This course explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a history of spatial and environmental transformations by considering the threshold of the Negev desert, a site along which multiple struggles unfold.

Description/Objective:

This course explores the Israeli-Palestine conflict as a history of spatial and environmental transformations by considering the threshold of the Negev desert. This desert edge is a conflict shoreline along which multiple struggles unfold: settlements displace native people in order to make the desert bloom, while climate change desertifies large tracts of formerly agrarian lands. This course investigates the nature of these contemporary conflicts by establishing relations among colonial history, architecture, literature, and climate change and by examining the political, legal, and aesthetic challenges that environmental violence initiates.

Sample Reading List:

Ariella Azoulay - The Civil Contract of Photography
Meron Benvenisti - Sacred Landscape
Mahmoud Darwish - A River Dies of Thirst
Rob Nixon - Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Salim Tamari - Mountain Against the Sea
Eyal Weizman and Fazal Sheikh - The Conflict Shoreline

Requirements/Grading:

Class/Precept Participation 25%
Oral Presentation(s) 25%
Lab Reports 50%
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Other Requirements:

Open to Graduate Students Only
Enrollment by application or interview.
Departmental permission required.
Total Course Enrollment: 12

Class Attributes:

International Travel Required

Other Information:

Combining an architecture studio with an experimental humanities lab and using a combination of archival resources, colonial era literature, field research and remote sensing mapping technologies, we will travel to Israel/Palestine during the spring break to conduct onsite investigations and to devise novel "testimonial strategies" to corroborate and expand the investigations of the Zochrot Truth Commission.

Interested students should submit a 1-2 page description of their interest and any relevant background to Eduardo Cadava ([email protected]) by February 1, 2017.

Schedule:

C01 W 7:30-10:20pm, 
B01 Th 9:30am-12:20pm
Spring 2017