Ella Shohat

Last updated
Ella Habiba Shohat
Occupations
  • Professor
  • Writer
  • Cultural theorist
Awards
  • Middle East Monitor Palestine Book Award (2017) for Memoir
Academic work
DisciplineCultural studies
Institutions New York University
Main interests
  • Eurocentrism
  • Orientalism
  • Post-colonialism
  • Trans-nationalism
  • Diasporic cultures
  • Iraqi-Jewish culture
Notable worksOn the Arab Jew, Palestine and Other Displacements

Ella Habiba Shohat is a professor of cultural studies at New York University. [1] She has written and lectured on the topics of Eurocentrism, orientalism, post-colonialism, trans-nationalism, diasporic cultures, [1] and Iraqi-Jewish culture. [2] [3]

Contents

Background

Arab-Jewish identity

Shohat's parents were Iraqi Jews who were displaced to Israel in the 1950s and then moved to the United States. [4] She has described herself as an "Arab-Jew" with regard to her identity (see Mizrahi Jews). [4] Some of Shohat's writing deals with Arab-Jewish identity within the context of the Arab–Israeli conflict. She described her childhood in Israel in the 1960s as a time when children were "recruited for the making of a new identity that was to clash with our parents' Iraqiness, Arabness and Middle Easterness". [5] Her grandparents never learned Hebrew and her parents lamented how "in Iraq [...] we were Jews. In Israel, we are Arabs". [5] Her father and his friends were told to stop speaking Arabic in the workplace and Shohat herself recalls similar messages being communicated to children at school. [5] She described herself and other schoolchildren as "unknowing targets of mental colonization [...] [who] were expected to delete [...] the past across the border [and] also the transplanted Baghdads, Cairos or Rabats of our homes and neighborhoods". [5] Shohat felt that this process was part of "disciplining, corrective, normalizing machine" designed to make them "proud Israelis". [5]

Writings and reception

In a review for the academic journal Biography, Egyptian Jewish professor Joyce Zonana described Shohat's book On the Arab Jew, Palestine and Other Displacements as a "profound work" and a "visionary contribution to (multi)cultural studies" which provides "helpful new ways of thinking about identity, politics, and culture in the Middle East and beyond". [6] Zonana compared Shohat to Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, who she named as the only other writers whose "cultural/political analyses are so explicitly and productively rooted in their lives" in the way Shohat's work also is. [6] Zonana further argued that Shohat had "honoured" Said and Fanon with this collection of writings. [6] The essays "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims" and "Dislocated Identities: Reflections of an Arab Jew" were described as "canonical" and "groundbreaking". [6]

The journal Mashriq & Mahjar also praised On the Arab Jew, Palestine and Other Displacements. [7] In the review, Professor Jennifer L. Kelly described the book as "required reading for scholars working at the intersection of critical refugee studies, comparative colonial studies, and feminist studies". [7] Kelly noted that Shohat "constructs meaningful parallels between dislocated Arab-Jews and displaced Palestinians with the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948" in order to "point to the multiple violences that animate life in the wake of occupation and exile". [7]

Israeli historian and activist Ilan Pappe named Shohat as one of a group of notable scholars, along with Sami Shalom Chetrit, who have "done much to expose" the "invidious process of de-Arabisation" that the Mizrahim were put through when arriving in the new state of Israel. [8]

On the Arab Jew, Palestine and Other Displacements was the winner of the Middle East Monitor Palestine Book Award 2017 for Memoir. [6] [9]

Ella Shohat's work has been translated into many languages including Arabic, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Turkish, Italian and Japanese. [1]

