Radical Histories of Palestine and Palestinians

[see here for this call for proposals in Arabic ]

A Call for Proposals from the Radical History Review
Issue number 159 (October 2027)
Abstract Deadline: December 7, 2025 (extended)
Co-Edited by Golnar Nikpour, Mezna Qato, and Nir Shafir

As the attempt to eradicate the Palestinian people from their lands accelerates–and with it the elimination of their histories, archives, and stories–the need for new radical histories of Palestine and Palestinians has become all the more urgent.

This special issue is an invitation to study the places and spaces, communities and movements that have transformed Palestine across millennia. It is a call for papers to break from the constraints of conventional periodization. Why should Palestinian history begin in 1917, 1948, or 1967. Or, for that matter, in 636, 1099, 1260 or 1516 CE? How could histories of Palestine unfold differently when we tell stories less often told? We ask you to consider the histories of those unregistered, of the countrysides, alleys, of the camps and encampments, of the exiled; the conquerors and conquered; monks and merchants; and sweepers, scholars, sharecroppers, and smugglers. We seek histories of religious endowments, patronage networks, festivals, pilgrimages, shrines, and disappeared spiritual worlds.

This call for submissions is as expansive as Palestine. We seek papers that take up materialist histories of Palestinian societies, that re-index Palestine onto global and regional currents and dynamisms in ways that force reconsiderations of scale and time. We call for, for instance, microhistories of a Gaza family. We call for a study of a neighborhood of Yarmouk or amongst the oil rigs in Kuwait, and the boardrooms of Santiago. A biography of a young man crossing the seas for work, or for struggle. Or of a soldier peering from atop a Safad fortress. And what of disasters and their aftermaths: plagues, floods, droughts, and wars, genocides, famines? We seek papers on the worlds, cultures, ideas, environments, and lives Palestinians cultivated, the ties they bound, the companies they built and the unions they forged, and the institutions and movements and campaigns they crafted. We want critical assessments of these histories, neither rehearsals of valorization nor denunciation. And we want to learn about those who joined them in struggle, in work, in solidarity, on battlefields and in encampments, and in love.

We seek material that help us clarify the historic stakes of Palestine through a study of Palestine and Palestinians: on sovereignty, extraction, capitalism, self-determination, imperialism, technology, communalism, indigeneity, ideology, class, anti-colonialism, populism, storytelling, environment, archive and memory. We seek papers that work through causality, and that reject presentism and teleologies that shrink Palestinian pasts and futures.

Through these submissions, we hope that Palestine emerges as a catalyzing force for an expanding historiographic radicalism: in analysis, in sources, in voices, and in purpose. We ask potential submissions to revisit the seemingly already concluded histories of Palestine’s many revolts, of movements, of negotiations and accords, and foreign policies and lobbies. Do these histories still hold?

These submissions can be in any form: essays, articles, reviews. We invite visual essays, archival notations, and artistic sketches.

[We welcome papers in English and Arabic]

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

Class and materialist histories of Palestine and Palestinians;
Histories of Palestine before the late nineteenth century and its myriad connections (social, economic, political) to the broader Arab mashriq or beyond;
Palestinian shatāts, especially beyond those most commonly studied, both before and after 1948;
Histories of Palestine before the era of the British mandate;
Histories of Gaza, both before and after 1948;
Histories of Palestinian institutions & institution-building – educational, social, economic, archival, etc.
Reflections on the history of “Palestine Studies” as a discipline, including short essays on key texts;
Critical re-thinkings and re-framings of key moments and ideas central to the framings of Palestine historiographies.

RHR publishes material in a variety of forms. We welcome submissions that use images as well as text. In addition to conventional research articles, we encourage submissions to the various departments, including Historians at Work; Teaching Radical History; Public History; Interviews; and (Re)Views. We especially encourage contributors to explore the possibility of supplementing their submissions with complementary pieces that may be published on The Abusable Past, RHR’s digital platform.

Procedure for submission of material:

By November 30, 2025, please submit a 1-2 page abstract summarizing the material you wish to submit to our online journal management system, ScholarOne. To begin with ScholarOne, sign in or create an account at https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/dup-rhr. After signing in, select “Author” from the menu up top, and click “Begin Submission” or “Start New Submission.” Please include “Issue 159” in addition to the rest of your proposal title the “Title” field when filling in the form that follows. Upload a Word or PDF document, including any images within the document. After uploading your file, select “Proposal” as the submission type and follow the on-screen instructions. Feel free to write to the journal’s managing editor at contactrhr@gmail.com if you encounter any technical difficulties or have any other questions about the process.

By January 15, 2026, authors will be notified whether they should submit a full version of their article for further consideration. The due date for completed submissions is expected to be in April 2026. Those submissions selected for publication will be included in issue 159 of the Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in October 2027.

Abstract Deadline: December 7, 2025
Contact: contactrhr@gmail.com