On the Move & Moving On. (Re-)negotiations of Migration in Contemporary Literature and Film
A PGR and ECR conference to be held at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University of London, on 13 January 2023.
Organisers: Vivian Jochens (IMLR) and Franziska Wolf (University of Birmingham/Oxford)
Call for Contributions – deadline 30 September 2022
Migration is one of the most widely discussed cultural, socio-political, and economic questions of our time. Whether internal or across borders, voluntary or forced, migration movements are influenced by a variety of factors that are rooted in regional and national, local and global interrelations. In contemporary discussions of migration, Europe’s diverse migration history and its entanglement with colonialism, (forced) labour, war and conflict are sometimes overlooked.
The crossing of nation-state and linguistic borders challenges stable notions of individual and collective identity and opens up debates about notions of belonging beyond established markers like nationality, ethnicity, and language. While writers, thinkers, and film-makers alike have used the theme of migration to explore alternative, potentially fluid ways of identifications, the political reality confronts us with a surge of cultural conservatism, right-wing populism, and an increase in racist violence.
Focusing on the European context, this conference aims to explore how contemporary writers and film-makers contribute to the (re-)negotiation of migration as a cultural, socio-political, and economic matter, thereby addressing the following questions: