February 23^rd. The Department of English at An-Najah’s Faculty of Arts organized a video conference between the English majors enrolled in the Autobiography course by Dr. Nabil Alawi at An-Najah’s Department of English and the students enrolled in the Political Justice course by Dr. Beth Harrison at Ithaca College. The conference was organized at the Conferences Room at the Old Campus library.

The students on both sides discussed “The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man” novel by James Weldon Johnson. The novel is a fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the “Ex-colored Man”, living in post Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre or by living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man.

The Ex-Colored Man was protected by his mother as a child and a teenager. Because his father left him a lot of money, his mother was able to raise her child in a different way than that of other black children of his age. The Ex-Colored Man got used to only upper-class blacks good white men. However, after his mother’s death, he was introduced to a very different way of life, that of the lower-class blacks.  

The novel discusses a number of themes including the main theme which is the question of race in the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The Novel mainly deals with the relationships between the white majority and the African-American minority.

The students discussed the many episodes in the life of this man through discussing the different issues that the novel addresses. They discussed identity, stereotypes, the role of education, and others. They also connected what they read in the novel with the Palestinian reality and suffering under occupation.

The students also exchanged questions and comments on the different issues raised by the novel. This video conference will be followed by many similar video conferences during this semester to create a communication channel between local and international students. Such events aim at communicating the Palestinian cause to the world and educating internationals about the Palestinian life.