Arcapita Visiting Professor in Modern Arab Studies, Salim Tamari, to teach new course: “Jerusalem: Sacred, Imaginary, World"

The Middle East Institute at Columbia would like to extend a warm welcome to visiting Professor Salim Tamari. Salim Tamari is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds. Professor Tamari is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.  He has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent publications include: Year of the Locust: Palestine and Syria during WWI (UC Press, 2010) Ihsan's War: The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Soldier (IPS, Beirut, 2008); The Mountain Against the Sea (University of California Press, 2008); Biography and Social History of Bilad al Sham (edited with I. Nassar,2007, Beirut IPS); Pilgrims, Lepers, and Stuffed Cabbage: Essays on Jerusalem's Cultural History (edited, with I. Nassar, IJS, 2005) and Essays on the Cultural History of Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem (editor, IJS, 2005).

Tamari has served as visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley (2005, 2007, 2008); Eric Lane Fellow, Cambridge University (2008); as lecturer in Mediterranean Studies Venice University (2002-present) among other posts.

This spring semester, Professor Tamari will teach a seminar course, “Jerusalem: Sacred, Imaginary, World.” (Middle East GU4257 section 001). This course will address the sacred, imagined, and worldly Jerusalem through its social history, religious rituals, the politics of archaeology, planning, and urban transformation, demographic debates, ethnicity, and war. It will examine the commodification and packaging of holy city for pilgrimage and tourism. The course will address the current predicament of the city and its future within the context of Arab Israeli conflict.