CERIS Book Discussion: Elastic Empire: Refashioning War Through Aid in Palestine

The book for discussion is Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine (2023) Stanford Press, by Lisa Bhunglia, political geographer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Kent State University.

"Drawing on extensive research conducted in Palestine, Elastic Empire offers a novel accounting of the US security state. The US war chronicled here is not one of tanks, grenades, and guns, but a quieter one waged through the interlacing of aid and law. It emerges in the infrastructures of daily life—in a greenhouse and library, in the collection of personal information and mapping of land plots, in the halls of municipal councils and in local elections—and indelibly transfigures lives. Situated in a landscape where the lines between humanitarianism and the global war on terror are increasingly blurred, Elastic Empire reveals the shape-shifting nature of contemporary imperial formations, their realignments and reformulations, their haunted sites, and their obscured but intimate forms."

The discussion will be facilitated by Lauren Banko, Lecturer, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University

Participants will receive a free copy of the book.

Register here https://forms.gle/nuFzuYBAFJHwuXpX8

In person dinner at 5:30 PM in 4217 Posvar Hall, book discussion begins at 6:00 PM hybrid