CMES: Preventing Palestine: How Diplomacy Curtailed Statehood

Date: 

Thursday, March 2, 2017, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA

 

Seth AnziskaThe WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar presents

Seth Anziska
Assistant Professor, University College London; Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Taub Center, New York University, 2016-2017

Dr. Anziska’s research is focused on the international history of the Middle East in the 20th century, particularly Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and US relations with the wider region. He received his PhD in International and Global History, with distinction, from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history, cum laude, from Columbia University. Seth has been awarded fellowships from New York University and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and has been a visiting fellow at the American University of Beirut and the London School of Economics. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation, “Camp David’s Shadow: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinian Question, 1977-1993,” which was nominated for Columbia’s Bancroft Award and Baron Prize. Utilizing newly released archival materials and oral history interviews from across Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, the US, and the UK, the manuscript examines the emergence of the 1978 Camp David Accords and the consequences of international diplomacy in circumscribing Palestinian self-determination. An article growing out of this research, entitled “Autonomy as State Prevention,” is forthcoming in a special issue of the interdisciplinary journal Humanity. Related projects include an international history of the 1982 Lebanon War, with early findings published in a New York Times piece that marked the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Dr. Anziska is also interested in the contemporary politics and visual culture of the Middle East, as well as the legacy of Arab-Jewish encounters in Europe and the Levant. A second book project investigates an incident of wartime refusal over the Mediterranean, drawing on his collaboration with a former Israeli air force pilot and a leading Lebanese artist for the 2013 Venice Biennale. Piecing together archives and memories between Jaffa and Beirut, this project interrogates the possibility and limitations of historical research across national borders given the afterlife of political violence.   

Co-sponsors: Weatherhead Center for International Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Contact: Liz Flanagan