Palestinian Studies

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Beshara Doumani,
Mahmoud Darwish Professor in Palestinian Studies
Department: History, Middle East Studies
Areas of interest: Social history of groups, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East. Also writes on population displacement, academic freedom, politics of knowledge production, and the Palestinian condition.

Academic year 2020-2021 was a transformative one for New Directions in Palestinian Studies (NDPS), a research initiative within the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University. Generous support by multiple donors provided the resources to establish the Mahmoud Darwish Professorship in Palestinian Studies, the first of its kind in the United States, with Professor Beshara Doumani as it's ​inaugural​ holder.

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In 2021-2022, NDPS invited three leading scholars - Ruba Salih, SOAS; Rema Hammami, Birzeit University; and Noura Erakat, Rutgers University, New Brunswick​ - ​to Brown as Darwish Visiting Fellows in Palestinian Studies. In addition to a public lecture, each of the scholars organized a panel discussion on currently relevant matters related to their research, visited undergraduate classes, and met with graduate students. In addition to these Darwish events, others on Palestine and Palestinians took place in fall 2021 to include a screening of the film "The Present" followed by a conversation with its director Farah Nabulsi;  in September, CMES Director Nadje Al-Ali in was conversation with Hagar Kotef on her book “The Colonizing Self"; in October with Walaa Alqaisiya on Queer Feminism in Palestine; as well as a talk in November by Somdeep Sen on his book “Decolonizing Palestine." In spring 2022, there was a book talk with Gil Hochberg on "Becoming Palestine,"  another book talk with Sa'ed Atshan on "Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique," and a panel discussion with Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas on "May Amnesia Never Kiss Us On The Mouth."

In 2022-23, Darwish Visiting Professor Abed Takriti, will take the reins for a year and will be organizing various lectures, panels, and the spring 2023 NDPS workshop.