UCLA School of Education & Information Studies

Presidents’ Day
2025-02-17 00:00 - 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles) | California

Early-Career Scholar Series Presenter: Arlyn Moreno Luna PhD. and Advanced-Career Scholar Facilitator Cecilia Rios Aguilar PhD.
2025-02-14 10:00 - 11:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Room 3320
In this session, Dr. Moreno Luna will explore the concept of spatial (in)justice in the context of community colleges and present preliminary findings from a national longitudinal analysis on degree attainment at these institutions, along with future research. She invites feedback, questions, and reflections to refine the theorization and clarity of the presentation.

Dr. Moreno Luna is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, working under the mentorship of Dr. Rios Aguilar. Her research employs quantitative methods to investigate access, experiences, and outcomes in higher education for historically underrepresented students. Dr. Moreno Luna has developed and validated an innovative instrument to measure college adjustment, contributing to the field’s understanding of student success. Current projects focus on the college transition experiences of Latina students at an elite public four-year institution and the STEM identity and belonging of Latinx students at a rural community college. She received her PhD in Education from UC Berkeley in the critical studies of race, class, and gender program

Refreshments will be served. Please direct questions to Dr. Deborah Southern, desouth@ucla.edu

Information Studies Colloquium with Professor Gregory Pierce
2025-02-13 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
Please join us for our next IS Colloquium on February 13, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in the Reading Room, 3340 Moore Hall. There will be refreshments to follow.

POSTPONED: Building Pathways to Higher Education: CALKids in Public Schools
2025-02-07 10:00 - 15:00 | UCLA Kerkoff Grant Salon, 308 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
Join us at the Southern California Regional Convening

Acquire awareness and knowledge of the CalKIDS program

Learn how to integrate CalKIDS into your TK-12 programming

Gain tools and resources to engage students in CalKIDS

The California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program (CalKIDS) is a children’s savings account program which provides eligible participants with college savings accounts, including seed deposits, to help pay for future qualified higher education expenses.

Registration & Refreshments: 10 AM

Program: 10:30 AM- 3 PM

Free Parking & Lunch Provided

Early-Career Scholar Series Presenter: Dr. Cinthya Salazar and Advanced-Career Scholar Facilitator Dr. Ozan Jaquette
2025-01-31 10:00 - 23:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Room 3320
During this session, Cinthya Salazar will present a paper in progress that she is co-authoring with Cindy Barahona from Texas A&M University. Using longitudinal data from 23 undocumented students with and without DACA, Salazar and Barahona seek to understand how participants experience legal violence during their college graduation process and its effects on post-graduation life. Specifically, the research questions guiding this investigation are: (a) In what ways do undocumented students graduating from college with and without DACA experience legal violence through their transition out of higher education? and (b) How does legal violence influence the post-graduation experiences of undocumented college graduates with and without DACA? During the session, Salazar will discuss the findings on this investigation and engage in conversations with attendees about the implications of this work for higher education research, policy, and practice.

Dr. Cinthya Salazar (ella/she) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education within UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies. Dr. Salazar’s research focuses on the mechanisms used by undocumented students to access, persist, and succeed in higher education. She uses participatory action research and engages undocumented students as co-researchers to generate localized student success models that can promote their college retention.

Refreshments will be served. Please direct questions to Dr. Deborah Southern, desouth@ucla.edu

Kenneth Karmiole in Archival Studies: Roots & Culture(s): Leaning In/Reaching Out
2025-01-30 16:30 - 18:00 | UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center, 425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for Kenneth Karmiole in Archival Studies: Roots & Culture(s): Leaning In/Reaching Out with Dr. Etienne Joseph

Introduction by: Thuy Vo Dang; Assistant Professor, and Anne J. Gilliland; Professor

The focus on difference and cultural specificity in contemporary archival praxes is both good and necessary as part of the movement toward the decolonization of ‘the archive’. However, especially in the polarized social and political conditions in which we find ourselves, it is also important that immediate intra-community concerns do not obfuscate potential cross-community solidarities grounded in our common humanity. Through a living example, this paper reflects on how leaning into principles and practices rooted in a specific diasporic culture can support the further development of a community-focused archival practice that explores solidarities across cultural lines.

