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"Roll, Jordan, Roll — Stereographic River, Colonial Hydropolitics"
The Avery Review, October 2026In African American spirituals, the Jordan was a river most singers would never reach. In Palestine, a river people drew from, crossed, and gathered beside has been pushed out of reach over the course of a century. This essay traces that transformation through photographs that pictured the river in very different ways: Underwood & Underwood stereographs selling the Jordan to Western parlors, American Colony negatives of laborers working in the water under watch, aerial views of Rutenberg’s hydroelectric works, and Palestinian family photographs of days spent beside the river. Across these images, immersion shifts meaning—from rite to labor, flight, and pleasure—while surveying, allocation, engineering, and enclosure turn proximity to the river into distance.
The essay grew out of a lecture performance with poems from Blue-Black Liver, presented at Agit, Berlin, and Tintera, Cairo, in 2025. An early version was printed as a companion to Blue-Black Liver; a revised and expanded version appears in The Avery Review. Notes on the printed edition.
Criticism & Academic Writing