Ashjan Ajour: Violence, Gender and Resistance in Palestine
Monday, October 11, 2021
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
1 PM New York l 7 PM Vienna
Ashjan Ajour's talk is the first in the Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice Fall 2021 lecture series, which is jointly curated by faculty involved in Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice--a new project that offers a sustainable platform for students and professors from OSUN institutions to engage in rigorous academic work, express themselves freely, inspire each other through art, and work closely with local and international initiatives to further the feminist agenda for social justice.
Gendered violence increases against women in conflict-affected areas in comparison to women in a relatively stable society. This lecture shall consider the gendered nature of conflict and explores the relationship between gender and conflict. It aims to deepen our understanding of the complex role that gender plays in the context of war.
Dr. Ashjan Ajour's talk will focus on the case of Palestinian women's resistance and experience of living under Israeli occupation. In colonized Palestine there are complex and intersecting causes of violence against women in their everyday life. Women can’t afford to separate the struggle for social and gender justice from the struggle against colonialism.
In general, colonial oppression affects men and women in different ways. According to Spivak (1988), women are subjected to a double-colonisation by both male counterparts and the dominant colonial powers; the Palestinian case is a good example of this. When Palestinian women challenge colonial power gender norms, the meaning of femininity and masculinity are destabilised. Sumud (Steadfastness) is an important element for Palestinian women in their encounter with the Israeli occupation, and also in their everyday life.
Ashjan Ajour completed her PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London in August 2019. Her research interests and teaching experience are situated in sociology; gender studies and feminist theories and movements; political subjectivity; incarceration; decolonization and global indigenous politics. She taught in the United Kingdom and Palestine at Goldsmiths, Warwick University and Birzeit University. In 2019 she engaged as a Teaching Fellow in Sociology at Warwick University convening modules in Gender Studies. Her last publications are an article by Cultural Politics (Duke University Press): The Spiritualization of Politics and the Technologies of Resistant Body: Conceptualizing Hunger Striking Subjectivity, and a forthcoming book by Palgrave Macmillan: Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body.