In the July 2026 issues of the Journal of Palestine Studies, Maya Mikdashi (Rutgers University – New Brunswick) authored, “Archives, Prophecy, and Return: The Phoenix of Gaza,” an open-access review of the virtual reality project, The Phoenix of Gaza. Mikdashi explores multiple scenes from the project that serve as portals drawing in in her own personal stories from growing up in Lebanon, relating with her Ojibwe ancestry, and facing the contradictions of universities perpetuating legacies of settler colonialism. She explores the relationship between Indigenous studies and Palestine studies, and considers citational and historical conversation around archives, futurity, history, and colonial epistemology. She notes, “The Phoenix of Gaza is one of these acts of Palestinian storytelling, of ‘ordinary people narrating extraordinary things.’ This creation of an archive is a radical act of refusal against erasure, and it is also an insistent, prophetic announcement of futures that may still yet unfold.” Further:
The Phoenix of Gaza offers a trespass into a capacious feeling of the familiar, from Lebanon to the United States. It offers a detour from the archives of states in search of the paper that accumulates and is inherited, the paper that lives in expectation of becoming evidence, the paper and videos and photographs that speak to the corrosive need for evidence to prove that your life and death, and that of your people matter. As its cocreator Ahlam Muhtaseb relayed yesterday, it is crushing to create an archive of life in Gaza only for it to be used as an archive of war crimes and genocide—only for it to become evidence. So many of the sites we visit through the portal of The Phoenix of Gaza—historic sites and lived sites—have been destroyed. And yet, The Phoenix of Gaza also shows us how they will be rebuilt, that life and death are woven together through everyday experience and everyday acts of commitment.
Mikdashi’s review affirms how virtual reality digital humanities projects can intervene in the digital cultural record through decolonial digital storytelling, bridging transformative personal and embodied experiences with archives and preserving memory for the future.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Kayla Abner, Rachel Hogan and Melissa Horak-Hern (Editors-at-Large), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara and Caitlin Christian-Lamb (Editors for the week), Ruth Carpenter, Pamella Lach, Molly McGuire, Hillary Richardson, Christine Salek, and Rachel Starry (dh+lib Review Editors), and Tom Lee (Technical Editor).