On Finishing a Ph.D in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton
Every day I stare at a nylon cell phone wallet taped to my desk bearing the words, “Princeton University alumni.” And that’s because I love staring at nylon. Most people like petting it. Nah. Staring is way more fun. It’s the gift Princeton gave me for finishing my Ph.D. That and a picture frame.
My Ph.D candidacy turned out to be a minor train wreck for the Near Eastern Studies Department. My initial dissertation prospectus was rejected. My advisor left the department for Europe. I chose a new topic. My committee was hastily put together a few months before I defended. My dissertation scope changed from four years — World War I — to four thousand years, a history of “Palestine,” like the word, name or place.
No committee member, including my advisor, had seen any part of the final version until three months prior to the defense date.
My dissertation didn’t exactly conform to what is often thought of as a, you know, a “dissertation”. I had a couple of pages in there about Neanderthals, about the origins of human language. I wrote in a more colloquial style. I was asked to remove all the jokes. I forcibly relocated as many of them as possible to the acknowledgements section, although some perished along the way.
Where were we? Me being a failure for the department, right. The other thing that happened was that I took a job outside academia my 5th year. That year, and my 6th year, I was on a “leave of absence”, then defended end of 6th year. I have no opinion about whether or not they have an opinion about me taking a leave of absence.
The dissertation defense didn’t go well. The problems started with my title. “The Invention of Palestine?” Professor Michael Cook, asked perplexed. “Surely you don’t mean that? What about the soil of Palestine? Is the soil invented?”
I said “historians don’t study soil.”
What I should have said was that historians don’t study the formation of organisms, or the classification of soil types, or the other things the soil people study. Where are ma soil peeeps at?
Thank you internet!
Ok, so, if Palestine isn’t made of soil, what is it? Rocks maybe? Mountains, seas and rivers? That’s what “Geography of Palestine” books will try to convince you of. But there are people that study those things too, and they sure as hell aren’t me. Geologists, marine biologists and oceanographers, or riverographers? Or, wait, who studies rivers? Or are rivers invented too?
Ok, so what is Palestine to a historian?
To a historian, Palestine is an idea that we completely made up. A person was like, “everyone gather around the fireplace. I have an idea. it’s called Palestine! Let me tell you all about it.”
And that person started drawing maps of it. Writing history and geography books about it. And people started calling each other Palestinians. And calling sports club after Palestine, and scouting troops Palestinian scouting troops. And, for historians, that’s what Palestine is. It’s a name that refers to a place, that someone made up, and convinced everyone else to use. That’s what my dissertation is about, it tries to look at how we invented this place, and institutionlized it, mapped it, circulated it on paper and ink, and in the 20th century, got people to be willing to die, dying to free Palestine.
I don’t think there was anything special about Palestine — that specific term got lucky in history, so to say. As did Israel, or Germany — like — these random names and places and nations and countries are popular today, but different ones were popular at different times. They come and go.
Now the problem with history — as opposed to literature, is that you can’t just make up a fun story about a dude by the fireplace who made up Palestine.
So that’s what I tried to do in the dissertation. Is trace how it got popular.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this piece, I produce comedy videos about the Middle East and Palestine over at this youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIo4D_bprrYYO8cWFP4odAg/videos
Thanks for tuning in!
