Student Narratives

Manar Makhoul

I am an Arab-Christian-Palestinian-Israeli. This is how I define myself, or more accurately how life defined me. Every element of this definition has political and cultural aspects, even the religious part, which I mention in spite of the fact that I am an atheist.

This ambiguity and complexity of my identity, which many times has conflicting "elements", and coming from a place where identity plays a decisive role in life, made me curious about the issue of identities and cultures, and the politics of the interactions between cultures.

My PhD is about the reflection of the Palestinian identity in the Palestinian literature. Since we can identify four main Palestinian groups today (Palestinian citizens of Israel; Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; Palestinian refugees in the Middle East; and Palestinians who live elsewhere), it is interesting for me to examine how being a Palestinian - i.e. living the "Palestinian experience" - may change through time and space. Living in different cultural and political locations, I believe, can change the way people "experience" their national history, identity and politics.

Manar Makhoul, PhD Student

Yoni Mendel

"Even a Fist was once an Open Palm with Fingers" wrote Israel`s most renowned poet Yehuda Amichai. This line echoes in me while researching the status of the Arabic language amongst Israeli Jews. Not only do the Jews in Israel not speak Arabic, which is an official language, but their attitudes to the language are both negative and hateful. A recent survey found that the first reaction of 31 per cent of Israeli Jews to Arabic is hate. Moreover, 50 per cent admitted that when they hear someone speaking Arabic their first feeling is fear. In 1952 half of the Jewish population in Israel spoke Arabic as a first language. In Medieval Spain Jews used to write Arabic using Hebrew letters and lived in harmony with their Muslim neighbors. The changing attitudes towards Arabic was an ongoing process involving sociological, linguistic, political and cultural aspects. My study will try to trace those processes and changes regarding the status of Arabic among Jews, bearing in mind that "Even a Fist was once an Open Palm with Fingers."

I speak both Hebrew and Arabic and used to work in Israel and Palestine for Physicians for Human Rights. I also served as a Hebrew teacher in several Arab schools in Jaffa. Last year I worked as the Middle East Correspondent of Walla News Israel. I did my B.A at Tel Aviv University and My MSc. At SOAS, University of London.

Yoni Mendel, PhD Student

Luke Peterson

Luke Mathew Peterson was born in New Port News, Virginia, 1977. He received a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Texas at Austin in May of 1999 with his senior level seminar focusing on Islamic Politics and Dynamics supervised by Dr. Hafez Farmayan. Luke returned to Converse Judson High School shortly thereafter and served as a social studies teacher from 1999 to 2002.

In the fall of 2002, he enrolled in the Master of Liberal Arts program at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas graduating with an MLA degree in December of 2004 specializing in the history and culture of the Middle East with particular attention to Palestine and Israel. In the summer months of 2004, Luke worked as a volunteer in the Municipal Offices of Beit Jala, Palestine in the Bethlehem District. There, he conducted archival research and gathered personal testimonies about Israeli policies regarding construction of the Separation Wall as well as general land confiscation policies in that region.

Luke entered the Master of Arts program in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas in Austin in August 2005. After his second stint in the West Bank, this time as a student of Arabic at Birzeit University in the summer of 2006, he began working with Dr. Kristen Brustad to produce his as yet unpublished thesis Kidnapped: The Discourse on Palestine in the Contemporary United States.

Upon completion of the MA degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Luke began at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. At Cambridge Luke works with Prof. Yasir Suleiman, and continues his research on language and cognition in media representations of Palestine and Israel.

Luke Peterson, PhD Student