Global Carceralities: Palestinians and the Israeli Carceral State

A Conversation with Ussama Makdisi (UC Berkeley History) and Aminah Joudeh (Neighborhood Business Alliance) 

The Critical Carceral Studies Collective invites you to join us in our continued interrogation of the transnational formations of the carceral state and its entanglements in histories of slavery, settler colonialism, and empire. In this panel conversation with historian Ussama Makdisi and Bay Area organizer Aminah Joudeh, we will discuss intersections of settler colonialism and carceral power in occupied Palestine.

About the Speakers

Ussama Makdisi is Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley. A historian of the modern Middle East, Makdisi’s books include Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (2019), Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820–2001 (2010), and Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (2008). Makdisi is also an engaged public scholar, he has published opinion pieces in Middle East Eye and Jacobin and is the co-host of the podcast Makdisi Street.

Aminah Joudeh is a first-generation Palestinian-American organizer raised in San Francisco. A graduate of UC Davis in Political Science with a focus on Public Service, Aminah spent several years in government before leading the San Francisco Neighborhood Business Alliance, a nonprofit aimed at supporting and advocating on behalf of minority-owned small businesses.