Faltering 'Frames of Exception': Feminist Contestations of Gendered Nationalism via Family Law and Artistic Productions in the Occupied West Bank

Chicago. Amman. Bethlehem. In all of these cities, I have carried the Hesburgh library with me­ usually in the form of some printed article or book checked out and renewed several times. In the summer following my sophomore year, it was in reading Rosemarie Tong’s “Feminist Thought” on the train into the Windy City that I began a process of discerning a political ethic that I maintain until this day­ one indeed, that very much informs my thesis and also the career in women’s rights and refugee law I intend to pursue. A stolen backpack in Amman’s dusty markets would be most mourned for the lost Saba Mahmood edition, which had transported me to the women’s mosque movement of nearby Egypt. Proceeding through a checkpoint dividing Israeli Jerusalem and Palestinian Bethlehem, my satchel would set off alarms (usually because of some coins). When tossed over by IDF soldiers, it was not uncommon for them to scowl as they saw my volumes of Arabic­language Palestinian poetry. Mahmoud Darwish’s beautiful liberatory verses (which often got me in a bit of trouble) were also made available to me by the library