Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories

Documentary: “Palestine, Story of a Land”

Simone Bitton, France 1993, 104 min.

Studium Generale presents an exceptional documentary about one of the world’s most contested regions. Simone Bitton uses rare film archive footage (1880-1991) to enrich our understanding of this region and its peoples. The result provides an historical backdrop leaving no thorny topic untouched.

Sign up in person on 20 November to participate in one of the follow-up contemplative conversation sessions. Time slot registration sheets will be available.

While the pain, suffering and grief has been obvious, knowing how to relate to this tragedy and finding a way to navigate the emotions it stirs has perhaps been less straightforward. For this, we invite you a special conversation to relieve heavy hearts, find solace and explore how others navigate challenging times which can take a toll on our well-being. Evanne Nowak,(academically trained in existential counselling at University of Humanistic Studies - Utrecht), will walk us through a structured conversation where a safe space is created in the tradition of contemplative dialogue. Soup for thought will be offered at the outset of each of these sessions.

In Contemplative Conversation – On the situation in Israel/Gaza

Studium Generale invites you to participate in one of four contemplative conversations on the situation in Israel/Gaza. Evanne Nowak, (University of Humanistic Studies - Utrecht) will walk us through a structured conversation where a safe space is created. Soup for thought will be offered at the outset of each of these sessions. You are invited to partake in a special conversation to relieve heavy hearts, find solace and explore how others navigate challenging times which can take a toll on our well-being. This is an opportunity to share how recent events in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the ongoing situation in Gaza has touched you and hear what it means for others. Diverse session time slots offered.

Registration is required.

Sign up at the documentary viewing 20 November.

Evanne Nowak

Evanne Nowak has a practice of curating cultural events and hosting philosophical conversations on lived experiences and existential questions in troubling times. Currently she works as a curator at ARTIS Groote Museum. At Studium Generale Wageningen she hosted contemplative dialogues before, on loneliness during COVID and facing climate change

Evanne Nowak is on a quest to learn to understand, think, and feel the meaning of living in the midst of ecological breakdown, injustice and inequalities. How to not become numb, anxious, depressed of everything that is at stake? How can we nurture our capacities to respond?

With a background in humanistic counseling, theatre and philosophy, she strives to hold space in which overwhelm, helplessness, grief, anger can just be. In order to find language that helps us to grasp the unsayable, unthinkable; to learn to stay with complexity; to acknowledge with compassion and empathy our complicity in these endless structures of destruction.

She hopes together we can nurture careful attentiveness in a ‘culture of uncle’. To learn to move from apathy to agency, from lonely fretting towards towards shared witnessing. To learn to see and understand with whom and what we are living and dying together. To acknowledge that in the midst of all we cannot choose, we also can make choices.

So we become stronger and softer, loving and courageous, able to take stand for life.