The Opening Session offers an introduction to the curriculum and its visual themes and can be used at the beginning of Session 1 or preceding any session or module to welcome the group, introduce participants to the session(s), and set community agreements.

This session offers an exploration of the historical context that resulted in the Nakba, including the expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians from their land, along with the erasure of Palestinan life and culture. Participants begin to understand the impact of settler colonialism on the Palestinian people. The richness and complexity of pre-1948 life in Palestine is juxtaposed with the impact of the Balfour Declaration and Britain’s support for a Jewish national home in Palestine.

In this session, participants consider the history and material consequences of the Nakba, including what’s been hidden and erased, what’s been built over, stolen, destroyed, and what remains. Concepts of Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and cultural identity are explored in relation to Palestine as is the role of British imperialism.

In this session, participants examine the ongoing displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land prior to and in 1947­/48, 1967, and that continues to the present. These ongoing realities are shown through different forms of information, including graphs that trace demographic and population shifts in both cities and villages; maps that depict changes in ownership and control of land; and stories that illustrate how these changes were part of intentional processes of ethnic cleansing that impact the lives of Palestinians and their families, then and now.

This session, presented in Slideshow format, exhibits the foundations and intentions of Zionism, the enactment and reality of Zionist colonization in Palestine, and the historical context for Palestinian opposition to Zionism. Excerpts from speeches and writings of Zionist and Israeli leaders illustrate the intentionality of the process. The session also addresses the pervasive Zionist narrative that continues to “justify” the Nakba, despite clear and compelling facts, historical documentation, and experiences of Palestinians.

This session presents life stories as historical events with an understanding that testimony, oral history, memory, and storytelling shape and are a critical part of history. The stories shared in this session specifically focus on what life was like before and during 1948 and offer accounts that are critical to the understanding of what and who has been omitted from historical accounts. Participants also conceptualize and reflect on what “testimony” means, and challenge notions of what constitutes “truth” and the historical record.

This session offers a look into archives, what constitutes an archive, what they contain, how they are constructed, and why. Participants engage in close readings of “archival” texts and consider the ways that a Palestinian archive, or an archive framed around the history of Palestine, is necessarily constructed from sources– images, texts, objects– that were not only created and compiled, but omitted, extracted, destroyed, and stolen.

In this session participants take a sharp look at the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their homes and land. Through data, stories, legal documents, artistic renderings, among other forms of expression, participants deepen their understanding of the realities and impact of expulsion and dispossession and the envisioning and practicalities of a return home.

This session explores ongoing social, political, economic, and cultural forms of resistance in Palestine. Through a look at different forms of resistance– current and historical as well as transnational, national, and local– participants understand the impact, visions, and connections among movements for justice in Palestine and globally.

This session can be used at the end of a series/course or added to the end of any session. This Closing offers a reflection on the session(s) as a whole and considers how what we’ve learned has impacted our thinking and how we might want to take action.