Acknowledgments

The kernel of this book’s contrapuntal orientation emerged while I was an undergraduate at Brown University. In the late 1990s I exercised the privilege of a free ten-day tour of Israel, funded largely by the United Jewish Appeal as a pilot program for American Jewish college students that in the years to come would expand exponentially. On the tour’s last day, as we sat on Mount Scopus watching the sun set over Jerusalem’s Old City, and just before a raucous New Year’s Eve party in Tel Aviv prior to our departure for the United States, I came to realize less a love of land and people than a troubled sense of my interpellation into a narrative that did as much to obscure as it did to illuminate. The telling of Jewish biblical presence, exile, and modern miraculous return reproduced the structured absence of Palestinians in the historical present, an absence I was being hailed to reproduce.

In 1999 I was pleased to return to the region for seven months, under the auspices of an Israel–Palestine Relations semester abroad program cosponsored by Brown and Wesleyan Universities. Their partnerships with Israeli and Palestinian institutions were brief, but the contrapuntal possibilities they yielded were significant. Attending Hebrew University in the mornings and Al Quds University in the afternoons, sixteen students studied Hebrew and Arabic language and literature, Palestinian and Israeli histories and politics, comparative religious thought and practice. We worked for nonprofit agencies against torture and for collaborative arts initiatives for peace. We traveled to illegal Jewish settlements and long-standing refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. U.S., Palestinian, and Israeli scholars were our teachers and mentors. The promise and peril of post-Zionism, of the Oslo Accords, of the Palestinian Authority, of an infrastructure of occupation and a past–present of displacement were daily topics of investigation. Many students stayed beyond the end of the semester, many returned to the region, and many pursued vocations linked substantively to Israel and Palestine. Thank you to Jeremy Zwelling, David Jacobsen, Kamal Abdel-Malek, and Rachel Tzvia Back for seizing the opportunity to structure a pedagogy of transnational contrapuntal investigation; to our incisive teachers and interlocutors; and to the students in the program who taught me to think and write amid dissensus. Thanks also to Elliott Colla, who assisted in charting lines of inquiry from there.

Several threads of this project came into relief while I was in Washington, D.C., in the days and months after 9/11. At George Washington University, I learned from Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Robert McRuer, Patricia Chu, Kavita Daiya, and Melani McAlister how to labor as a scholar. At the Middle East Research and Information Project, Chris Toensing taught me about the politics of knowledge production and circulation. I am grateful that he invited me to investigate the racial logic of the war on terror and handed me what has become a well-worn copy of Suheir Hammad’s Born Palestinian Born Black.

The textual life of A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America was incubated as a dissertation at the University of Washington, under the supportive guidance of Alys Eve Weinbaum and Nikhil Pal Singh. Their respective insights and critiques sharpened the project’s critical theoretical edge, and they routinely pushed me to ask more incisive questions about the material life of theory and the historical life of race—always as a detour on the way to a different kind of future. Terri DeYoung provided crucial expertise in Arab and Arab American literatures, and Laura Chrisman asked just the right questions at just the right times. My doctoral studies were substantively enriched by a bevy of engaged interdisciplinary faculty, including Anis Bawarshi, Bruce Burgett, Eva Cherniavsky, Kate Cummings, Christine DiStefano, Gillian Harkins, Nancy Hartsock, Ron Krabill, Joel Migdal, Katharyne Mitchell, Chandan Reddy, and Matthew Sparke. Under the tireless guidance of Kathleen Woodward and Miriam Bartha, the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities facilitated a robust space for interdisciplinary inquiry and action. I was privileged to study alongside a remarkable cohort of brilliant students, among them Edmond Chang, Sharleen Mondal, Vincent Schleitwiler, Daniel Griesbach, Ji-Young Un, Amy Reddinger, Trevor Griffey, Rahul Gairola, Jed Murr, Christian Ravela, and Simone Trujillo. I do not know what I would have done without Georgia Roberts and Anoop Mirpuri.

Interwoven throughout this book is a dialogue with scholars who have circuited through the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, from whom I have continued to learn so much. As chairs, Thomas Biolsi and Catherine Ceniza Choy ensured that existence on the tenure track has been more than simply bearable. It is an honor to call as colleagues Raúl Coronado, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Ramón Grosfoguel, Shari Huhndorf, Elaine Kim, Beatriz Manz, David Montejano, Michael Omi, Laura Pérez, Alex Saragoza, Lok Siu, Khatharya Um, Chris Zepeda-Millán, Hatem Bazian, Huma Dar, Victoria Robinson, Patricia Penn Hilden, and Carlos Muñoz. Nelson Maldonado-Torres showed me the ropes. Special gratitude to upstairs neighbors Leigh Raiford, Michael Cohen, Ula Taylor, Paola Bacchetta, Mel Chen, Juana María Rodríguez, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender incubates everything amazing under the committed vision of Evelyn Nakano Glenn and Alisa Bierria. The Program in Critical Theory has been a welcoming home away from home, with a door held open by Daniel Boyarin, Judith Butler, Wendy Brown, Samera Esmeir, Saba Mahmood, Zeus Leonardo, Robert Kaufman, and Martin Jay. Hossein Ayazi, Tasha Hauff, Bayley Jo Marquez, and Charisse Burden collectively stretched my thinking about the impact of the work of Edward W. Said. The Critical Prison Studies Strategic Working Group provided a key testing ground for several lines of argument in this book. Many thanks to the Townsend Center for the Humanities for supporting the group, and to Francisco Casique, William Drummond, Marcial Gonzalez, Patricia Penn Hilden, Tony Platt, Victoria Robinson, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Jonathan Simon, Jill Stoner, Bryan Wagner, and Connie Wun.

