Elaborating Ethnonational Awareness via Academic Literacy: Palestinian Israeli Women at the University

Building on a poststructuralist theory of literacy, we delve into the "black box" of Palestinian Israeli women's encounters with academic knowledge. Through interviews and observations, we disclose practices the women used to unearth the construction of dominant Jewish Israeli knowledge and to reconstruct gender in the Palestinian Israeli ethnonational discourse. Our study takes a new angle on the New Literacy Studies by looking at unprogrammed literacy from within dominant institutions, and how subjugated populations utilize it to change discourses. Our qualitative record contributes to feminist poststructuralist pedagogy by revealing how liberal participation in literacy can be an empowering tool in reconstructing conceptions of women in ethnonational discourse. These insights should guide educators to understand that students' reactions to knowledge and classroom practices may hold different meanings when interpreted from within the framework of nondominant classroom discourses.