The collective
The Desert Futures Collective is a growing network of scholars, activists, and artists whose shared goal is to chart new paradigms for interdisciplinary humanities scholarship through a comparative focus on the poetics and politics of desert spaces. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic—for the health and the safety of our communities—the collective began to operate digitally. When it is possible to do so, we convene in person at events organized by our founding members at their respective institutions. Dates and details for those events will be made available on this website. Together, we are working to open new pathways for south-south, multilingual, and transnational intellectual exchange as we build a shared conceptual vocabulary for the comparative study of deserts.
The symposium and workshop at yale
The “Desert Futures : Sahara” symposium and workshop took place in person at Yale University from April 28 to May 1, 2022. This interdisciplinary, multi-day event brought together a distinguished group of artists and scholars from diverse disciplinary and linguistic backgrounds to participate in conversations focused on the poetics and politics of Saharan spaces in particular. The conference included a public opening symposium, film screenings and art exhibitions, a graduate student colloquium, and a scholarly workshop. More information about the 2022 conference can be found here.
supported by:
- The Humanity/Humanities Program at the Whitney Center for Humanities at Yale
- The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
- Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration
- The Yale Department of French James T. King fund for French Studies
- Yale MacMillan Center Council on African Studies
- Yale MacMillan Center Council on Middle East Studies
- Yale MacMillan Center Council on European Studies
explore the site
- Click here to learn more about the vision of the Desert Futures Collective.
- Click here to learn about the 2020-2021 online gatherings of the Desert Futures Digital Collective.
- Click here to learn about the people involved in the Desert Futures Collective.
- Click here to learn about the 2022 symposium and workshop scheduled to be held at Yale.