Dr. Loaay Wattad

Loaay Wattad is a cultural sociologist specializing in Israeli and Palestinian children’s literature, with a particular focus on politics, war, borders, and childhood. He earned his PhD in Sociology and Comparative Literature from Tel Aviv University, where his dissertation, Minor Literature for Minor Readers, offered a comparative analysis of Palestinian children’s literature. From 2023 to 2027, he is a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. During 2025-26, he serves as a Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow at the Seminar für Semitistik und Arabistik at Freie Universität Berlin. Beginning in 2027, he will join the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also held research fellowships at the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) and the Internationale Jugendbibliothek. Alongside his academic work, he serves as Advisor for the Arabic and Hebrew Children's Literature Collections at the International Youth Library in Munich. In 2025, he published his first Arabic children's book, Salman the Pirate in Search of Shirts, as part of the Maktabat al-Fanoos project. He is currently completing a book-length study of Little Red Riding Hood and its reinterpretations in Palestinian and Israeli culture.

Lehrveranstaltung im SoSe 2026:

Introduction to Palestinian and Israeli Children’s Literature

This seminar explores Palestinian and Israeli children’s literature as a site where politics, culture, memory, and imagination intersect. Rather than treating children’s books as neutral educational texts, it examines them as cultural artefacts that shape and reflect competing narratives of nationhood, identity, and belonging. Drawing on literary studies, sociology, and cultural history, the course investigates themes such as war, borders, ecological imagination, folklore, fantasy, and collective memory through comparative readings of Hebrew and Arabic works. Particular attention is given to motifs such as the separation wall, political fairy-tale adaptations, ecopolitics, and fantasy portals, demonstrating how children’s literature engages with contested histories and imagines alternative social and political futures.

Vortrag:

"The Uprooted Tree: Ecopolitics in Palestinian and Israeli Children's Literature" am 20. Januar 2027, 18 Uhr c.t., LMU, Historicum, Raum K 001.

Eine Veranstaltung des Zentrums für Israel-Studien (ZIS)