Fourth-year undergraduate student Jenna Barhoush was chosen as one of the two Jackman Humanities Institute’s 2023-24 Undergraduate Fellows, receiving the Jukka-Pekka Saraste Undergraduate Award in the Humanities. The theme for the Institute for 2023-24 is Absence. Undergraduate fellows hold carrels at the JHI, and research and write an Independent Study on a topic of their own choice under supervision by one of the year’s 12-month Faculty Research Fellows. A full course credit for this Independent Study is awarded by each fellow’s home unit. Fellows also receive funding and travel support.
She will be researching and writing a paper on The Absence of the Palestinian: Erasing a People Through a System of Environmental Manipulation. Under the auspices of addressing the impacts of climate change, Israel began an afforestation project in the Negev desert that relies on the expulsion of the Bedouins and the replacement of Indigenous ecosystems with foreign species. The land is altered to replicate European landscapes and to make it unrecognizable to its native inhabitants. Relying on historical and geographic contexts, the research project will explore the ways in which Israel’s contemporary strategies of environmental manipulation further the juxtaposed absence of the Palestinian with the presence of the Israeli.
Jenna is completing a double major Environmental Studies major and Public Policy with a minor in Critical Studies in Equity & Solidarity, and certificates in Sustainability Pathways and International Affairs.