For more information, please contact us at (310) 206-0375.

SSCE Lunar New Year Celebration
2025-01-29 14:00 - 17:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
Join SSCE in celebrating Lunar New Year with couplet writing and a

chance to win a gift!

CGI Winter Virtual Mini-Conference
2025-01-25 08:00 - 11:30 | Online
Saturday, January 25, 20258:00 – 11:30 AMOnline

7:30 – 8:00 Pre-Admittance Gathering8:00 – 9:00 Suzanne Huerta, Keynote Speaker9:15 – 10:15 Session 110:30 – 11:30 Session 2

Join us online on Saturday, January 25, 2025, for a morning filled with inspiring and empowering stories from teachers and collaborators in our shared journey. Our presenters will be sharing from their CGI practice and experiences aimed at promoting mathematical understanding, centering student thinking, and infusing joy into the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Hear our Stories: Campus Sexual Violence, Intersectionality, and How We Build a Better University
2025-01-22 16:00 - 17:30 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Dr. Jessica Harris will be in conversation with Dr. Shannon Speed about her recently published book, Hear Our Stories: Campus Sexual Violence, Intersectionality, and How to Build a Better University. The conversation will take place on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025 from 4:00pm-5:30pm in the Moore Hall Reading Room (Moore Hall 3340). Light refreshments will be served and a limited number of books will be available for participants at no cost.

This event is co-sponsored by the Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center.

For comments or questions, please email jharris@gseis.ucla.edu

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
2025-01-20 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Information Studies Colloquium: Participatory AI with PhD candidate Kelly Wagman
2025-01-16 14:00 - 16:00 | Zoom
Please join us by Zoom for this week’s Information Studies Colloquium, Thursday, January 16, 2-4 p.m. The presenter will be Kelly B. Wagman, discussing participatory AI.

Bio:

Kelly B. Wagman is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago in the Computer Science department where her focus is human-AI interaction. Kelly’s research centers around understanding how AI integrates with sociotechnical systems and how to improve the design of those systems. Previously she worked at Microsoft Research and received a MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and BAs in Computer Science and Economics from Brown University.

Abstract:

“Participatory AI” has been proposed as a mechanism for designing ethical and inclusive AI systems. However, scholars differ on theoretical definitions for participatory AI and few practical examples exist of participatory AI implementations in real-world settings. In this project, we develop a participatory AI system for climate that is being deployed in a Chicago neighborhood in order to understand the benefits and limits of this approach. More specifically, we partnered with climate scientists and a Chicago community non-profit organization to understand how AI models of microclimates can benefit community residents and incorporate their perspectives. To do this we conducted interviews, co-design workshops, and ethnographic work. Based on this qualitative work, we built a climate reporting and visualization app for the community to contribute data (e.g. photos of basement flooding) to the science AI pipeline as well as understand how these climate models can be made actionable in their own lives. Ultimately this project demonstrates that it is possible to develop a practical participatory AI system that benefits multiple stakeholders, although it is time-intensive and questions remain as to the scalability of such an approach.

Professional Leadership and Coaching Academy
2025-01-09 16:00 - 18:00 | California
This program focuses on empowering participants to take ownership of their learning journeys. Instead of a top-down approach that simply identifies problems and prescribes solutions, it emphasizes collaboration, responsive listening, and open dialogue.

Leaders in this program learn to create an inclusive environment where team members feel safe to express ideas, take risks, and reflect on their experiences. By cultivating curiosity and resilience, we explore participants’ strengths and areas for improvement together. Through experiential learning and coaching, leaders will learn how to help their teams to develop skills, think critically, and adapt to changing systems and environments. This approach not only enhances individual performance but also fosters a culture of learning, growth, and innovation within organizations.

