Agenda

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ANIMALS AND COLONIALISM

Virtual lecture series organized and moderated by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (University of California, San Diego) and Federica Timeto (Ca’Foscari University, Venice), in collaboration with the Environmental Humanities Degree at Ca’ Foscari University. 

The New Jewish Shepherd: The Great Battle of Pastorship in Area C of the Israeli-Occupied West Bank 
Irus Braverman, The State University of New York

Irus Braverman’s talk will explore the recent deployment of sheep and grazing practices by Jewish settlers for advancing settler ecologies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Jewish takeover of land via sheep, which started a mere decade ago, has picked up its pace recently and is becoming the largest land grab in the occupied West Bank since 1967. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, Braverman reveals the central features of the new shepherding “revolution,” as the settlers call it, situating this phenomenon amidst sheep-related practices in other settler colonial settings. More broadly, Braverman provides a contemporary portrayal of the role of more-than-humans in Israel’s ecological warfare. She argues that wild and domestic animals and plants lie at the heart of the state’s settler colonial regime, naturalizing and washing the violence promoted in their name.

Braverman is Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of Geography, and Research Professor at the Department of Environment & Sustainability at the University of Buffalo, The State University of New York. Braverman’s scholarship lies at the intersection of law, geography, anthropology, and critical animal studies and includes ethnographic research in Palestine-Israel, where she was born and where she worked as an environmental lawyer and community organizer. Braverman published seven monographs and seven edited collections. Her most recent monograph, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) discusses the broad deployment of nature conservation for settler colonial ends, focusing on the political underpinnings of national parks and the recruitment of nonhuman animals and plants for ecological warfare.

March 7, 6:00 p.m. CET
12:00 p.m. ET, 9:00 a.m. PT; 2:00 a.m. JST [March 8, night-time]; 4:00 a.m. AEST [March 8, night-time].
Registration link (to be published soon)