major sociology conference 🤡 it’s on the politics of location, global solidarity & thinking repro justice from Palestine, but personally, affectively & effectively, it’s also a paper on academic dislocation & undisciplinarity
It’s time for German leftists (of the anti-d, liberal fraction) to wake up to the fascist, anti-Palestinian police state Germany transformed into; this kind of repression will have a boomerang effect and it doesn’t seem like the German center-left is aware of that
Invited to address a conference in Berlin about my work in Gaza hospitals during the present conflict.
The German government has forcibly prevented me from entering the country
Silencing a witness to genocide before the ICJ adds to Germany's complicity in the ongoing massacre.
This term's
@UCL_SPRC
Race, Ethnicity, and Postcolonial Studies colloquium!
@mahvishahmad
opens the series next week with a paper on ‘On Postcolonial Racialisation: On the Possibilities and Limitations of a Concept'
‘Why are the soldiers hurting Palestinian children?’ - Important and moving piece on parenting, social reproduction, and Palestine by
@AlaSirriyeh
in
@TheSocReview
I spoke with
@XineYaoPhD
about their (multiple!) award-winning book Disaffected (
@DukePress
) for the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast. This is such a brilliant book to demonstrate what interdisciplinary work can do, and how to approach literary and cultural text *as* theory. Xine reflects on 1/
We made a statement calling-in the field of reproduction: “Resistance is Fertile: No Reproductive Justice without Freedom for Palestine.” The time for resistance and transnational solidarity is now. Repro-workers, scholars, and activists, please sign ♥️
When does a project begin? I've been thinking about "Entangled Reproduction: Life in the Wastelands of Racial Capitalism" at least since 2022, and I am now slowly(!) embarking on this "new/next book" project (while finishing the first...), alongside these companions!
My short piece on what the appearance of sociologists and their writings in Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives can teach us - my first attempt to think about a sociology of refusal & repair - was the
#4
most read article in the
@TheSocReview
magazine! Thank you all for reading :)
Eyes and the prize: we’re in the home stretch of our
#Top22for2022
countdown spotlighting last year‘s most-read Magazine articles.
At
#4
,
@galarexer
says repairing sociology’s haunted past requires finding new language to write about the social world.
Everyone should listen to this! Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian on the
@MakdisiStreet
podcast, weaving together politics, theory, history, and solidarity in a uniquely sharp and compassionate way, truly one of the most inspiring thinkers of our time
Really exciting episode of the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast in the making! I spoke with Professor Akwugo Emejulu (
@SocioWarwick
) about her book "Fugitive Feminism" (
@Silver_Press_
), the figure of the fugitive, feminist writing, and Sylvia Wynter's reconfiguration of the human
Two of my most formative academic years came to an end yesterday, with a warm goodbye from the
@UCL_SPRC
crew and students 🖤 First as postdoc then as a lecturer, I learned so much at the SPRC and will carry this place and its intellectual spirit with me in the future
I celebrated my beautiful friends wedding this weekend 🥲 I was supposed to prepare for another conference but I’m learning to give myself more time for friends and community 🤲🏻
Hi Philly!
#ASA2023
I’m presenting my paper “Thinking reproductive justice and global solidarity from Palestine” on the “Racial Capitalism, Emancipation & Global Solidarity ” panel (Monday). So curious to learn more about US sociology & how my interdisciplinary work fits in here
Reading for “The Black Atlantic at 30” conference at
@UCL_SPRC
. The Du Bois chapter title conveniently capturing some my own intellectual journey to the uniquely special place that is the Sarah Parker Remond Centre, where I will stay for another year as Lecturer starting in June!
