Here/There: Migrant Narratives

This first-year seminar brings together texts, films and contemporary art that focus on migrant, immigrant, refugee, expat and exile experiences. We will explore how migrant subjects negotiate dominant discourses of nationality and citizenship, and how their identities as migrants intersect with their other positionalities, with a particular emphasis on race, gender and queerness. Some questions we will consider: How are immigrant, migrant and refugees marginalized, racialized and queered by dominant discourses? How do immigrants, migrants and refugees negotiate belonging when they cross cultural, national, linguistic and religious borders? How do these authors, filmmakers and artists resist erasure and complicate our understanding of home, belonging and identity? Texts are subject to change but will likely include authors such as Gloria Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, Kazim Ali, Fatimah Asghar, Ocean Vuong, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Masha Gessen, Viet Thanh Nguyen, as well as selected films, documentaries, visual art and other media.