Refugees, Refuge, and Human Displacement

Description

Every American is a descendant of either a Native American, and enslaved person, an immigrant, or a refugee. This book is devoted to the fourth category. The essays in this volume will study the concept of refuge as well as historical forced displacement and statelessness, trying to provide potential lasting solutions to the many problems associated with this situation. This volume is not only timely but expansive, as it moves from the pressing crisis of refugees to the crisis of humanity that seeks to find refuge. From refugees to asylum seekers, from climate change to war, from historical uprootedness and displacement to today's crisis of refugeeism, these topics are mobilizing humanities scholars to think about refugees with a new sense of urgency. This book demonstrates how interdisciplinary cultural approaches grounded in the humanities can transform refugee conversations so often dominated by political science, economics, and other disciplines. In doing so, the collection sets up far more inclusive refugee discussions and urges humanities thinkers to respond by taking the lead in the face of environmental and sociopolitical uncertainties.

Marjorie Agosin is a poet and human rights activist with a long career dedicated to the themes of social justice. Ignacio Lopez-Calvo is UC Merced Presidential Endowed Chair in the humanities and professor of Latin American literature. He is the author of eight monographs.

"Ranging from history to literature and lm to mental health to environmental responsibility to academic sanctuaries, this collection is a truly multi-disciplinary, global, and temporally expansive exploration of what it means to seek out demand and create refuge. It aims to both re-open and advance a conversation that is crucial for our times" - Aline Lo, Assistant Professor of Asian American Literature, Department of English, Colorado College, USA. "This new volume oAers wide-ranging perspectives on refugee experience from scholars working in and across numerous disciplines, time periods, and geographic spaces. The contributions are tied together by a concern for the ethical treatment of refugees, with meditations on care, safety and self-determination amid trauma and continuing forced migration" - Mai-Linh K. Hong, Assistant Professor of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures, University of California, Merced, USA. "An accessible and wide-ranging anthology, Refugees, Refuge, and Human Displacement brings together essays that reAect on the refuge as a practice, idea and place. With essays on literature, lm, song, dance, health care, the environment and the university campus, the authors respond expansively to a call for, in the words of Saharawi intellectual and activist Bahia Mahmud Awah, 'the solidarity of others'" - Naimou Angela, Associate Professor, Department of English, Clemson University, USA.