Publications

Books

Articles

Edited special issues

Participation in films

Elia Suleiman's film incorporates a few segments from Shohat's article, written during the 1990-91 Gulf War. Shohat & Suleiman rewrote the segments as a letter from Ella Habiba Shohat to her friend Elia Suleiman. As Suleiman receives the faxed letter, Shohat is heard in a voice-over reading from "Reflections of an Arab-Jew." [30]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Shohat, Ella (2017). On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements (Paperback ed.). London: Pluto Press. p. 464. ISBN   978-0-7453-9949-2.
  2. Shohat, Ella (2020). Remainders Revisited: An Exilic Journey from Hakham Sasson Khdhuri to Joseph Sassoon Semah. Amsterdam: Stichting Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten.
  3. Shohat, Ella (6 December 2016). Lost Homelands, Imaginary Returns The Exilic Literature of Iranian and Iraqi Jews. NYU press, 2016. pp. 20–58. doi:10.18574/nyu/9781479883844.003.0006. ISBN   978-1-4798-8384-4.
  4. 1 2 Shohat, Ella (2014). "Remembering a Baghdad Elsewhere: An emotional cartography". Biography. 37 (3): 785. doi:10.1353/bio.2014.0034. S2CID   143258497.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Shohat, Ella (2014). "Remembering a Baghdad Elsewhere: An emotional cartography". Biography. 37 (3): 786. doi:10.1353/bio.2014.0034. S2CID   143258497.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Joyce, Zonana (2019). "Review of On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings, by Ella Shohat". Biography . 42 (2): 455–459. doi:10.1353/bio.2019.0052. S2CID   203011812.
  7. 1 2 3 Jennifer Lynn, Kelly (2019). "ELLA SHOHAT, On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings (London: Pluto Press, 2017). 464 pages. $115.00 cloth, $28.00 paper, $28.00 e-book. ISBN 9780745399508". Mashriq & Mahjar. 6 (2). doi: 10.24847/66i2019.233 .
  8. Pappe, Ilan (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Paperback ed.). London: Oneworld Publications. p. 254.
  9. "On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements".
  10. "On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings of Ella Shohat, Shohat". www.press.uchicago.edu. Archived from the original on 2017-05-19.
  11. Between the Middle East and the Americas.
  12. "Race in Translation".
  13. "Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism".
  14. Reviews of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices:
    • McCarthy, Conor (2008). "Review of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices". College Literature. 35 (2): 188–191. ISSN   0093-3139. JSTOR   25115500.
    • Hochberg, Gil Z. (2008). "Review of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices". Middle East Studies Association Bulletin. 42: 205–207. ISSN   0026-3184. JSTOR   23063597.
  15. "Book Details".
  16. Zikhronot Asurim (Hebrew, Forbidden Reminiscences), Bimat Kedem LeSifrut with the Alternative Information Center, pages 1-410 (Hebrew), 2001 (Digital Publication, el Ray Agency and Booxilla, 2017). January 2001.
  17. Talking Visions | the MIT Press. Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art. MIT Press. 6 July 1999. ISBN   9780262194266.
  18. "Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media".
  19. "Israeli Cinema: East / West and the Politics of Representation". 2012-03-25. Archived from the original on 2012-03-25. Retrieved 2020-01-09.
  20. Shohat, Ella (January 2016). ""Lost Homelands, Imaginary Returns: The Exilic Literature of Iranian and Iraqi Jews" in Moments of Silence: Authenticity in the Cultural Expressions of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988, Arta Khakpour, Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami and Shouleh Vatanabadim, eds., New York, New York University Press, 2016, pages 20-58". Moments of Silence: Authenticity in the Cultural Expressions of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988.
  21. Shohat, Ella (January 2016). ""The Specter of the Blackamoor: Figuring Africa and the Orient" in Re-Significations: European Blackamoors, Africana Reading, Awam Amkpa, ed., Rome: Postcart SRL, 2016, pages 95-115".
  22. جدلية, Jadaliyya-. "A Voyage to Toledo: Twenty-Five Years After the 'Jews of the Orient and Palestinians' Meeting". Jadaliyya - جدلية. Retrieved 2020-01-09.
  23. Shohat, Ella (January 2013). ""The Sephardi-Moorish Atlantic: Between Orientalism and Occidentalism" in Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora, Ella Habiba Shohat, Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany, eds., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, pages 42-62".
  24. Ella Shohat (2002). "The Shaping of Mizrahi Studies: A Relational Approach". Israel Studies Forum. 17 (2): 86–93. JSTOR   41804897.
  25. Ella Shohat (1992). "Rethinking Jews and Muslims: Quincentennial Reflections" . Middle East Report. 178 (178): 25–29. doi:10.2307/3012984. JSTOR   3012984.
  26. Shohat, Ella (January 1992). ""Dislocated Identities: Reflections of an Arab-Jew," (Published simultaneously in Emergences) Movement Research 5 (Fall 1991/Winter 1992), page 8". Movement Research: Performance Journal.
  27. Ella Shohat (1988). "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims" . Social Text. Autumn 1988 (19/20): 1–35. doi:10.2307/466176. JSTOR   466176.
  28. https://www.arabfilm.com/item/265/ See also: FORGET BAGHDAD - Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7eyiHpIBnk
  29. "Fresh Blood". Archived from the original on 2021-11-26.
  30. Elia Suleiman - Homage by assassination. YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-11.