Research for A Shadow over Palestine benefited from the acumen of Francisco Casique, Maria Faini, and Kristen Sun. Tala Khanmalek, Maria Faini, and Kim Tran gave crucial late-stage feedback on the manuscript. Anyone who has interacted with Berkeley’s ethnic studies undergraduates knows the gravitational force they create in the universe; I’ve strived to write a book that can travel in its orbit.

My thanks to Sylvester Johnson and Tracy Leavelle for the invitation to participate in the Seminar on Religion and U.S. Empire, hosted by the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Creighton University, where several of these ideas were honed. Tamara Lea Spira read and commented on most of this book. Her critical wisdom sharpened and clarified crucial elements of the book’s argument and continues to teach me about how to imagine forms of justice in deep affiliation to the historic past.

Research and writing for this book have been generously supported by the John C. Flanagan Dissertation Fellowship, the Hellman Family Faculty Fund, an Institute for International Studies Junior Faculty Fellowship Grant, a Committee on Research Research-Enabling Grant, and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. My thanks to the Bancroft Library, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Special Collections at the Stanford University Library, and the Schlesinger Library. The Institute for International Studies also graciously sponsored a manuscript workshop in the book’s final stages. I am immensely grateful for the insights provided by Amy Kaplan, Alex Lubin, Nadine Naber, Colleen Lye, Waldo Martin, and Laura Pérez.

Interlocutors at the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut, where I presented aspects of this project, have included Sophia Azeb, Moustafa Bayoumi, Ira Dworkin, Brian Edwards, Nada Elia, Sirene Harb, Salah Hassan, Maryam Kashani, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Patrick McGreevy, Anjali Nath, Dana Olwan, Vijay Prashad, Junaid Rana, Steven Salaita, Harry Stecopolous, and Adam Waterman. Thanks as well to generous hosts at UCLA, Oklahoma State University, and Penn State University.

Rabab Abdulhadi, Melani McAlister, Hilton Obenzinger, and Steven Salaita have been this book’s scholarly pathbreakers. They have been generous guides from its inception. Writing this book has given me the excuse to bend the ears of a wide range of brilliant scholars: Hosam Aboul-Ela, Thomas Abowd, Hisham Aidi, Evelyn Alsultany, Paul Amar, Amal Amireh, Ruha Benjamin, Dan Berger, Marcellus Blount, Jordan Camp, Sylvia Chan-Malik, Ebony Coletu, Sohail Daulatzai, Ashley Dawson, Aureliano DeSoto, Noura Erakat, Carol Fadda-Conrey, Nina Farnia, Nouri Gana, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David Theo Goldberg, Che Gossett, Zareena Grewal, Maryam Griffin, Lisa Hajjar, Sora Han, Salah Hassan, Peter Hitchcock, Gil Hochberg, Sharon P. Holland, Grace Hong, Apple Igrek, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Ronak Kapadia, Caren Kaplan, Jodi Kim, Sue J. Kim, Marcy Knopf-Newman, David J. Leonard, Erik Love, Jenna Loyd, Sunaina Maira, Anita Mannur, John David Márquez, Sophia McClennen, Leerom Medovoi, Sarah Anne Minkin, Koritha Mitchell, Nick Mitchell, Manijeh Moradian, Fred Moten, Aamir Mufti, Bill V. Mullen, Donna Murch, Marcy Newman, Dinna Omar, Therí A. Pickens, Jasbir Puar, Dylan E. Rodríguez, Ricky Rodríguez, Jordana Rosenberg, Malini Johar Schueller, Micol Seigel, Magid Shihade, David Stein, Cheryl L. Suzack, Robert Vitalis, and Howard Winant.

I am forever indebted to Richard Morrison, former executive editor of the University of Minnesota Press, for his commitment and vision for this book, and to Jason Weidemann and Erin Warholm-Wohlenhaus for seeing it to completion. Cathy Hannabach and Paula Dragosh provided meticulous copyediting. Reviews from Amy Kaplan, Melani McAlister, Jodi Melamed, and two anonymous scholars were crucial in identifying what was valuable about the project. Many thanks, also, to David Kyuman Kim, John L. Jackson, Rudy V. Busto, Emily-Jane Cohen, and Jade Brooks for their support.

Dear friends have lived with this book, and with me, through assorted iterations: Eric Bruskin, Matthew Aronoff, Christiaan Greer, and all the Bethesda Boys; Sadie Costello, Josh Costello, Wendy Mazursky, and Scott Fischette.

Angie Parlin, Chris Parlin, Nicole Saul, and Ben Saul have been consummately supportive throughout this project, offering nourishment, good stories, and great questions. Ben Feldman has made just the right joke at just the right time. Ruth Tenzer Feldman and Michael Feldman have taught me love, caring, how to ask questions, how to search for answers. Samuel arrived just when this project was being hatched in Seattle, and Milo came to be as it was coming into book form. Both have been remarkably patient with me and always willing to laugh, even as they have borne the brunt of tenure track effects.

This book, and so much more, would have been utterly impossible without Amy. Counterfactuals tremble at the thought. She has inhabited this book with me, clarified things when necessary, cursed it with me, and enlivened the process from beginning to end. Two words will never capture the impossible immensity of it all, yet they are what must be said again and again: Thank you.