Diana Abouali (Arab American National Museum)
Rochelle Davis (Georgetown University)
The construction of memory and the ongoing reinterpretation of history are living processes. How have Palestinians, in historic Palestine and in the diaspora, conceptualized and materialized their own history, while confronting long standing policies of destruction and erasure? What does it mean for Palestinian individuals and institutions to engage with their heritage in the face of occupation and violence? This symposium takes up these questions with the help of experts in museological practice and historical anthropology. In conversation with the audience, our guests will explore strategies Palestinians have adopted to sustain collective identities rooted in shared histories, while navigating tensions across geographies, classes, and generations.
Diana Abouali is the director of the Arab American National Museum (AANM) in Dearborn, Michigan. She joined the museum in 2019 and has since been leading institutional transformation through enhancing digital capabilities, updating exhibitions, expanding research and outreach initiatives, growing the Museum’s artist-in-residence program, and strengthening ties to the Arab American community.
Prior to her work at AANM, she was an assistant professor teaching courses in Middle Eastern studies at Dartmouth College, head of research and collections at the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, and director of education, outreach and awareness at the Petra National Trust in Amman, Jordan. Diana is Palestinian, was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up in Kuwait. She received her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University in 2004.
Rochelle Davis is the Sultanate of Oman Associate Professor in anthropology at Georgetown University in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Her research focuses on refugees, war, and conflict, particularly Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi refugees. She authored Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced (Stanford University Press, 2012).
She’s currently completing a manuscript on the cultural training the US provided soldiers about Arabs, Muslims, and Iraqis in the US military invasion and occupation of Iraq, using interviews with US military service members and Iraqis. She’s also at work on a manuscript chronicling the lives of Palestinian refugees who fled Jerusalem in 1948.
