Modern Palestinian Women under the British Mandate: Interpreting History Through Film

My PhD research project creates and analyses visual representations of Palestinian women's history during British Mandate Palestine (1920-1948) through film. My project has three main conceptual dimensions. The first is concerned with locating women's agency against dominant structures, exploring how Palestinian women during this period negotiated the politics of colonialism, nationalism and feminism. The second explores the constructing of a historical narrative and representation through film in resonance with present political and feminist contexts. The third is concerned with film aesthetics, spectatorship and the production of meaning and knowledge. Undertaking an interdisciplinary approach which draws upon the fields of film, visual and oral history and gender and sexuality, this research is based on practical work as a form of critical enquiry and will yield two outputs: a creative and reflexive documentary film vignettes about the experiences of Palestinian women during British Mandate Palestine; and a written thesis that explores a nuanced understanding of Palestinian women's feminist politics pre-1948, based on the study of primary sources and the theoretical underpinnings of my practice-based research in film and colonial archives. The research advances a methodology that supports working across media as well as qualitative data collection and analysis. Empirical research through semi-structured interviews with Palestinian women in Palestine and Jordan. Primary archival research (text, audio and image covering, films, photographs, newspapers and newsreels, memoirs and autobiographies, personal letters, recorded oral accounts, official government records and radio and sound recordings). Secondary research in academic texts and research studies. Walking in geographical landscapes and locating the process of research through video documentation, sound capturing and journal keeping.