Migrations

March 22-23, 2019, University of Pittsburgh 

Organized by: Heath Cabot, University of Pittsburgh and Georgina Ramsay, University of Delaware

With increasing forms of precarity across the globe, there is a need to call attention to sites of struggle that bridge assumed divisions between ”migrants,” “refugees,” and “citizens.” These include access to housing, safety, thriving neighborhoods, healthcare, food, education, childcare, the labor market, and other shared needs. What would it mean to de-exceptionalize displacement, rethinking mobility and citizenship alike

Sponsored By: The Office of the Provost, the Global Studies Center, and the University Center for International Studies (UCIS) at the University of Pittsburgh

Download or view the event flyer here.

Undergraduate Conference in the Modern Languages: “Migrations of Cultures”

March 22-23, 2019, University of Pittsburgh

Our keynote speaker will be Dr Katelyn Knox, Asst. Professor of French at the University of Central Arkansas, author of Race on Display in 20^th and 21^st Century France (University of Liverpool Press, 2016). 

Topics could include:

§  Multilingual societies and their conflicts ("language wars") and advantages

§  Linguistic landscapes and their evolution

§  Translation as a political tool

§  Literatures of the diaspora

§  Circulation of texts through multiple areas and in multiple languages

§  Travel literature through the ages

§  Exiles, migrants, and refugees

§  Processes of acculturation

§  The politics of cultural production

§  Films and the problems of cultural translation

Migrations Brown Bag Series

All inquiries can be directed to Prof. Giuseppina Mecchia, at mecchia@pitt.edu.

Course on Mobility and Displacement by Heath Cabot (Anthropology)

Th 6:00PM - 8:30PM

What does it mean to belong, or not to belong? What does it mean to be mobile? What is a home, a homeland, home country, or nation? How do experiences of migration, exile, and displacement shift one's understanding of home? Warfare, statecraft, and political violence, and recent environmental and social disasters, are giving rise to forms of belonging, mobility, and displacement that do not fit within traditional categories.  War and political violence destabilize national borders while reinforcing structures of power that bolster or mimic nation-state forms.  Environmental disaster and poverty cause displacements that cannot be classified purely in terms of either "economic" or "forced" migration, but produce composite categories which, as of yet, have no formal legal foothold, such as "economic" or "environmental" refugees. 

November 29, 2018 - 12:30pm to 2:00pm

Elizabeth Rodrigues Fielder (English, with responses from Bill Scott (English) and Mike Sell (IUP, English)

During the 1960s and 1970s, American minority artists involved in social movement activism produced work that would seek to revolutionize the relationship between art and politics. My book tells the story of the artistic side of organizing during the civil rights movement, what I refer to as cultural activism. Through performance and experimental media, creative production offered ways for people to debate political ideologies while still maintaining solidarity with the movement. I argue that internal dissent, rather than unity, shaped creative expression emerging from civil-rights-era social movements. The chapter I will workshop centers on the early plays of El Teatro Campesino, a collective ensemble that developed from the strikes and protests that would lead to the creation of the United Farm Workers of America.