CLASS DESCRIPTION

Until the mid-twentieth century, the dress of the Palestinian people was descriptive of identity; by societal segment (city dweller, villager or bedouin), and by the region in which the wearer came. Within each regional style, finer distinctions in women’s dress (thobe) were expressed that shared the maker’s life and the natural world around her. Palestinian women recorded their identity in their thobe with embroidery (tatreez) through a shared illustrative language of embroidered patterns, stitching techniques and thread colors. The thobe records unwritten stories and serves as a visual register of collective and individual identities, documenting a woman’s village, tribe or town, her marital status, her familial lineage, and the material impact of colonialism, occupation, war and exile. The regional identity of the woman defines the overall governing style of her thobe, and evidence of identity is largely through her embodiment of land.

This lecture will discuss the regional distinctions in dress in historical Palestine during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by city, village and tribe for at least six regions, to include Ramallah, Galilee, Gaza, Bir Saba, Al Khalil, and Bethlehem.

ABOUT OUR LECTURER

Wafa Ghnaim is an art and dress historian, fashion researcher, embroiderer, educator, and the founder of the Tatreez Institute, specializing in Palestinian embroidery and adornment. She is the author of Tatreez & Tea (2016) and THOBNA (2023), with research published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Singapore. A former instructor at the Smithsonian and Research Scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she now continues her preservation work as a Mellon Foundation Research Fellow at the Museum of the Palestinian People, and a commissioned designer for Victoria & Albert Museum’s Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine.

INSTAGRAM: @tatreezandtea @thetatreezinstitute

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This is a recording of a live session hosted by The Feminist Lecture Program in June 2026. The reading list for the class can be found alongside this rental.

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