Fee

$2400/participant

Discounted Registration $2,150 until Dec. 2

Team Discount: A 25% team discount is available for eligible applications registering from the same organization with three or more participants. Discounts cannot be combined.

Registration Deadline – January 3, 2025

No refunds 10 business days prior to any event. Please Note: There is a 15% administrative fee on all cancellations. No-shows will be charged the full amount.

For registration or Team Discount information, please contact Nancy Lee Sayre at sayre@gseis.ucla.edu.

Technological Jingoism and the Domestic Politics of the US-China "AI Arms Race"
2025-01-09 13:00 - 14:00 | UCLA Murphy Hall Room 3312
All Are Welcome!

January 9, 2025 | 3321 Murphy Hall | Talk: 1-2 p.m.

The rise of large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT has popularized the notion that AI companies are locked in a race to be the first to produce artificial general intelligence (AGI). This narrative is amplified by the geopolitical framing of US-China competition, cast as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism. Layering propaganda atop speculation, technocrats posit that building AGI first is a moral imperative for the United States because the Chinese government would use the advanced technology to assert global political control. This framing not only distorts the discourse around AI itself, but also limits the ways information is constructed, shaping data infrastructures to serve a narrow agenda of economic nationalism.

In this talk, Dr. Shazeda Ahmed argues that democracy is threatened by each new iteration of AI arms race thinking. Drawing upon interview studies in China and the United States, Dr. Ahmed investigates how certain expert communities have transformed ideological stances on AI into knowledge production practices and policies that sustain policymakers’ belief that maintaining the United States’ global technological dominance is a top national security objective. This framing is instrumentalized to justify anti-Asian xenophobia in the proposed TikTok ban, as well as the persecution of Chinese STEM researchers in the US; to defer the accountability of Silicon Valley companies that claim regulation will dampen innovation; and to stymie efforts to safeguard society against well-documented AI harms, including automated discrimination. Yet, despite how deeply AI discourse has become saturated with an air of inevitability, international scholars, civil society advocates, and tech workers committed to trans-Pacific peace point a way forward and out of recursive Cold War logics.

Bio

Shazeda Ahmed is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral (Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program) fellow at UCLA. Shazeda completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley’s School of Information in 2022, and was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. She has been a research fellow at Upturn, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) Institute, and NYU’s AI Now Institute.

Shazeda’s research investigates relationships between the state, the firm, and society in the US-China geopolitical rivalry over AI, with implications for information technology policy and human rights. Her work draws from science and technology studies, ranging from her dissertation on the state-firm co-production of China’s social credit system, to her research on the epistemic culture and knowledge production practices in the emerging field of AI safety.

Winter Quarter Instruction Begins
2025-01-06 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Winter Campus Closure
2024-12-21 00:00 - 2025-01-01 23:59 | California

Coffee, Pastries and a Book: SEIS Book Club 2024-25 - Virtual Book Club Meeting
2024-12-11 16:00 - 17:00 | California
Our 2024-2025 AY book club reading and discussing Prentis Hemphill’s new book, What It Takes To Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

Fall Quarter Virtual & In-Person Meetings

Virtual Book Club Meeting – Wed, Dec. 11th, 4PM-5PM

(Spring and Winter Quarter Meetings TBD)

Early-Career Scholar Series Presenter: Dr. Chris Jadallah and Scholar Facilitator Dr. Teresa L. McCarty
2024-12-06 10:00 - 11:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Room 3320
The UCLA Department of Education Early-Career Scholar Series invites Department faculty, staff, and students to come together to engage with early-career scholars and their research, and build community over a Department lunch at noon following the session. At each session, an early-career scholar will either present their research or workshop a paper or study in progress facilitated by an advanced-career scholar.

This monthly event strives to foster community and connection within our Department, come together to learn more about our early-career scholars, and support their work. Coffee and refreshments will be served.

