2025-26
Reading Series: Voices from the "Abyss of Genocide"
Facilitators: Jason Hannan and Jane Barter
The Centre for Research in Cultural Studies (CRiCS) is pleased to announce a new biweekly reading series running from November 2025 through March 2026. This series brings together recent and forthcoming works that explore the global cultural, political, and moral implications of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Palestine. All CRiCs members are welcome, but they must sign up in advance by contacting Jane Barter, signaling their intent to join the group. These sessions will be hybrid. All sessions take place from 12:30-2:00pm in the Knowledge Mobilization Lab.
To register for the reading group or to sign up to lead a session, please contact j.barter@uwinnipeg.ca.
Download the schedule as a PDF
November 21 and December 12, 2025
Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza: A History.
New York: Penguin Books, 2025.
In this work, Pankaj Mishra traces the global reverberations of Gaza’s destruction, situating it within a longer history of imperial violence, moral complicity, and resistance. The book offers a critical framework for understanding the reshaping of global politics in the aftermath of Gaza.
January 9 and 23, 2026
Mohammed El-Kurd, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal.
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2025.
Poet and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd exposes the moral double standards that shape Western responses to Palestinian suffering. Drawing on essays and public interventions, this collection challenges the politics of empathy and the demand for “perfect victims.”
February 13 and 27, 2026
Saeed Teebi, You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times.
Toronto: Scribner, 2025.
In this memoir, acclaimed writer Saeed Teebi reflects on his Palestinian identity, exile, and the act of writing as resistance. The book testifies to the enduring power of imagination in the face of violence and despair.
March 13 and 27, 2026
Mahmoud Al Shaer, A Year on the Abyss of Genocide.
Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2025.
Palestinian poet and activist Mahmoud Al Shaer combines journalism, poetry, and diary fragments, to create a record of genocide and the resilience. This work includes the writings of Nasrin Himada, Fadi Ennab, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.