Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Sharif Abdul Qader Kanaanah was born in the town of Arraba al-Batouf in the occupied Galilee in 1935. He is married and has two sons and a daughter. He studied primary school in Arraba al-Batouf and Sakhnin schools, and secondary school at Nazareth High School, from which he obtained his high school diploma in 1954. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Youngstown State University in the United States in 1965, a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and a doctorate in the same field from the same university in 1975.
He worked as a teacher at the Tuba al-Zangariya School in the occupied territories, and as a professor of psychology at Hawaii Community College between 1967 and 1969, then at the University of Hawaii between 1971 and 1972. He was an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin in the United States between 1972 and 1975, and an assistant professor in the Department of Education and Psychology at Birzeit University between 1975 and 1976, then in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the same university, where he headed the department between 1976 and 1981. He worked as an associate professor at An-Najah National University, and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at An-Najah National University between 1981 and 1983, and as President of the University between 1983 and 1985. He was the director of the Research Center at Birzeit University between 1985 and 1989, and an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Birzeit University, and the director of the Center for Heritage Studies. The community has been involved with the Family Revitalization Association for several years.
Kanaan was interested in Palestinian heritage, preserving the popular narrative, identity and the transformations that occur to it, and in collective and folkloric memory. In 1977, he initiated a project to study the villages destroyed in 1948, and sixteen studies on sixteen villages were published under his supervision. He also initiated the Palestinian folk tale project, which he started in 1978, and published a number of studies under it, including his famous book, "Say, O Bird." This effort resulted in UNESCO's recognition in 2005 of the Palestinian folk tale as one of the masterpieces of intangible human heritage that must be preserved.
Kanaan organized a number of academic conferences as part of his research interests, and participated in others in Palestine and around the world. He has published a number of books, studies and research on these topics, including the following books: Social Change and Psychological Adjustment among the Arab Population in “Israel” (1987), The House is Our Father’s House (1992), The Palestinian Diaspora: Migration or Displacement (1992), The Louse (A Story from Folk Tales) (2006), Stories from Palestinian Folk Heritage (2008), Why Did the Winter Divorce Aziza? A Study in Political Jokes, Myths and Rumors (Joint, 2008), Say, O Bird: Children’s Tales from Palestinian Folk Heritage (Joint, 2010), Zionist-Israeli Violence and Aggression: Its Manifestations, Causes, and Roots (2011), and The Destroyed Palestinian Villages and Towns of 1948 (Joint, 2nd ed., three parts, 2022).
He was awarded the Medal of Culture, Science and Arts of the Creativity Class in 2023.
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