TRUMAN_17

Truman Shelves
WHY I LEFT SCHOOL
Voices of Palestinian
Dropouts in East
Jerusalem
by Laila Abed Rabho
According to data published in 2012, nearly 40% of Palestinian students in East
Jerusalem do not complete 12 years of study. Comparatively, the dropout rate
is a mere 3% amongst the overall Jewish population of Jerusalem. This study
examines the factors that lead to such high dropout rates in East Jerusalem, and
possible ways to contend with them. It includes extensive in-depth interviews
with 26 youth who agreed to disclose their personal stories under condition of
anonymity, as well as interviews with principals, teachers and advisors.
A LOCAL HABITATION
AND A NAME
A Literary and Cultural
Reading of the Arabic
Geographical Names of
the Land
by Amer Dahamshe
The book examines the meaning of the Arab names of places in Israel, their
subjects, the reasons for their existence, and the practices of Arab-Palestinian
society, as evidenced by local stories and community memoirs that were
recorded by the Galilee Arabs. The book relates not only to names of settlements,
but also to names of natural features such as springs, caves, tracts of land, roads
and more. This is the first academic forum in which Arabic place names are
analyzed as a cultural and narrative creation whose deep structure contains
cultural and ideological messages relating to the perception of land and place,
and the perception of names in Palestinian Arab society.
HOMELAND
Zionism as a Housing
Regime, 1860-2011
by Yael Allweil
This book reveals how housing has played a pivotal role in the history of
nationalism and nation building in Israel-Palestine. The author highlights how
land and housing are central to both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism,
and how the histories of Zionist and Palestinian national housing have been
inseparably intertwined from the introduction of the Ottoman Land Code in
1858 to the present day. She discusses the formation of nationalism as the
direct result of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 and examines housing as a
means of claiming rights over the homeland.
MEMORY ACTIVISM
Reimagining the Past
for the Future in Israel-
Palestine
by Yifat Gutman
Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on
long-term fieldwork, this ethnographic study offers an innovative analysis
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of "memory activism"
among three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens--Zochrot,
Autobiography of a City, and Baladna—and shows how they appropriated the
global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices
such as tours and testimonies.
FREEDOM IN THE
ARAB WORLD
Concepts and Ideologies
in Arabic Thought in the
Nineteenth Century
by Wael Abu-’Uksa
This book examines the development of the concept of freedom (hurriyya)
in nineteenth-century Arab political thought, its ideological offshoots, their
modes, and their substance as they developed the dynamics of the Arabic
language. The author traces the transition of the idea of freedom from a term
used in a predominantly non-political way, to its popularity and near ubiquity
at the dawn of the 20th century. He also analyses the importance of associated
concepts such as “liberalism”, “socialism”, “progress,” “rationalism,” “secularism,”
and “citizenship.”
24 TRUMAN NEWSLETTER 2017