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Papers by helga tawil-souri

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2024

A short and personal reflection on "liking" Instagram posts during the early months of the genoci... more 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 shadowbanning, 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 inability to stop the violence.

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

This article proposes an Internet Pigeon Network as a prototype and a critique. As a prototype, i... more 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 possibility of establishing an infrastructure that is equitable, adaptable, sustainable, and grounded by the collaborative effort between humans, animals, and the environment that sets it in motion. The article discusses such a prototype’s implications on mobility and the goal of an infrastructural ecology.

Open Gaza

The book brings together a large, collaborative group of architects, urban designers and social s... more The book brings together a large, collaborative group of architects, urban designers and social scientists to think through the problem of how this situation might be changed. Can planning, design and technology aid in advancing a more resilient and sustainable urbanism? For my piece I looked at how to build a sustainable, affordable, green, and surveillance-proof internet infrastructure through pigeons. No joke.

Arab Cultural Studies, 2012

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2021

Palestinian futures: anticipation, imagination, embodiments. Introduction to special issue Mikko ... more Palestinian futures: anticipation, imagination, embodiments. Introduction to special issue Mikko Joronen , Helga Tawil-Souri, Merav Amir and Mark Griffiths d Space and Political Agency Research Group (SPARG), Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University, New York, NY, USA; School of Natural and Built Environment, Geography, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK; Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Arab Studies Quarterly, 2016

Elia Zureik. Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit. London and New York: Rou... more Elia Zureik. Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. 278 pages. Paperback $52.95Fouad MoughrabiIf there is any doubt that a paradigm shift has occurred in the discourse on Israel/ Palestine, professor Zureik's brilliant new book puts it to rest. This work takes us back to what the core of the conflict is really all about, namely, one that pits a rapacious settler colonial movement against a native population deeply attached to its land and history. Gone is the discourse of partition that was supposed to produce a two-state settlement. This reframing serves to set the historical record straight and contributes to a clearer understanding of the problem.Zureik looks at the key foundational concerns of this colonial movement, namely, the dispossession of the indigenous population through violence, repressive state laws and practices, and racialized forms of monitoring. These laws and practices, according to him, extend from i...

in Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski,... more in Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski, eds. (2016)

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2024

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

Open Gaza

Arab Cultural Studies, 2012

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2021

Arab Studies Quarterly, 2016

Open-air prison, Terror, Resistance, Occupation, Siege, Trauma, Bare humanity: irrespective of wh... more Open-air prison, Terror, Resistance, Occupation, Siege, Trauma, Bare humanity: irrespective of when, where, and to whom the word is uttered, Gaza immediately evokes an abundance of metaphors. Similarly, a plethora of metaphors also invoke Gaza: Crisis, Exception, Refugees, Destitution, Tunnels, Persistence. With essays written by journalists, writers, doctors, academics and others, this volume uses metaphor to record and historicize Gaza, to contextualize its everyday realities, interrogate its representations and provide an understanding on Gaza's real and symbolic significance. The essays within, written both from within Gaza and outside, touch on life and survival, the making of the Gaza Strip and its increasing isolation, the discursive and visual tools that have often shackled Gaza behind misunderstandings, and what Gaza contributes to our understanding of exception; inequality; dispossession; bio-politics; necro-power and other terms which we rely on to make sense of our world. The volume reveals how Gaza is an outcome of specific historical and spatial practices, and not simply a metaphor of a far-away humanitarian disaster or place of incomprehensible violence. Gaza As Metaphor demonstrates that Gaza is a real place, an inseparable part of the past, present, and future condition of Palestinians, in particular, and of dispossession, more generally.

"Ginsberg (Holocaust Film) and Lippard (By Angels Driven), along with eight distinguished field s... more "Ginsberg (Holocaust Film) and Lippard (By Angels Driven), along with eight distinguished field scholars, provide the foremost subject dictionary, intended to support deeper inquiry into Middle Eastern filmmakers' representation of culture, history, and self. Entries cover films, figures, production companies, cinematic concepts, and key terms relevant to the various nations positioned between Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. However, among the 500 alphabetized entries are also productions made by exiled or otherwise politically dispersed Middle Easterners. While acknowledging North American and European filmic depictions, the authors devote less time to these outsider interpretations. Instead, the multiparagraph, fully cross-referenced entries offer specifics on whether profiled films were intended for domestic or international audiences, and consideration is given to how these particulars impact characterization and self-depiction. The entries are bookended by a chronology, dating the inception of Middle Eastern cinema to 1896 Lumière screenings in Egypt, and a 51-page film list, organized by country. A 31-page further reading list rounds out the work. BOTTOM LINE While it extends well beyond the chronological boundaries of Lina Khatib's Filming the Modern Middle East, this is still a fitting complement. Recommended for collections serving Middle Eastern-focused studies and film studies." -- Savannah Schroll Guz, LIBRARY JOURNAL

