*THIS EVENT IS HYBRID* If you plan to attend in person please head to the University of Chicago Social Sciences Research Building (SSRB), Room 402 on 1126 E 59th St. Otherwise, you can join us online!
To commemorate 75 years of the Nakba, the Institute for Palestine Studies hosted a How to write your Nakba story? workshop. Five stories were published in English, Arabic, and Spanish after writers attended training in narrative writing, oral history collection, and trauma-informed reporting.
Reflecting on her experience as a writer in the series, Marah Abdel Jaber is co-leading this lecture with the writing workshop’s organizer Laura Albast, to share a practical guide on documenting family narratives, oral history collection tools, and journalism's role in generating access to personal histories. Focusing on the experience of the Nakba as a canon of violent fragmentation of Palestinian society, the presenters will also discuss the impact of narrative as a producer of the Palestinian collective conscience.
Laura Albast is a Palestinian journalist, photographer, editor, and media analyst. Her publications and appearances include The Washington Post, The New Arab, Arab American News, Doha News, Al Jazeera, TRT World, KPFA, and other outlets. She is also a professional Arabic/English translator who contributed to dozens of video, audio, and print projects, including Bloomberg Businessweek, The Nation, FIASCO podcast, The Common, and Skin Deep magazine. In 2022, she guest-edited and translated Palestine: Ways of Being, published by the UK-based creative magazine Skin Deep. She is the Senior Editor of Digital Strategy and Communications at the Institute for Palestine Studies and the organizer and editor of the How to write your Nakba story? workshop.
Marah Abdel Jaber is a Palestinian writer, researcher, and creative currently pursuing her master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. Her work focuses on constructions of Palestinian identity within and beyond occupied land, historical preservation, Palestinian creative movements, and the imagined Palestinian space. Marah is devoted to accessible knowledge production, seeking innovative methods of globalizing education about Palestine which prioritize the Palestinian narrative.