We had a wonderful evening with
@XineYaoPhD
at the
@UCL_SPRC
colloquium feat. linkin park, monstrous femmes, resting pillow princesses, but also reflections on collectivity and holding space for each other as we move through a world that makes us sick 🖤
I am an international member of
@ASAnews
and a member of the UK-based collective Sociologists in Solidarity with Palestinians
@socispal
and I voted YES in the
@Soc4Pal
resolution for justice in Palestine because Palestine, as Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian reminds us 1/2
umm ok, so basically this would be the end for any kind of "international" UK higher education because the entry level salaries for academics post PhD are below that
Germany continues to dig its own grave as a place of serious & critical knowledge production. The silence of tenured profs is deafening, while it is mostly ECR, precariously employed, and marginalized/racialized scholars speaking up and organizing (sometimes "behind the scenes")
The head of the university of Cologne, Joybrato Mukherjee, has disinvited US philosopher Nancy Fraser from the upcoming Albertus Magnus Professorship for signing a statement titled "Philosophy for Palestine". Just everyday normality in Germany these days.
I declined to speak at one of the Max Planck Institutes earlier this year. Now some members have come forward with this letter! This is also a reminder that institutional responses take time, but that people are organizing (members were in solidarity when I declined the invite)
A powerful statement by some members of the Max Planck Society, an institution I used to work for, calling for the organization to reconsider its relationship to rethink its biases towards Israeli communities and incorporate Palestinian perspectives
Another episode of the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast in the making! Some of my (former) students and I met with
@A1RWhite
to talk about his brilliant book Epidemic Orientalism!
Taught my last class at
@UCL_SPRC
today 🥲we read
@savannahshange
on abolitionist anthropology alongside
@sumi_madhok
/Adrienne Rich on the politics of location, asking with
@jennykellyedu
what ethnographic witnessing means/does in the face of ongoing genocidal violence
@JewishCurrents
' After October 7 reader is an excellent collection of texts on Israel's genocidal war but also earlier pieces explaining with such clarity how we got to this point 2/
I will take up this post in 2024 after a year of teaching at my current academic home
@UCL_SPRC
. Pictured: the joy of not being anxious 24/7 (thx for nothing precarity), celebrating with
@drsaraharens
who, like many others, supported me in this process💗ty, you know who you are
New
@UCL_SPRC
podcast with Prof. Akwugo Emejulu! We discuss fugitive feminism, solidarity and coalitional work, counter-storytelling, and the difficulties of staying in the liminal space of fugitivity as a mode of ambivalence and disidentification from the figure of the Human.
In solidarity with my German colleagues speaking up against police brutality and defending student protesters!
@NaikaForoutan
is a brilliant scholar and was my MA + BA thesis supervisor, she has been consistently speaking up in the last 7 months
Germany’s biggest newspaper has printed pictures of lecturers who signed an open letter against the brutal eviction of a student protest camp, calling them perpetrators
Doing a teach-out with
@wwkstandspal
on Wednesday! I’ll be talking about Israel’s fertility economy, demographic anxieties, and reproductive justice for Palestinians - come along if in Coventry (not a prof yet but v flattered 🥰)
some of my faves for
#ReadPalestine
week:
heba hayek - sambac beneath unlikely skies
kaleem hawa - hating it lush, on tel aviv
yara hawari - the stone house
adania shibli - minor detail
My fave texts for
#ReadPalestine
week:
Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness
Suad Amiry, Sharon & My Mother-in-law
Anton Shammas, Arabesques
Jean Makdisi, Teta, Mother & Me
Edward Said, After the Last Sky
Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns
📢The
@UCL_SPRC
warmly welcome
@Gargi_at_home
as our new Director for the centre. Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya will be joining us from September, we look forward to what is in store ☀️
Please join us tomorrow at the
@UCL_SPRC
colloquium on Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies, where I'll be presenting "The Hospital as 'Terra Nullius': Medical Neutrality and the Political Conditions of Israeli Settler Colonialism", based on a chapter of my book project
I'll be presenting a paper based on my theory project at
#britsoc2023
: "Critical, Speculative, Otherwise: Towards a Sociology of Refusal and Repair" I'm happy I get to think and write about this more, and venture into Sociological Theory™ after years of empirical research
academia on twitter: either "i'm honored to accept my new position as assist prof at [ivy league] & I'm basically ReInVenTiNg tHe FiELD" or "i'm leaving academia FoReVeR & here are 15 reasons wHy YoU ShOulD ToO" why can't this just be like a regular job? 🥴
that bodies and bodily matter constitute a crucial lens from which to analyze Israeli settler colonialism and its carceral regime. It offers some reflections on what this means from a methodological perspective and foregrounds the knowledge Palestinian women share with us
I submitted my dissertation "Bodies and Borders. The Politics of Reproductive Technologies in Israel/Palestine" yesterday! It takes a multi-scalar approach to understanding the impediments to Palestinian women's reproductive justice in the Israeli fertility economy:
Oh remember this? "'How does it feel to be a population?' Thinking Reproductive Justice and Global Solidarity from Palestine" got accepted for
#ASA2023
Section on Global and Transnational Sociology/ Session on Racial Capitalism, Emancipation, and Global Solidarity - v v excited!
