Join the Department of English for a Faculty Brown Bag Event with Eleni Coundouriotis.
Wednesday, November 20 at 12:00 pm in the Stern Lounge (Austin 217).
“Refugee Experience and Historical Retrospection”
For literature scholars, the exile and an exilic sensibility of homelessness have a particular resonance associated with an ethics of reading marked by historical engagement. Anthropologists are now using the term exile to recast the figure of the refugee. What happens in this shift from refugee to exile, especially considering that exile is not a term with any legal meaning? What can our literary sense of the term exile bring to the discussion of refugees as exiles? To explore these questions, the paper examines the figure of the exile in the context of what Michel Agier has called the “existential community” of exodus for which historical retrospection becomes a means of political re-subjectification.
Sponsored by the Department of English Speakers and Symposia Committee. Drinks and desserts will be provided!
For more information, contact: Wayne Franklin at wayne.franklin@uconn.edu