Migration is one of the most talked about issues dominating our public imagination. With more than 232 million international migrants crisscrossing various chartered and unchartered routes of travel, today’s map of the world increasingly resembles a complex web of traffic and transportation. This mass movement of people stems largely from a convergence of both global and local forces ranging from war, civil unrest, climate change, economic dislocation and resettlement in an era of growing global population. The violent displacements of the Rohingya refugees across the Bangladesh-Myanmar border and the alleged questions of ‘ethnic cleansing’ including regional power struggles are at present attracting a great deal of international critical attention.
In light of these crises, we seek to explore how writings about and by refugees and other ‘undocumented’ and ‘disposable’ populations—past and present, real and imaginary— intersect with and impact the humanities. The Department of English and Humanities (DEH) at ULAB invites papers exploring the life, work and representations of refugees in the humanities.
Date: December 22, 2017
Deadline for submissions: November 22, 2017
Contact email: conference.english@ulab.edu.bd
Possible topics and areas of focus may include, but are not restricted to:
– How refugees tell their stories. Where and how refugee narratives fit into the humanities.
– Spatial and psychological dislocation of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers
– Legal and illegal migration: economic migrants, contract labourers, and skilled professionals
– Post/colonial migration: slavery, indentureship, exile and re-settlement
– The case of women and children refugees
– Comparative diasporas: transnational identities and global networks of communication
– Refugees and returnees: voluntary repatriation and rehabilitation
– Regionalism and globalism
– Critical analyses of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality in migration studies
– Questions of language and intercultural communication
Please submit an abstract of 250 words along with a short biography to conference.english@ulab.edu.bd by November 22 2017. Notification of selection of papers will be announced by November 29, 2017.
Convener:
Prof. Shamsad Mortuza, PhD, shamsad.mortuza@ulab.edu.bd
Conference committee:
Ms. Arifa Ghani Rahman (arifa.rahman@ulab.edu.bd)
Dr. Sohana Manzoor (sohana.manzoor@ulab.edu.bd)
Dr. Mahruba Mowtushi (mahruba.tasneem@ulab.edu.bd)
Dr. Nadeem Zaman (nadeem.zaman@ulab.edu.bd)