Not me submitting the most anti-sociology paper to a major sociology conference 🤡 it’s on the politics of location, global solidarity & thinking repro justice from Palestine, but personally, affectively & effectively, it’s also a paper on academic dislocation & undisciplinarity
Join us for “Palestine and Global Solidarities: Histories, Challenges, Futures” the 2nd
@socispal
webinar on June 26, with
@AlaSirriyeh
@nevegordon
Agata Lisiak, Manal Massalha, and my former student Yara 😍
@hebh_jamal
Germans love to police around language (while most peoples English even in public institutions is rather limited 😏) Thank you for sharing your experience. As a German, I am well aware of the specificity of anti-Palestinian racism and it needs to be talked about more, not less.
It was such a joy to host
@jacobinoire
and
@phamthikang
at
@UCL_SPRC
! their conversation weaved together the internationalist anti-capitalist history of a decolonial feminism, the work of writing "minor" stories, racial capitalism, social reproduction, and pollution 1/2
Join us for “Palestine and Global Solidarities: Histories, Challenges, Futures” the 2nd
@socispal
webinar on June 26, with
@AlaSirriyeh
@nevegordon
Agata Lisiak, Manal Massalha, and my former student Yara 😍
A special episode of the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast is out! We discuss
@A1RWhite
's book, racial and sexual boundaries in Victorian horror and figures of the monstrous, the role of health regulations in the making of racial difference in the Middle East, and Humanism - link below
Another episode of the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast in the making! Some of my (former) students and I met with
@A1RWhite
to talk about his brilliant book Epidemic Orientalism!
sometimes going back to interview transcripts, audio recordings, or photographs from doing fieldwork is such a wild ride: not only does it conjure up all the richness and complexity that can never really be translated into text -
I had such a great time talking to
@mayamikdashi
for the
@UCL_SPRC
podcast! We discussed her book "Sextarianism" (
@stanfordpress
), the relationship between geopolitics, epistemology, and methodology, and what happens 1/
Dreaming up an intro to sociology class in which I would show born in flames (1983) and bread and roses (2000) to teach racial capitalism, borders, migration, gender, intersectionality… will keep adding to film list for when I’ll get to do this ✍🏻
Bye
#britsoc2023
!
@alim1213
left us all inspired and hopeful about the discipline (&its undisciplinarity) with his plenary on the cunning of sociological reasoning, epistemically humility, and social theorizing as connecting local struggles against oppression
Please join us for our first
@socispal
workshop on April 23! "Decolonial pedagogies and Palestine in the sociological classroom" with
@hebagowayed
@NancyTamimi
Goldie Osuri and Hala Shoman
Finally got to read
@salamitsheba
’s book this weekend (
@hajarpress
). It captures the universal experience of girlhood and the particularity of growing up in Gaza in a truly stunning way, you should all read this! Thx
@sophiemarie_ng
for letting me borrow your copy!
