Examples of Teaching Sessions
Pedagogies for Israel/Palestine Education
An exploration of pedagogical approaches to teaching charged political topics, particularly Israel/Palestine. This includes both theoretical exploration of how we might teach Israel/Palestine as well as practical skills in implementing various approaches in our own contexts. Participants come away with a set of foundational questions they should ask of themselves and their institutions as well as language for the art and practice of teaching. While each iteration of this session focuses on the specific challenges and needs of your community, it always includes discussion of how to expand the diversity of voices we teach, and how to acknowledge power dynamics at play while remaining committed to multi-vocality.
Zionism(s) and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
In mainstream Zionist historiography, Palestine was refferred to as a "land with no people for a people with no land." However, there were people living in Historic Palestine in the 1880s/1900s. This session explores competing philosophies about how Zionism should have engaged with the local Arab-Palestinian population. We then trace those philosophies into today's political ideologies as we endeavor to understand how echoes of historical conversations are reproduced in the contemporary discourse. This sometimes includes an exploration of various strains of Zionism (and how they engaged with the ideas of religion, statehood, and Jewish culture as organizing principles of the Jewish national project) as well as primary-source documents from mandate-era Palestine.
Navigating a Public Sphere: the Ultra-Orthodox and the Secular Jews
Israel self-identifies as a Jewish State, but what does that mean for the public sphere? Should it be culturally Jewish? Religously Jewish? How will it balance the requirements of Jewish law with the majoritarian desires of a secular people? How should a democracy balance representation and accessibility for minority groups when the minority culture directly contradicts principles of gender equality and freedom? In this session, we look at various case studies to understand pressing questions about how to navigate competing Jewish interests in Israel.
The West Bank, The Settlements, and Distribution of Land in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
This session explores the current jurisdiction and administration of land in the West Bank and traces common questions around international law and the conflict. This session uses interactive and static maps as guiding educational tools and attempts to disentangle the legacies of the 1995 Oslo Accords on today's political environment. This session can be designed to address questions of occupation, apartheid, and settler-colonialism/indigeneity.
The Mizrachi-Ashkenazi Divide
More than half of Israel's Jews can trace their recent ancestry to Arab and Muslim lands; yet, the Mizrachi story has largely been left out of the Israeli dominant narrative since its founding. Using primary texts and contemporary pop culture pieces, we explore the oppression of the Mizrachim, the reclamation of power in the public sphere, and the tensions that arise when an oppressed group navigates relative "insiderness" and "outsiderness" within Israel's socio-political power hierarcy.
Mapping the Conflict: Multiple Narratives of Israel/Palestine
This session uses various maps of Israel/Palestine produced by Israelis, Palestinians, The United States, and the United Nations to capture the ways in which various stakeholders understand the relationship to land, identity, and nation. This is designed as an interactive and image-heavy exploration of the ways in which language carries meaning and maps tell stories.
Other
If you are looking for something else, please be in touch with me and we can create a session based on your needs.