Diasporic spaces and dispossession: Palestinian museums in the United States

This paper examines how the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C. and the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge, Connecticut, use digital self-representation to make Palestinian history and presence publicly credible and legible in a U.S. context where Palestinian narratives are contested. Through digital methods and textual analysis of their websites, this paper argues that both museums engage in legitimacy work through three mechanisms: (1) complicating dominant historical narratives through documentation and historical records, (2) seeking to foster a sense of collective identity across the diaspora through shared symbols and institutional practices, and (3) creating space for Palestinian voices across past and present through storytelling and participatory framing of a collective narrative. Situated within scholarship on settler colonialism, spatial production, and memory, the analysis shows how these museums function as sites of narrative intervention and collective memory, while also highlighting the practical and political constraints that shape what can be made public. It underscores how community museums can contribute to decolonising space, resisting dispossession, and enabling self-representation for marginalised groups.