A strip of land around 25 miles long and 7 miles across at its widest point, access to the Gaza Strip is controlled, and severely limited, by Israel (from the north, east, and the sea to the west) and Egypt (to the south). In the past fifteen years Gaza has not only been targeted for attack, but also victimized by enforced immobility. Through years of policies of increasing control, closure, and blockade, Israel has created this vulnerability and it has then deployed immobility as a lethal weapon. This talk traces the trajectory of movement control in Gaza and considers how Gazans have lived with and against these restrictions.

Ilana Feldman is Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at George Washington University. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-67 (Duke University Press, 2008) and Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule (Stanford University Press, 2015); and co-editor (with Miriam Ticktin) of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Duke University Press, 2010).


For CMENAS students only
1:30-2 pm — CMENAS students workshop/discussion with the lecturer/professor.