Ella Shohat

Ella Habiba Shohat (Arabic: إيلا حبيبة شوحط; born 1959) is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University, and has taught, lectured and written extensively on issues having to do with Eurocentrism and Orientalism, as well as with postcolonial and transnational approaches to Cultural Studies. More specifically, since the 1980s she has developed critical approaches to the study of Mizrahi Jews in the context of Israel and Palestine. Born to a Baghdadi family, Ella Habiba Shohat defines herself as an Arab Jew.^[1]

Her writing has been translated into several languages, including: Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, and Italian. Shohat has also served on the editorial board of several journals, including: Social Text; Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies; Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; and Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. She is a recipient of such fellowships as Rockefeller and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, where she also taught at the School of Criticism and Theory. Recently she was awarded a Fulbright research / lectureship at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, for working on the cultural intersections between the Middle East and Latin America.

Bibliography

• Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic (New York: NYU Press, 2012).
• Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989; new edition, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010). Endorsement by Edward W. Said (1989): "Israeli Cinema is a tour-de-force. Not only is it theoretically sophisticated, it is also deeply rooted in the changing politics and perceptions of the Israeli predicament as they bear upon Israeli films. With brilliant humanistic insight, Shohat describes the underlying ideological myths and allegorical structures and contributes significantly to a new, enlarged understanding of the dynamics between Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities, and between them and the Palestinians."
• Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism (New York: Routledge, 2006).
• Le sionisme du point de vue de ses victimes juives: les juifs orientaux en Israel (first published in 1988, with a new introduction, Paris; La Fabrique Editions, 2006).
• Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
• Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
• Zikhronot Asurim (Forbidden Reminiscences) (Bimat Kedem LeSifrut Publishing with the Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem, 2001); Arabic translation, Thakariat Mamnu’a, with a preface by Ismail Dabaj (Damascus: Dar Kan’an, 2004); and abridged selected chapters translated into Arabic in As. Safir, Beirut, August 2003; October 24, 2003.
• Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
• Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
• Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1994).
• Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (University of Texas Press, 1989); Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (University of Texas Press, 1989); Hebrew translation, HaKolnoa haIsraeli: Historia veIdeologia (Israeli Cinema: History and Ideology; Breirot Press, 1991), pp. 1–292; Arabic Translation, Alcinema Alesraeliya, translated from the English by Mahmoud Ali (Cairo: Sawt wa sura, 2000), pp. 1–267; Arabic translation of selected chapters in Adab wa- Naqad (Literature and Criticism) by Ahmad Yusuf: “Muqadama” (Introduction), # 172, December 1999; “Al-Falastiniyun wa-yahud al-sharq” (chapters 1 and 3), # 173, January 2000; “Al-Cinima al-Israiliyya ba’ad 1948” (chapter 2), # 175, March 2000.

Her award-winning publications include: Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (Duke University Press, 2006), Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (University of Texas Press, 1989; New Updated Edition with a new postscript chapter, I.B. Tauris, 2010); Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (MIT & The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998); Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives (co-edited, University of Minnesota Press, 1997); and with Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism (Routledge, 1994); Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media (Rutgers University Press, 2003); Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism (Routledge, 2007); and Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic (NYU Press, 2012). Shohat’s co-edited volume, Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora (forthcoming, University of Michigan Press, 2013).

Selected Articles

• "Travelling ‘Postcolonial’: Allegories of Zion, Palestine and Exile", published lecture delivered at the “Edward Said: A Continuing Legacy” conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, October 3, 2004; published in a special issue, “The conflict and Contemporary Visual Culture in Palestine & Israel,” Haim Bresheeth and Haifa Hammami, Eds. Third Text 80-81 May/July 2006, pp. 287–291.
• “The ‘Postcolonial’ in Translation: Reading Said in Hebrew” (a special issue on Edward Said, edited by Rashid Khalidi), Journal of Palestine Studies, XXXIII, no. 3 (Spring 2004), pp. 55–75.
• "Rupture and Return: Zionist Discourse and the Study of Arab Jews", Social Text, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 49–74.
• “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge”, Social Text 72 (Fall 2002), pp. 67–78 (based on a lecture in conjunction with book-signing events for Talking Visions).
• “’Coming to America’: Reflections on Hair and Memory Loss”, Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, Lisa Suhair Majaj & Amal Amireh (eds), Garland Publishers, 2000, pp. 284–300.
• "Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions: Columbus, Palestine and Arab-Jews" in Performing Hybridity, May Joseph & Jennifer Fink (eds), University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 131–156.
• "The Invention of the Mizrahim", Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 5–20.
• "The Narrative of the Nation and the Discourse of Modernization: The Case of the Mizrahim", Critique, (Spring, 1997), pp. 3–18.
• "Staging the Quincentenary: The Middle East and the Americas", Third Text (London) (Special issue on "The Wake of Utopia"), 21 (Winter 1992-93), pp. 95–105.
• "Rethinking Jews and Muslims: Quincentennial Reflections", Middle East Report, No. 178 (September–October 1992), pp. 25–29.
• "Dislocated Identities: Reflections of an Arab-Jew", Movement Research: Performance Journal #5 (Fall-Winter 1992), p. 8. Elia Suleiman's New York-based film Homage by Assassination (1992) incorporates a few segments from Shohat's article, written during the 1990-91 Gulf War. Shohat & Suleiman rewrote the segments as a letter from Ella Habiba Shohat to her friend Elia Suleiman. As Suleiman receives the faxed letter, Shohat is heard in a voice-over reading from "Reflections of an Arab-Jew."
• "Notes on the `Post Colonial'", Social Text, 31 32 (Spring 1992), pp. 99–113.
• "Territories of the National Imagination", Transition 53 (Spring 1991), pp. 124‑132.
• "Gender and the Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema", Quarterly Review of Film and Video 131:1‑2 (Spring 1991).
• "Imaging Terra Incognita: The Disciplinary Gaze of Empire", Public Culture 3:2 (Spring 1991), pp. 41‑70.
• "The Media's War", Social Text 28 (Spring 1991) pp. 135–141.
• "Gender in Hollywood's Orient", Middle East Report 162 (January‑February 1990), pp. 40‑43.
• "From Didactic Texts to Allegorical Readings", Jewish Ethnology Review 11:1‑2 (1989), 38-41.
• "Wedding in Galilee", Middle East Report 154 (September‑October 1988), pp. 44‑46.
• "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims", Social Text, No. 19/20 (Autumn 1988), pp. 1–35.
• "The Return of the Repressed: The 'Palestinian Wave' in Recent Israeli Cinema", Cineaste 15:3 (Spring 1987), pp. 10‑17.
• The Trouble with Hanna: Costa Gavras and the Representation of Palestine", Film Quarterly 38:2 (Winter 1984 85), pp. 50–55 (co-authored).

Edited

• “Edward Said: A Memorial Issue” (co-edited with Patrick Deer & Gyan Prakash), introduction, pp. 1–9, Social Text 87 (Summer 2006), pp. 1–144.
• “Corruption in Corporate Culture” (co-edited with Randy Martin), introduction, pp. 1–8, Social Text 77 (Winter 2003), pp. 1–153.
• “Palestine in a Transnational Context” (co-edited with Timothy Mitchell & Gyan Prakash), introduction, pp. 1–6, Social Text 75 (Summer 2003), pp. 1–162.
• “ 911-A Public Emergency?” (co-edited with Brent Edwards, Stefano Harney, Randy Martin, Timothy Mitchell, Fred Moten), introduction, pp. 1–8, Social Text 72 (Fall 2002), pp. 1–199.

References