"This work by Ginsberg (International Council for Middle East Studies) and Lippard (Univ. of Utah) will be a necessary purchase for most academic and large public libraries because it is the first English-language dictionary published on Middle Eastern cinema as a whole....This new historical dictionary opens with a valuable chronology, covering 1896-2009, and dealing with outstanding cinematic events in the region. Key sociopolitical events are also mentioned, to provide context. Following a brief but helpful introduction, the body of the dictionary provides A-Z entries on significant films, filmmakers, stars, and topics of concern. These topics include but are not limited to film schools, festivals, centers, organizations, movements, genres and types of film (e.g., Beur cinema), themes (e.g., women, Islam), and historical summaries of national cinemas under the nation's name. This volume offers pioneering coverage of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and provides references for their nascent cinematic developments. It is blessed with a substantial and valuable filmography and bibliography, the latter classified into general works and then into works by nation; it covers both journal articles and books....This is an excellent buy and should see heavy use in libraries. Essential." -- Carmen Hendershott, CHOICE

"For students or aficionados of specialized topics, the various Historical Dictionary series can mean the difference between starting the research process or finding nothing at all. HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF MIDDLE EASTERN CINEMA, part of the Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts series, is a prime example. The authors are both specialists in the field, with substantial publication credentials. The volume starts with a chronology that begins in 1896 (the first Lumiere screenings in Egypt) and concludes in 2009 (the use of YouTube for political purposes in Iran; the first Palestinian American feature film). The lengthy introductory essay that follows concludes with an explanation of what countries are not included and why. The 500 or so A–Z entries cover people (including actors, directors, critics, composers, writers, and important historic figures), specific films, styles of film, concepts, and more. Entries on individual countries are several pages long and outline the place of the country within the region, its contribution to the history of the film, and important films and individuals. Entries about concepts such as Gender and sexuality and Nationalism focus on how these have been treated in film. The entries on the films themselves, which include information on the director, actors, plot, and significance, may be the most consulted entries in the volume. An alphabetically arranged filmography is cross-referenced to the dictionary entries. The bibliography that follows is divided by subject. This book is essential for all academic libraries where film study is important and should be given consideration by larger public libraries in areas with a large Middle Eastern population." -- Danise Hoover, BOOKLIST

Arab Studies Quarterly 38(4), 2016

Part of a series of Reviews and Responses on Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursu... more Part of a series of Reviews and Responses on Israel’s Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit, Elia Zureik. Routledge Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 2015.

the collective, lateral, and intergenerational trauma of wa d burial is resurrected and manifeste... more the collective, lateral, and intergenerational trauma of wa d burial is resurrected and manifested, despite temporal and spatial distances, in novels about personal and political suppression. Whether discussing female identity construction through a "mosaic autobiography"; the Lebanese civil war where the wa d metaphor extends to all, women and men alike, city and country; the problems of Lebanese immigrants haunted in their exile by the trauma of the war, and torn between life in diaspora and the memory of home; or, examining the recent political disappointments and the perennial alienation of the Arab individual from society and state, the in-depth analysis of Anxiety of Erasure delves into the multiple modern recastings of the maw uda trope in Arab women's fiction, which unfolds today before our own eyes in the suffocation of the Syrian people, the torture of activists, and the burial of the city of Aleppo. It demonstrates how the authors' imaginary is bent on the necessity and importance of excavating archives, resurrecting memories, recognizing trauma, and revealing how burial imagery and vestiges in Arab culture extend from women to men to cities, nations, ideas, dreams, literary archives, and aspirations for change and progress. The corpus of this extensive study extends to some of the most recent writings by women living in the diaspora, such as those by Samar Yazbak, the Syrian writer and activist who documented the first few months of the Syrian uprising, when wa d trauma spread to an entire people and perhaps through a larger extension to the collective Arab population.