The Project on Palestine Studies
Launch & Vision
Since October 2023, the genocidal war waged on Palestine has been a major point of focus for Muslim communities across the globe. Many communities have risen up to protest the injustice wrought against Palestinians, both within settler colonies like the US and Canada that are actively complicit in the genocide, as well as in countries across the post-colonial world who are protesting in solidarity. Across each of these contexts, states and anti-Palestinian actors alike have enacted new and old forms of oppression in order to silence these calls for justice. Such actions include mobilizing tools of state surveillance against Muslim communities reminiscent of the post-9/11 era, rising acts of Islamophobia at the popular level, and the proliferation of media discourses that dehumanize and conflate Palestinians and Muslims alike.
It is clear that the subject of Palestine and how institutions treat inquiry of and advocacy for it is emblematic of the larger array of forces that marginalize Muslim communities across the globe.
It is for this reason that the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies is pleased to announce the launch of our new Project on Palestine Studies. This dedicated project -- the first of its kind at CCMS -- is geared to expand the programming on the history, present, and future of Palestine here at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV, bringing in a multiplicity of disciplines, local and international scholars, and resources in order to accomplish its mandate.
The PPS will house a number of components in order to support the numerous facets of Palestine Studies, including Pedagogical Engagement, an Events Series, a Resource Library, and a Scholarship Program. Read more about these components below.
If you would like the support the Project on Palestine Studies, get in contact with us at ccms@sfu.ca. We are looking for community partners, funders, and are open to collaborations of all stripes. We look forward to offering these resources to the community.
Components
- Pedagogical Engagement
CCMS will work with local community partners in order to craft resources about the history of Palestine that will be useful for K-12 and post-secondary education. Those resources will include curated selections of primary sources documents with annotations to give instructors direction, curricula development resources, syllabus-building workshops that help instructors include Palestine in attendant lesson plans, teach-ins on the history of Palestine, and more.
- Signature Event Series
CCMS will program a yearly event series rooted in the subject of Palestine. Such events will include faculty lectures, film screenings featuring Palestinian films and film related to Palestine, graduate student presentations, and other topically-relevant points of interest. These events will be aimed to attract a range of audiences -- from faculty and students to the wider community interested in learning more about Palestine. CCMS plans to record these events and make them available for watching thereafter in order to reach non-local audiences as well. Resource Library
CCMS plans to build a resource library to support scholarship and teaching on the subject of Palestine. In addition to the pedagogical resources mentioned in the pedagogical component, we will also be constructing a that will host both popular and and rarer films produced in and about Palestine. In addition to screening them ourselves, these films will be available for checking out by the local community so that they may introduce them to their own communities.Scholarship Program
Finally, CCMS will host an annual scholarship program intended to support a Palestinian student pursue a degree of their choosing at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV. This scholarship will be principally intended to support a Palestinian student displaced from Palestine to Canada within their lifetime, but all Palestinian students in the Vancouver-area diaspora are welcome to apply. Stay tuned for more to come.