Ghassan Kanafani and the Legacy of Palestinian Resistance Arts

Описание: The Palestinian Youth Movement is proud to invite you to attend an event on the legacy of Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian writer, essayist, and freedom fighter.
Kanafani has played an outsize role in inspiring artists and academics both inside and outside the Palestinian community. The PYM has been commemorating this legacy through its awarding of the annual Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship, publishing artists, poets, and writers from the Palestinian diaspora in the Ghassan Kanafani Anthology, a compendium of Palestinian resistance art and literature.


Speakers:
Ismail Khalidi is a playwright, screenwriter and director who adapted Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa for the stage with Naomi Wallace. Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents and raised in Chicago, Khalidi's plays include Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre, 2010), Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater, 2005), Foot (Teatro Amal, 2016-17), Sabra Falling (Pangea World Theater, 2017), Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre, 2018) Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, 2018)and The Corpse Washer (Actors Theatre of Louisville, 2019) . Khalidi's plays have been published in numerous anthologies and his writing on politics and culture has appeared in The Nation, Guernica, American Theatre Magazine, and Remezcla. His poetry and plays have been published by Mizna, and he co-edited Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG, 2015). Khalidi has received commissions from the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Noor Theatre, Pangea World Theatre, and The Public Theatre, and is currently a Directing Fellow at Pangea World Theater. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.


Dr. Omar Zahzah is a writer and poet who has been organizing for Palestinian freedom and liberation since 2012. Omar’s publications on Palestine and Zionism have appeared in various outlets including the Journal of Palestine Studies, Arab Studies Quarterly, Mondoweiss, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times, and Omar’s creative writing and cultural criticism have appeared in various literary journals. In 2016, Omar released their first chapbook, 13 Almost Love Poems. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA, and Omar’s dissertation, “Undercover and Hyper-Visible: Security Poetics and Pacification Prosaics in African American and Arab American Literature” analyzes how writers have used literary means of resistance to racialized policing and surveillance initiatives from the Cold War to the “War on ‘Terror.’” Omar is currently an active member of the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Education and Advocacy Coordinator of Eyewitness Palestine.

Webinar occurred October 22, 2020.