We propose to present a three-year series of events at the Center in Paris/IIRP and the American University Beirut as part of Revolutionary Disappointment, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory’s new collaborative initiative. Revolutionary Disappointment is a theoretical, historical, and multi-sited ethnographic project that engages the writings of revolutionaries, artists, and scholars who think about questions of revolution, despair, political retrenchment, nostalgia, the politics of waiting, and temporality more generally. It intends to consider the work of revolutionaries in exile and those who have stayed in their countries of origin, to reflect on themes of generational change and of evolving priorities, and to investigate the multifarious efforts to navigate everyday life when dreams have been dashed and loved ones lost. Centered on debates in the Middle East, the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, and Europe, project activity will include both closed workshops and public conferences featuring a working group of interdisciplinary, international scholars working primarily in the humanistic social sciences. The Paris- and Lebanon-based activity will be complemented by events here in Chicago and result in a special issue of Critical Historical Studies as well as a monograph by PI Lisa Wedeen.