Acknowledgments
I began research for Buried in the Red Dirt in January 2016. It is difficult to acknowledge in this section every name of the hundreds of people in multiple countries who facilitated the research over five years. I am grateful to every informant, librarian, archivist, translator, reader, interlocutor, secretary, and technical assistant, many of whom I recognize in notes, captions, and the bibliography. Librarians, especially Sean Swanick at Duke University, Brooke Andrade at the National Humanities Center (NHC), and Humi Ayoubi and Samya Kafafi at ACOR – the American Center of Research, warrant special mention for kindly finding sources on short notice. For translation assistance, I turned more than once to Suzan Abdi, Duke librarian Rachel Ariel, and Samya Kafafi. I appreciate the assistance of Duke staff members Julie Wynmor, Jeremy Boomhower, and Jinny Yoon.
Many research projects, and certainly all my books, begin as leaps of faith guided by interest, a hunch, and a commitment to doing the painstaking work without knowing where the path will ultimately lead. Working on this historical project triggered more than the usual humility because it required a methodological shift to archival research, which acquired the status of a terrifying challenge until I started to do it. Many of my meetings and communications were as much about conceptualizing the outlines of the project as determining where I could turn to study non-archival subjects like abortion among Palestinians, Palestinian infant and child death during the British Mandate, or the involvement of the Arab delegation in the race controversy at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. A number of scholars were consequential and generous in the directing process, including Salim Tamari, Faiha Abdulhadi, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Anita Vitullo Khoury, Sonia Nimr, Ylana Miller, Reem al-Botmeh, Ghada Madbouh, Rita Giacaman, Leena Dallasheh, Munir Fakher Eldin, Musa Budeiri, Mahmoud Zeidan, Sharif Kanaana, Rema Hammami, Falastin Naili, Lauren Banko, Roger Heacock, Saleh `Abdel Jawad, Philippe Bourmaud, Suhad Daher Nashif, Mahmoud Yazbak, Rashid Khalidi, Penelope Mitchell, Beshara Doumani, and Ellen Fleischmann.
I appreciate the former students who engaged relevant texts and ideas with me, with special mention due to Kathryn Medien, Jake Silver, Sinan Goknur, Bill Hunt, Sally Tran, Mumbi Kanyogo, Hadeel Abdelhy, and Jennifer Uzcategu.
I wanted to produce a high-quality, aesthetically pleasing physical text that would also be available to academics and nonacademics throughout the world in the digital Creative Commons without paywall barriers. I am thrilled to have been awarded a 2020 Duke Open Monographs Award, and I am grateful to David Hansen and Haley Walton at the Duke Libraries and to Maria Marsh at Cambridge University Press for working with me to bring this commitment to fruition. I am deeply indebted to Moataz Dajani for giving me permission to use his beautiful art on the cover and inside the book.
Research and writing for Buried in the Red Dirt was funded and supported by a 2017 research grant from the Josiah Trent Memorial Endowment Fund (Duke University), a 2018 Senior Residency Fellowship at ACOR, funded by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and a 2018–2019 Residency Fellowship at the NHC, funded by Delta Delta Delta. The NHC experience was particularly memorable given the unique intellectual setting and the sociality and friendship that developed among the fellows. I am especially grateful for the support and friendship of Abraham Terian, Lisa Earl Castillo, Weihong Bao, Ling Hon Lam, Lanlan Du, Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Julie Velásquez Runk, Meta DuEwa Jones, Yan Xu, Claudia Leal, and Matthew J. Smith.
We too often take for granted and underestimate how much commitment and invisible labor are necessary in academia to help each other, students, and emerging scholars advance knowledge, ideas, and careers. I extend my sincere thanks to Lila Abu-Lughod, Beth Baron, Leo Ching, Sally (Sarah) Deutsch, Leela Fernandes, Ranjana Khanna, Amaney Jamal, Charles Kurzman, Minoo Moallem, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Raka Ray, Judith Tucker, and Kathi Weeks for this labor on my behalf. My friend Nadia Yaqub is a longtime source of ideas, support, and homegrown foods. I am regularly reminded of the gifts of friendship and intellectual community with Patrice Douglass, Jessica Namakkal, and Nayoung Aimee Kwon.
I presented earlier versions of the work in March 2018 at “The Shadow Years: Material Histories of Everyday Life,” the fifth annual New Directions in Palestinian Studies Workshop at Brown University, organized by Beshara Doumani and Alex Winder; in March 2018 at ACOR in Amman, for a keynote address organized by Barbara Porter and ACOR staff; in April 2018 at a research seminar at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies, organized by Sara Ababneh; in September 2019 at the “Death and Afterlives in the Middle East Workshop” at Brown University, organized by Aslı Zengin with Osman Balkan as my reader; and in November 2019 at the Décima Semana Árabe en México, for a keynote address at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México, organized by Camila Pastor and Miguel Fuentes Carreño.
Buried in the Red Dirt benefited from a Franklin Humanities Institute Book Manuscript Workshop, which was scheduled at just the right time to focus my anxious mind in April 2020, early in the pandemic closure. I acknowledge Sylvia Miller’s backstage work and support. Karl Ittmann of the University of Houston and Beth Baron of the City University of New York Graduate Center provided invaluable readings and suggestions on the manuscript as the external interlocutors. I am grateful for the time and participation of local colleagues – Leo Ching, Shai Ginsburg, Ranjana Khanna, Anna Krylova, Charlie Kurzman, Kimberly Lamm, Jocelyn Olcott, and Nadia Yaqub. They will notice the impact of their valuable feedback on the final manuscript. Three reviewers solicited by Cambridge University Press asked questions that further strengthened the book. All that said, I take full responsibility for the arguments and apologize salaf for any errors in Buried in the Red Dirt.
I collected an entire corpus of material – largely interviews – on post-1948 shifts in reproductive healthcare, birthing practices, and birth control in Palestine that is likely to become the basis of another monograph, although I occasionally use sensitive information from these interviews without attribution in Buried in the Red Dirt. I thank the traditional healthcare providers, midwives, nurses, health researchers, and physicians who took precious time to answer my questions: `Awdeh Abu Nahleh, Salwa Najjab, Berit Mortensen, Dina Nasser Khoury, Fatima Ahmad, Barbara Ben Ami, Imm `Imad (Bayt Jala), Sahar Hassan, Vartouhi Kukeian, Miriam Shibli-Kometiani, Jantien Dajani, `Aysha Barghouti Saifi, Jamila Qawassmi, and Huda Abu El Halaweh.
There’s a special place in my heart for dear friends in Palestine and Jordan with whom I regularly socialized and shared ideas: In`am `Obeidi, Soraida Hussein, Salam Mahadin, Sara Ababneh, Carol Palmer, Rawan Arar, Robert Schick, the late Rula Quawas, Maya Abu-`Ajamiyya, Reem Quawas, Randa Nasser, Maysoon Samour, and Dima Saad. My aunt Bandar Khoury, cousins Evon Rabadi and Majeda Dababneh, and godmother Rahmeh Yatim (Imm Sami) helped fill sometimes lonely weekends in Jordan with company and delicious meals.
Jeff Dillman, my partner and favorite person, keeps my world in balance even when the world is upside down. I love and appreciate him. Our children, Jamal Dillman-Hasso and Naseem Dillman-Hasso, are excellent sources of apropos memes, inside jokes, political analysis, and solicited advice. Possibly more important in this case, they came through repeatedly when I needed difficult-to-access sources in electronic form on short notice in the final stages of writing and revision, helping overcome the research challenges posed by the pandemic closures and slowdowns of the interlibrary loan system.
Open access