Experiments in Decolonizing the University: Towards an Ecology of Study

Abstract

the deep disillusionment in collective resistance that Kayali’s interlocutors have described, the text ends on a hopeful note that the women’s “agentive responses also contain potential seeds of change” (215). Perhaps this conclusion illustrates the persistent sumoud of Palestinian women and the Palestinian people as a whole—the endurance to continuously innovate strategies throughout such a long history of resistance. One aspect of this innovation might be how today’s Palestinian women’s collectives reaffirm their identity, not solely as women’s organizing spaces but explicitly feminist movements that confront colonialism, dispossession, and gender-based violence. As Kayali’s research was conducted primarily among women in the Bethlehem governorate, future scholarship can build on this work by expanding the scope to other locales, particularly Palestinians in the 1948 territories, Gaza, and in exile and diaspora, so that the scholarship can overcome the fragmentation and divisions caused by Israeli settler colonialism. Palestinian Women and Popular Resistance is essential reading for anyone curious about Palestinian women’s movements and would be a great addition to any women and gender studies syllabus or course on Palestine.