Sayed Kashua launched our Challenging Borders series with a discussion on “Transgressing Boundaries: Culture as a vehicle for socio-political change.” With his unique wit and ability to see humor in the most dire circumstances, he described his journey to “exile” from Jerusalem to Champagne, Illinois. In Champagne, he teaches Hebrew and is the Clinical Professor of Jewish Culture and Society. In telling this and many other stories, he offers a corrective to the historical understanding of the nature of the apartheid imposed by the Israeli state on Arab Palestinians since the Nakba in the 1940s. He also illustrates how Israeli government policies and patriarchal family structures have diminished the motility of Arabs living in Israel.
A full transcript of the lecture is available here.