The "Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+" Faculty Research Network is designed to motivate sustained scholarly engagement with the question of the Palestinian present - in the context of broader currents and comparative moments in the Arab world. 

Led by Alexander Key (Comp Lit) and Nora Barakat (History), the 2024-2025 Faculty Research Network (FRN) "Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+" focuses on questions of power and politics, with an eye to histories of colonialism and extraction but a core focus on the current moment of genocide, scholasticide, extensive destruction of the built environment, the upending of Palestinian political and social organizations and the new regional and global structures that are emerging.

"Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+” aims to synthesize, integrate and clarify concepts germane to Palestinian identity and politics, Islam and the secular in North America and the Arab world, and the relationship between agency and scholarship. This network will pursue events and activities that seek to build capacity across Stanford communities (faculty, students, staff) on these concepts, promote a deliberative culture about these ideas and histories, and disseminate historical and contemporary debates and developments about these concepts. Winter and Spring 2025 activities will include discussions with a series of key interlocutors including Tareq Baconi on Palestinian identity and politics and Sherman Jackson on Islam and the secular.  Events for this FRN are supported by the Research Institute of CCSRE, the Middle Eastern Studies Forum, and the Department of Comparative Literature, among others.

All Stanford students, staff, and faculty are welcome to attend the "Arab Futures and Pasts: Palestine+” FRN events.

Supported by the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, the Faculty Research Network (FRN) program provides CCSRE Faculty Affiliates with the funding, space, and visibility needed to catalyze a series of impact- and inquiry- driven conversations that center issues of race, ethnicity, and inequality. 

For more information on these sponsored activities and to learn how you can participate in this FRN’s initiatives, contact Kenia Blanco Álvarez (keniab [at] stanford.edu (keniab[at]stanford[dot]edu)).