In this session, Dr. Jadallah will present a recently completed study with educators of color mapping the sociopolitical commitments that guide their pedagogies in farms, gardens, and other land-based settings (Jadallah, 2024). He will also share plans for an upcoming study extending this work in partnership with young people in the San Fernando Valley using oral history approaches to document their own families’ connections to and relationships with land. He welcomes comments, questions, and feedback.

Dr. Jadallah is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice in the Department of Education at UCLA, where he co-designs, implements, and studies learning environments where people come together to learn in, with, and from the natural world. Across his projects, he endeavors to foreground the knowledge of non-dominant communities as an asset for both learning and socio-ecological changemaking, operating from the premise that these communities’ everyday practices provide fertile ground from which to anchor the work of building more just and sustainable futures.

Upcoming Series Dates:

January 17, 2025

February 14, 2025

March 14, 2025

April 11, 2025

May 9, 2025

June 6, 2025

Fall Quarter Instruction Ends
2024-12-06 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Information Studies Colloquium: Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) with Dr. Christine Ong and Seul Lee
2024-12-05 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
Please join us for our next IS Colloquium on December 5, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in the Reading Room, 3340 Moore Hall. There will be refreshments to follow.

Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH)

Dr. Christine Ong and Seul Lee

Abstract

Social Media and the Spread of Hate or SMASH is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, educators, and policy advocates from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative (HCI), and an independent non-profit partner, the Organization for Social Media Safety (OFSMS). SMASH is funded by UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate.

Our primary goal is to explore how young people encounter hate speech online, their responses to it, and ideas for making social media safe for everyone. Our study incorporates various methods including survey data gathered during school assemblies and in-depth conversations with young people about their own experiences using social media.

In the past two years, SMASH has gathered survey data from over 24,000 students in grades 5-12 across 94 schools nationwide. Our findings have informed OFSMS program improvements. Our research has also been shared by OFSMS partners in legislative testimony related to potential harms on social media and broader advocacy efforts at the local, state and national level. SMASH results may also inform future development of educational resources and interventions, such as activities to promote kindness, empathy, resiliency, and critical thinking around social media use.

Bios

Seul Lee is a doctoral candidate in Information Studies at UCLA, holding a B.A. in Management Information Systems, an M.A. in Data Science, and a graduate certificate in Digital Humanities. Her research interests involve investigating the intricate landscape of information biases, algorithmic subjectivities, and the pivotal role of digital literacy education in fostering a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of biases behind the presentation of online information. She has been working as a graduate student researcher for the Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) team to combat online hate speech by collaborating with middle and high school students in the US.

Dr. Christine Ong is a research scientist at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA. Dr. Ong has extensive experience managing research and evaluation studies that involve multi-institution partnerships. She is project director of the Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) study, an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, educators, and policy advocates from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and the non-profit Organization for Social Media Safety and funded by UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate. This work includes an examination of features of social media apps that may help fuel hateful content adolescents encounter. She also serves as an external evaluator for two NSF grants that connect to computing education, Computational Thinking Equity Project (CTEP) and Researching Equity and Antiracist Learning (REAL-CS). In addition, she is part of the California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network (CTERIN) and sister study, California Preparation Pathway Project (CP3, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), charged with constructing and enhancing teacher-level data related to new teachers’ preparation, placement and retention in the state.

A Civil Rights Agenda for California's Next Quarter Century - An Education Research and Policy Briefing
2024-12-05 10:00 - 15:00 | The Citizen Hotel – Quorum Room, 926 J Street, Sacramento, California, 95814, United States
The UCLA Civil Rights Project is celebrating its first quarter century by taking a critical look forward at the upcoming generation—not at the history of civil rights challenges, debates over older policies, or at prior victories. We are focused on what California needs in the next quarter century to address the challenges facing our rapidly changing society. Our research series, “A Civil Rights Agenda for California’s Next Quarter Century,” harnesses the skills of innovative thinkers from various disciplines to think systematically and deeply about how California is transforming and what the implications are for the future of racial justice. This December 5th we will share new research and engage in discussion, charting a new path forward in an anti-civil rights era.

