A special issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly
Palestinian Food and Foodways
Guest Editor: Christiane Dabdoub Nasser
The Jerusalem Quarterly, a leading journal dedicated to the past, present, and future of Jerusalem and its environs, and to Palestinian society and culture within and beyond Palestine’s borders, is pleased to announce a call for contributions for a special issue dedicated to food and foodways. Please submit proposal abstracts by 15 September 2023 (see below for details).
Food is a core element of Palestinian culture, linked to individual memories of people and places and central to communal gatherings and collective identity. Food reflects both material and psychological or imaginative dimensions of Palestinian life—from local food production to the trade routes and economic networks that bring ingredients to and from Palestine, from the preservation of traditions to the innovation of new culinary trends. Food plays a central role in practices associated with hospitality, charity, ritual, and celebration. It is associated with local and regional identities, with particular places (regions, cities, neighborhoods, restaurants) and times (times of the day, festivals or holidays, seasons), and thus illuminates the diversity and texture of Palestinianness.
We encourage contributors to explore the variety of cultural, historical, political, and economic dimensions of food and foodways of Palestine and Palestinians, though special consideration will be given to topics related to Jerusalem and its environs.
Potential topics include (but are not limited to):
- Palestinian cuisine within Greater Syria, including the impact of trade routes and regional and imperial influences from the Ottoman era to the present.
- Urban versus rural practices in the evolution of Palestinian cuisine
- The impact of the Nakba on Palestinian food, including the rupture of displacement and dispossession and the recreating of Palestinian cuisine in “refugeedom.”
- Food as a way of storing the past and Palestinian diaspora cuisine as an avenue for creating food memories, recreating home, preserving identity, and asserting Palestinianness.
- Palestinian food practices within the dialectic of immigration and assimilation, whether as a means of narrative construction or a search for identification, self-understanding, and commonality.
- The role of gender in Palestinian cuisine and changes in foodways, in which women serve as primary carriers of culinary traditions, and men as claimants to the title of chef.
- The emergence of Palestinian cuisine on the world scene, as a cultural phenomenon or a form of resistance.
- Processes of claiming and reclaiming Palestinian cuisine, including transformations and processes of inclusion/exclusion or re-imagining ethnic identity/integration.
- Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian cuisine as a material manifestation of a form of regional acculturation and indigeneity (sabra culture) or a form of erasing the Palestinian past.
Submission Guidelines
Authors are invited to submit proposals for original articles, essays, or pieces for JQ’s permanent sections that align with the theme of the special issue. The editors encourage collaborative proposals as well as proposals that take advantage of JQ’s digital format to include audio or video sources.
Authors are requested to adhere to JQ’s Submission Guidelines, available at: www.palestine-studies.org/en/journals/jq/how-to-submit. Research articles will undergo a double-blind peer-review process, ensuring academic rigor and originality.
Process and Deadlines
Please send a proposal abstract of 300–500 words to the managing editor: [email protected]; and to the guest editor: [email protected]. The abstract should give a clear sense of the scope and/or argument of the proposed manuscript and its connection to the issue’s themes.
Abstract submission deadline: 15 September 2023
Accepted proposals will be asked to submit a full manuscript draft by: 15 January 2024
The Jerusalem Quarterly plans to publish the special issue in 2024.
For inquiries or further information, please contact the guest editor of the special issue, Christiane Dabdoub Nasser, at [email protected].
About the Jerusalem Quarterly
The Jerusalem Quarterly (JQ) is the leading journal on the past, present, and future of Jerusalem. It documents the current status of the city and its predicaments. It is also dedicated to new and rigorous lines of inquiry by emerging scholars on Palestinian society and culture. Published since 1998 by the Institute for Palestine Studies through its affiliate, the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, the Jerusalem Quarterly is available online in its entirety at www.palestine-studies.org/en/journals/jq/about.