I also loved
@sophiemarie_ng
s paper on the scavenger method! Cultivating wonder and making new worlds from what we already know, feel and see 🌞 this is a much needed reflection on sociological methods as extractive and violent
#britsoc2023
Very happy to share that I am starting a postdoc position at the
@UCL_SPRC
at
@UCL_IAS
where I will continue to work on questions of reproductive justice in Israel/Palestine, and further develop my research on the unequal distribution of waste/toxicity under racial capitalism
Congratulations to Dr. Gala Rexer who accepted a post-doc the Sarah Parker Remond Center for the Study Racism and Racialization at the University College London!
@UCL_SPRC
Gala has been our student since B.A. We will miss you, Gala!
@galarexer
@Div_Soc_Conf
This whole discourse is so weird to me (and, honestly, so American?) I did a PhD because I was in my mid/late 20s & interested in researching a topic I deeply cared about. I didn’t have any other “lucrative” options, nor did I think about a PhD as a “well paying” career path
“financial suicide”: this should be the first (though not the only) thing academics should say to students who ask whether they should do a PhD in the humanities or social sciences.
total loss of earning potential in 20s-early 30s, plus X years of subpar pay & costly moves.
"feminist decolonial" scholars not citing newer research by ECRs who write about similar topics... 🤨you heard of "citational praxis" before? (I'm not usually that salty, but its sad to see when ppl you were looking up to fall short of their own political commitments)
It's been taking me months, literally thousands of £££, and a lot of worries to get me and my partner's visa sorted and paid. This is as a German citizen, fairly middle-class person and early career scholar. I don't think we could have afforded higher visa & NHS fees.
As a
@BoellStiftung
alumna, I'm shocked and angered (and not surprised) by its continuous unwillingness to engage with Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voices (cc Masha Gessen). Read Sarah El Bulbeisi's now removed article here (in German):
.
@BoellStiftung
published an article by the brilliant Palestinian academic,Sarah Bulbeisi on how Palestinian identity faces endless phases of displacement, even within Germany through tabooization. Well, this org just pulled her article after pro-Israel pressure proving her point
Ich habe diesen "Brief aus Berlin" unterzeichnet. Gegen rassistische Polizeigewalt und Antisemitismus, gegen die Massaker an jüdischen Israelis und gegen den Genozid in Gaza - auch wenn es im Deuschen Diskurs unmöglich scheint, diese Positionen sind vereinbar!
Brief aus Berlin
Es ist möglich, gegen antisemitische Anschläge und rassistische Polizeigewalt, gegen die Massaker der Hamas und die Kriegsverbrechen der israelischen Armee gleichzeitig zu sein!
As a
@BoellStiftung
alumni, I'm ashamed by their cancellation of
@mashagessen
but also slightly surprised (in a naive way)? The essay is subtle and nuanced, and even in the paragraph after the comparison in question, they specify the nature and difficulty of such comparisons? 1/2
Please join us for the last
@UCL_SPRC
colloquium this term:
@mahvishahmad
on "Postcolonial racialisation: on the possibilities and limitations of a concept", March 14, 5-7pm
fellow scholars, do you introduce your research interests through themes ("gender, race, reproduction, sexuality"), fields ("gender studies, STS, medical sociology") or interventions/stakes ("reproductive justice, environmental justice"); and why? :-*
Michael Burawoy’s contribution to the
@Soc4Pal
teach-in on the Palestine resolution, and on sociology and the question of Palestine more broadly: “How can we not join the mounting chorus for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza?”
Michael Buroway explains that the ASA has often taken a stand on political issues and why voting YES for the Justice for Palestine resolution is the sociological thing to do. He quotes Howard Becker's 1966 address to SSSP: 1/
you know those fields and "disciplines" that always feel like home despite (or maybe because) not being your actual "discipline", where reading feels like you're speaking your native language? its queer theory for me
I came to
#ASA2023
to explore US sociology & I’m leaving impressed and inspired! So much great work is being done in global/transnational, anti-colonial/abolitionist sociology and the fields of gender, sexuality, and critical pedagogies! Some highlights and crappy photos 🧵