Grad Pro Skills Workshop: “Politico-Ethical Engagement and Witnessing: Through Family Photograph-based Storytelling”

This workshop will examine the potential and limits of a unique family photograph-based storytelling methodology, which is currently being used to exchange postmemories of the Holocaust and the Nakba between Palestinians and Israelis currently living in their respective Canadian diasporas.  The key question addressed in this workshop is how the sharing of personal counter-memories of the Holocaust and/or the Nakba can foster the occasions and conditions of possibility necessary for politico-ethical engagement and witnessing between these supposed ‘enemies.’

Nawal Musleh-Motut is a PhD Candidate and Sessional Instructor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.  Her publications include From Palestine to the Canadian Diaspora: The Multiple Social Biographies of the Musleh Family's Photographic Archive (MEJCC forthcoming) and Negotiating Palestine Through the Familial Gaze: A Photographic (Post)memory Project (TOPIA 2012).  Nawal holds a MA in modern Middle Eastern history and is an active member of the Board of Directors for Peace It Together, a Vancouver based organization that brings together Palestinian and Israeli youth from overseas to build and promote peace through joint dialogue, filmmaking and community engagement.

Inquiries can be made to cohds.chorn@concordia.ca