We hope to see you there. Register at the link.

Live Stream Link Forthcoming

Learning Café: A Community Engaged Scholarship Series with Nicole (Nikki) Barry
2024-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for our monthly Learning Café series highlighting the community engaged work of our faculty and graduate students. Listen, learn and engage with the work of our school.

Featuring Nicole (Nikki) Barry, PhD., Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice Education

Community-based research design (CBDR) is an approach to research that prioritizes community goals, voices, desires, needs, and perspectives. While many researchers and community members are interested in utilizing this research model to center community strengths, build capacity, and even nation-build, it is not always clear how to integrate community participation into each aspect of the research process. In particular, data analysis and interpretation may seem more challenging when incorporating community participation. Community participation in data analysis is important to ensure that data is defined appropriately, validly measured, managed correctly, and interpreted to achieve the goals of the community and the research team. This session will explore the importance of including community participation in the data analytic process, create a space to discuss data and analysis broadly, engage participants in hands-on analysis and interpretation, and share results from an ongoing CBDR project exploring how culture affects our thinking about ecosystems.

Future Dates

Winter 2025

Karen Hunter Quartz – February 11

Thuy Do Vang – Winter Quarter

Ananda Marin – Winter Quarter

Spring 2025

Julissa Muñiz – Spring Quarter

Cinthya Salazar – Spring Quarter

Melissa Villa-Nicolas – Spring Quarter

Chris Jadallah – Spring Quarter

Thanksgiving
2024-11-28 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Book Talk and Signing with Professor Laura Chávez-Moreno
2024-11-19 11:00 - 13:00 | UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), 44 Haines Hall, Los Angelea, California, 90095
Books: A limited number of books will be available at no cost for UCLA students, first come first served

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning researcher, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Department of Education. How do schools make us think about race? And where does Latinx fit in? In How Schools Make Race, Laura Chávez-Moreno shows how schools play a pivotal role in shaping the concept of race and racialized groups. In this talk, she tells the story of how the teachers and students in a racially diverse Spanish-English bilingual education program grappled with conflicting ideas about race and about the Latinx category. She explores how curriculum, pedagogy, policy, and language interplay to form, reinforce, and blur the boundaries of racialized groups. Chávez-Moreno challenges us to reconsider what makes race and invites us to see Latinx as a racialized group. Her research reveals why this shift matters–because how we think about race affects whether our schools can provide youth with an education that challenges racist ideas.

Chávez-Moreno will be joined by two esteemed panelists, Professor of Social Science and Comparative Education, and Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, and Director of the Center for Critical Race Studies in Education at UCLA, Dr. Daniel Solórzano, and Assistant Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center, Dr. Celia Lacayo. The event will be moderated by Professor of Social Research Methodology at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, and Co-Director of the Language, Learning, and Literacy (L3) Collaborative , Dr. Inmaculada García-Sánchez. RSVP Deadline for Lunch: November 13th, 2024

Event sponsored by the Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, the Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, and the Language, Literacy, and Learning (L3) Collaborative at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies.

Coffee, Pastries and a Book: SEIS Book Club 2024-25 – Fall In-Person Meeting
2024-11-18 12:00 - 13:30 | IS Library, SEIS Building, Room 102
Our 2024-2025 AY book club reading and discussing Prentis Hemphill’s new book, What It Takes To Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

Fall Quarter Virtual & In-Person Meetings

Fall In-Person Book Club Meeting – Mon, Nov. 18th, 12PM – 1:30PM

Virtual Book Club Meeting – Wed, Dec. 11th, 4PM-5PM

(Spring and Winter Quarter Meetings TBD)

Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning Summit
2024-11-18 08:00 - 17:00 | California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1000 E Victoria St., Carson, California, 90747, United States
The UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning is hosting our annual summit on Monday, November 18, 2024. This year’s theme is Bridging Research, Practice, and Policy to Improve Educational Opportunities.

