Faculty and staff

Dr. Nawal Musleh-Motut is an Assistant Professor of Media and Communication in the School of Culture, Media, and Society at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, BC. She is also a settler of Palestinian descent.

Before her move to UFV in August 2024, she was the Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Justice and Decolonization with the Institute for the Study of Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines (ISTLD, now TILT) and a Term Lecturer in the School of Communication, both at SFU.

Her book, Reconciling the Holocaust and the Nakba Through Photograph-based Storytelling: Willing the Impossible(2023 Palgrave Macmillan), explores how contending master narratives and collective memories of the Holocaust and the Nakba, which have created and continue to sustain the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, can be challenged, complicated, and disrupted when Palestinians and Israelis story and exchange their own counter-narratives and counter-memories of these tragedies through vernacular photographs.  Her other publications include, Comics Images and the Art of Witnessing: A Visual Analysis of Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza (ASJ 2019), From Palestine to the Canadian Diaspora: The Multiple Social Biographies of the Musleh Family’s Photographic Archive (MJCC 2015), and Negotiating Palestine Through the Familial Gaze: A Photographic (Post)memory Project (TOPIA 2012).

Nawal’s current research undertakes a decolonial investigation of the first ever livestreamed genocide and ethnic cleansing documented, narrated, and made visible by both the colonizer and the colonized. It first documents how Israelis and Palestinians have leveraged social media to further their causes – the former to justify the seizure of land and the dehumanization and erasure of native Palestinians, the latter to create an archive of their own suffering and resilience that calls for global witnesses and decolonial solidarity. It then explores the possibilities and limits of ever-increasing Palestinian/Indigenous solidarity and the creation of decolonial and just futurities via storytelling and visual culture.

PhD, Communication, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University (2019)

MA, Modern Middle Eastern History, Department of History, Simon Fraser University (2006)

BA, Communication (major), Middle Eastern and Islamic History (minor), School of Communication, Simon Fraser University (2004)

Diploma in Radio Broadcast Communications, British Columbia Institute of Technology (1998)

Decolonial theory and praxis; critical intersectional social justice; critical race/anti-racism theory and praxis; critical, imaginative, and performative ethnography; visual culture; narrative and storytelling; solidarity and the creation of decolonial futurities between Indigenous, Palestinian, and Black communities globally.

Books

Musleh-Motut, N. (2023). Connecting the Holocaust and the Nakba Through Photograph-based Storytelling: Willing the Impossible. Palgrave Macmillan.

Refereed Journal Articles

Musleh-Motut, N. (2019). Comics Images & the Art of Witnessing: A Visual Analysis of Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. Arab Studies Journal, XXVII(1), 62-89.

Musleh-Motut, N. (2015). From Palestine to the Canadian Diaspora: The Multiple Social Biographies of the Musleh Family's Photographic Archive. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 8(2-3), 307-326. 

Musleh-Motut, N. (2012). Negotiating Palestine Through the Familial Gaze: A Photographic (Post)memory Project. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 27, 133-52.

Refereed Web-based Publications

Musleh-Motut, N. (2016). Witnessing in Palestinian-Israeli Peacebuilding. Center for Empathy in International Affairs. Available at http://www.centerforempathy.org/witnessing-in-palestinian-israeli-peacebuilding.

Other Publications

Musleh-Motut, N. (2015, May 12). Report for the “Know the Ledge We’re On: From Accountability to Activist Research” Workshop. Vancouver: The Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities (CPCC), Simon Fraser University (SFU).

Murray, C. A., S. Halasz, N. Musleh, and A. Sahota. (2002). Silent on the Set: Cultural Diversity and Race in English Canadian TV Drama. Hull: Strategic Research and Analysis (SRA), Strategic Policy and Research, Department of Canadian Heritage.