Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature » (REV)

Kamal Abdel-Malek is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University.

David C. Jacobson is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University.

In this groundbreaking volume, scholars from the fields of literature, history, political science, and sociology come together to exchange new insights on the Arab-Israeli conflict. They examine how events in the region since the 1940s have affected Israeli and Palestinian concepts of identity, on either side of the cease-fire lines of 1949 and in exile communities in the region and abroad. As the Palestinian poet Fawaz Turki says, "History and history-making is everyone’s milieu in our part of the world," and the contributors reveal the extent to which politics and history inform the Israeli and Palestinian literary imagination.

Library Journal

The chapters in this volume are drawn primarily from a conference directed by the editors, scholars of Arabic and Judaic literature, at Brown University in April 1997. They have assembled a fine collection of papers that focus on the question of identity formation among Arabs and Israelis. The contributors represent a diverse group of individuals from the fields of literary studies, history, political science, sociology, and film studies. In many respects, this is a unique book, as it seeks to explore the shifting boundaries of Palestinian and Israeli identities from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors also analyze the complexities of Arab-Israeli relations in their totality and demonstrate several overlapping dimensions of Palestinian-Israeli identities. This captivating book shatters many common myths about Arabs and Israelis. Highly recommended for academic libraries.--Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.