Current Volume: Volume 14 (2024) Volume 14: October 2024

Introduction

I began working as an Associate Editor and eventually as Editor for The International Third World Studies Journal & Review in 1993. Editing that journal continued for 13 years. It was a paper journal, which presented its own set of issues. In 2006 I thought that journal had outlived its usefulness. In that same year the idea of ID was conceived. The first volume was published in 2011 and now 13 volumes later we continue to publish a wide variety of works.

It did not take long to understand that editing an academic journal goes way beyond the contents themselves. It involves creating editorial boards and staff, promotion, solicitation of works, navigating between authors and referees, and so on. I am continuously looking for things that light me up, and thinking about how those things can play into my own writing and, most recently, into my mixed-media and street art.

This year has been an unusual one, given the most recent horrific retaliatory intervention in Gaza and continued violence in the West Bank (and now expanded into Lebanon, and perhaps tomorrow into Iran), which find their way into this volume. This year’s volume includes a variety of works dealing with The Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Israel. I must admit that we at ID have been somewhat negligent in publishing much work about the OPT and Israel over the years. Feeding off a passage from the American experimental novelist Kathy Acker, I acknowledge that oppression and occupation in there many forms are repulsive aspects of human reality. That is what we have failed to draw sufficient attention to in the pages of ID. Volume 14 will address this deficiency. There is an interview entitled “Analysis of the PLO and Hamas: Interview with Sir John Jenkins”—a speculative history; Curtis Hutt provides us with a Review Essay entitled “Ethnocratizing the ‘Holy Land,’” a review that focuses on the work of Nimrod Luz; and a poem by the Haifa-based Palestinian poet, Asmaa Azaizeh. I first became aware of her in reading Marcello Di Cintio’s Pay No Heed to the Rockets (2018), a book that I had my students work through. I became intrigued with how creative expressions are forms of resistance in themselves. The instantiation of the cultural presence of a people as they themselves define it is extremely important for a people (and in this case the Palestinian people). It makes erasing them much more difficult. I am extremely grateful to Asmaa for her willingness to submit her work during these difficult times for the Palestinian people in the OPT and beyond. ID looks forward to publishing more work by Assma’ Azaizeh and other Palestinians.

This volume also contains a review essay by Edward Sankowski and Betty J. Harris, two of ID’s assistant editors. Ed and Betty are our resident reviewers of the work of Slavoj Žižek. For years they have been reviewing the work of Žižek for ID. I can always count on them to craft an interesting Review Essay. In this volume they tackle Žižek’s new book Freedom: A Disease Without Cure (Bloomsbury, 2023). Volume 14 also contains a pair of book reviews: Joe L. Derdzinski reviews Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (Princeton University Press, 2022) and Brett J. Kyle examines The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works—and When It Backfires by Rochelle Terman (Princeton University Press, 2023).

We are so fortunate to have such an interesting mix of works in this volume.

I thank the editors, staff, and board members for their assistance in putting together Volume 14. I want to thank Kathryn A. Cox Schwartz, who has served as editorial assistant since the inception of ID. Kathy has decided to retire from ID. This will be her last volume. I believe that I was in denial of this day. She has been a godsend for us all at ID. ID has been as much a product of her labor as mine. In her place we have Richard Baus, who earned his BA and MA from UNO. We are also very appreciative of the continued financial support from the Executive Committee of The Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights at UNO.

Remember ID is accessed through Digital Commons: https: //digital commons.unomaha.edu/id-journal/.

There is still a need for additional board members and various editors. Interested individuals should send a letter of interest and an abridged CV to rconces@unomaha.edu.

I thank all those who reviewed manuscript submissions to ID over the past several months. I am grateful for their adherence to deadlines and, most importantly, their insightful comments to both editors and authors. The following list includes board members and external referees who reviewed submissions for Volume 14:

Pinar Bilgin, Bilkent University (Türkiye) Ghaleb Darabya (UK)

Ramazan Kilinç, University of Nebraska Omaha/ Kennesaw State University

Curtis Hutt, University of Nebraska Omaha Thomas Manig, Auburn University

R.J.C.

Omaha

Table of Contents

Notes from the Editor

Article

Review Essays

Book Reviews

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