Fadi Asla delivers inaugural History of Now postdoctoral lecture
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences ·
MIT History postdoctoral associate traces how imprisonment under the British Mandate, 1920–1948, shaped Palestinian national identity. The post Fadi Asla delivers inaugural History of Now postdoctoral lecture appeared first on MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences .
On Monday, October 26, MIT’s History Section offered the first postdoctoral lecture in the new History of Now initiative held its first public lecture. Fadi Asla , one of the initiative’s two inaugural postdoctoral associates, delivered a talk, “The Birth of the Palestinian Political Prisoner and the Formation of Palestinian Identity, 1920–1948,” to a packed house in E51. Attendees included MIT undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and scholars from Harvard and Brandeis.
In opening remarks, History Section head Lerna Ekmekcioglu described History of Now as “a new intellectual direction for the department.” The initiative emerged from faculty conversations about the role historians can play in understanding the urgent issues of our time. “The present cannot be understood without the past,” Ekmekcioglu said, adding that historical scholarship “should not remain confined to our classrooms, academic conferences, and scholarly publications.”
History of Now unites research, teaching, and public engagement, beginning with the Middle East. Alongside two two-year postdoctoral appointments, the initiative is developing senior scholar residencies, public lectures, and conversations with the wider MIT community. Its vision extends beyond the region, offering a framework for addressing today’s pressing questions.
A historian and archivist
Asla received his PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2025. His dissertation, “The Literature of Palestinian Villages and Their Place in Palestinian Historiography,” examined how village communities document, narrate, and preserve their past.
He is also an archive builder. In 2016 he founded the Khazaaen Archive in Jerusalem, a community-based archive that has gathered more than 25,000 family documents from hundreds of families across several countries. As Ekmekcioglu noted, this work treats ordinary people “as both subjects and producers of historical knowledge.”
What comes next
The lecture opened History of Now’s public programming, which continues in November with the initiative’s senior scholar in residence. Orit Bashkin, Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Chicago, will give three public talks at MIT under the theme “Jews in the Arab World: New Perspectives on a Connected History.”
All talks begin at 5:00 pm in MIT Building E51, Room 095, and are in person only. The lectures are free and open to the public.
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Источник: MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences