ISHA Spring 2003

For Spring 2003, ISHA selected the theme of 'Migrations', a topic which allows a broad range of approaches and directions. In the call for applications, prospective participants were asked to consider some of the following observations in formulating their projects:

Some migrations are voluntary, others are forced. Major migrations have occurred historically; many are continuing now. Some migrations take place individually, others by or across communities. Some are defined by class, others by race, ethnicity, or gender; many are created by political or economic forces. Migrations are human but of course take place in nature as well, and these offer us a different model, of migration as a form of 'natural necessity'. Migration takes place at different levels and orders of existence. Diseases migrate, genes migrate, animals and birds migrate. Terrorism migrates. Fashion migrates, language migrates, in metamorphosis over time and space. Art, music, literature are reformulated by and through migration. In migration culture is both preserved and transformed, both for the migrant and host communities. Whereas some migrations change us wholly, others--whether in nature or human society--reinforce longer-term patterns of continuity and stability. The migrations of the internet are virtually instantaneous. Through the media ideas, icons, and ways of seeing migrate…

The result was a set of stimulating reponses, drawn variously from the disciplines of Art History, Comparative Literature, English, German Language and Literature, Linguistics, and Women's Studies. Here is a list of participants in the seminar, with a short description of their projects. Please feel free to contact them.

Fellows

 

Ulrike Brisson
German and Scandinavian Studies
The Migrant Banana or Exoticism in Migration. 

Walter B. Denny
Department of Art, Architecture and Art History

Laszlo Dienes
Comparative Literature

Laura Doyle
Department of English
Selections from book project Traumas of Entry: Race and the Fictions of Liberty in Atlantic Modernity (1630-1930). 

John Kingston
Department of Linguistics

Banu Subramaniam
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The Rhetoric of Biological Invasions