Lila Abu-Lughod, former director of CSSD and co-director of CSSD projects Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies, Reframing Gendered Violence, and Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, delivered the Clifford Geertz Commemorative Lecture at Princeton University on February 22, 2018.
Abu-Lughod’s lecture, “Settler Colonialism Observed: Palestine's Alter-natives”, examined “Palestine’s apparent political impasses” in light of “the current ferment in critical indigenous and native studies about settler colonialism in places like Australia and North America.” Considering “questions about how to judge the efflorescence of recent Palestinian cultural projects like the new Palestinian Museum”, Abu-Lughod argues that the concept of settler colonialism, “however contested and even problematic”, remains a potent force that can “generate comparisons and solidarities that burst open exhausted political imaginations and bring together the political, material, and moral.”
In addition to serving as director, project co-director, and executive committee member at CSSD, Abu-Lughod is Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, a former director and current executive committee member of the Columbia Institute for Research on Women, Gender, & Sexuality, and former director of the Columbia Middle East Institute.