Learn about connections between research and practice related to new education initiatives and policies in California. Network with educational leaders, practitioners, interdisciplinary researchers, policymakers, and community members to highlight the connections between neuroscience research, practice, and policy across the following four thematic strands:

Behavioral & Mental Health in Childhood

Supporting Neurodiverse Children as They Transition to School

Language & Literacy Development Among Multilingual Children

Executive Function and Self-Regulation in Adolescence

Iris Booth Headshot Event
2024-11-13 11:00 - 14:00 | UCLA Career Center, Strathmore, 2nd Floor
In Partnership with UCLA Career Center, join us and try out the IRIS Booth! The IRIS Booth condenses a full size photo studio into a fun, modern 20 square foot space.

Dress Code

Business wear is optional

If you don’t have business wear, we recommend wearing solid colors (e.g. beige, navy, black)

A small amount of color is fine (tie or sweater), but stay away from loud prints or a lot of color.

Veterans Day
2024-11-11 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Bruin Family Weekend | Parents Luncheon
2024-11-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Royce Hall Ahmanson Terrace
Join us for our Ed&IS Family Luncheon on November 8th from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Located at Royce Hall, Ahmanson Terrace

No RSVP Required

UCLA Bruin Family Weekend is our annual, two-day family event that’s jam-packed with exciting activities, important information about campus resources and fun opportunities to see UCLA through your student’s eyes. While bonding with your Bruin and meeting other UCLA families, enjoy presentations from top faculty, lunch with your student’s dean, parent and family workshops and so much more.

Don’t miss this chance to spend quality time with your Bruin and find out what being part of the Bruin family is all about.

Information Studies Colloquia: The Bible is Our Deed: Owning the Past and Heritage Territoriality in Israel and Palestine with Yair Agmon
2024-11-07 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Please join us for our next IS Colloquium on November 7, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in the Reading Room, 3340 Moore Hall. There will be refreshments to follow. This will be the first of several colloquia this year that feature the research of completing IS doctoral students.

The Bible is Our Deed: Owning the Past and Heritage Territoriality in Israel and Palestine

Yair Agmon

Abstract

In recent years, the Israeli government and private settler organizations have invested heavily in developing heritage tourism in Palestinian Occupied Territories. Governmental grants and state authorities have funded archaeological excavations, poured money into the tourism industry, and used the force of military actions to secure Israeli itineraries moving through Palestinian territory. This heritage tourism industry focuses on promoting a powerful imaginary based on a messianic interpretation of biblical scripture, in which Israeli nationalism is projected into antiquity to claim Jewish indigeneity and ownership over the land. Yet the Israeli state and private settler organizations have also used the administrative infrastructure and state power of heritage management to dispossess and displace Palestinians. Land use policies, economic disinvestments, and legal actions have transformed sites of heritage in which Palestinians live or work into sites of Jewish settlements. I describe this process as heritage territoriality, rendering symbolic claims to origins into places of dwelling, materializing Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s famous idiom that “The Bible is Our Deed.”

​This presentation will map the development of heritage territoriality over the last 25 years across Israel and Palestine, closely examining The City of David National Park in East Jerusalem as the primary case study. Through this survey, I demonstrate how heritage regimes and cultural memory have produced a unique type of settlement that obfuscates the colonial violence of its own making through tourism. I discuss how, ultimately, Jewish settlers’ encounter with the material ruins of ancient Jewish life, interpreted through messianic readings of scripture, has resulted in a colonial theory of property based on a divine right to land that has produced racialized structures of identity, territory, and accumulation.

Bio

Yair Agmon is a scholar, artist, and activist. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA and holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

UCLA Pritzker Center Open House
2024-11-07 10:00 - 12:00 | UCLA Pritzker Center, 10945 Le Conte Ave, Suites 1350-55, Los Angeles, California, 90024, United States
Join us for our Open House event on November 7! Learn about our research, meet our team, and connect with our faculty and staff. Light refreshments will be served.
