Tania Libertad Balderas

Tania Libertad Balderas is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow within the Department of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of New Mexico. Her fields of study are 20th Century Comparative Literature, centering on Chicanx, Latin American, and Native American Literature. She specializes in Marxism, feminism, theater studies, and decolonial theories. Her current book project, Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in 1960-70s US and Mexico, traces the interrelationship between the novels, autobiographies, theater plays, and oral histories that center the participation of women in the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Chicano/a Movement, and the “Dirty War” in Mexico. Her project emphasizes how these narratives articulate notions of decolonization, self-determination, women’s liberation, and the existence and significance of transnational solidarity networks established in their struggle for liberation.

Esen Kara

Esen Kara received her Ph.D in the American Studies department of Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey, in 2018, with a thesis titled “Claiming the Right to the City: Representation of Los Angeles in the Transnational American Literature.” She is an assistant professor at Yasar University, Department of English Language and Literature, where she teaches courses on postcolonial literature, contemporary American literature, and Turkish literature as world literature. For the 2023-2024 academic year, Esen Kara is appointed as a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College COLT, Spanish/Portugese with a TUBITAK international post-doctoral fellowship. Her current research focuses on ecological imagination as medium of counter-memory in Turkish and US-Latinx literatures, specifically the production of affective archives in testimonial narratives of wars and genocide.

Preeti Singh

Preeti Singh is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College where she is affiliated with the department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages.  She researches and teaches postcolonial studies and world literature with a focus on 20th and 21st century South Asian and South Asian diasporic literatures and cinema. Broadly, she is interested in literary expressions of political and social crises at the intersection of decolonization and the global cold war,  discourses of human rights, and the contemporary rhetoric and theories of populism. 

Preeti received her PhD in English from Ohio State University-Columbus in August 2022. Her book project is based on her dissertation titled, Postcolonial Exceptions: Cultural Lives of the Indian National Emergency (1975-1977)  which examined literary and cinematic representations of the widely memorialized national emergency declared by Indian prime-minister Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975. Reading across a range of genres—  novels, theatre, cinema, and political cartoons, Postcolonial Exceptions, scripts a literary and cultural history of postindependence India through the prism of the ‘Emergency.’  Her second project tentatively titled The Comparative Poetics of Decolonization theorizes decolonization as a planetary phenomenon with specific attention to the aesthetics of alignment, solidarity and indigeneity. The project traces the relationship between indigeneity and refuge as it has shaped the intellectual history of Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies.  

Preeti completed her M.A. and M. Phil degrees at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India where she wrote an M.Phil. dissertation on urban form and postcolonial subjectivity in the emerging genre of the Indian graphic novel. At Dartmouth, Preeti is the co-convenor of the South Asian Studies Collective. She is also one of the principal investigators on the project Infrastructures of Race, Knowledge, and Aesthetics funded by the Leslie Center’s Venn Vision Grant. 

SSF 2019: Home Lost


WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

The roundtables are discussion based so participants need to have read the pre-circulated papers beforehand

To receive a copy of the papers please contact eman.s.morsi@dartmouth.edu

All roundtable sessions will take place in Haldeman 246

Monday August 12

6:00 pm-8:30pm: Opening reception and dinner at the Hanover Inn for participants and sponsors

Tuesday August 13

7:30 am-9:00 am: Breakfast

Day 1. Theorizing the Home/land

Roundtable I: 9:30 am-12:00pm

  • Ofure Aito, Senior Lecturer, Department of English and Literary Studies, Faculty of Arts, Federal University, Lokoja, Nigeria
    • Home and Exile: Belonging/’Unbelonging’ Identities in Nwosu’ A Gecko’s Farewell
  • Oluwole Coker, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
    • Tensions of (Be) longing:  Envisioning Home and the Homeland in the Twenty-first Century African Novel
  • Subhasree Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Calcutta, India
    • In Search of Home: Nostalgia and Trauma of Lost Homeland of the East Bengali Migrants

12:00 pm- 1:30pm Lunch

Roundtable II: 2:00 pm-4:30 pm

  • Alina De Luna, PhD Candidate, Center for Conflict Studies, Phillips University of Marburg, Germany
    • This Body We Call Home: Exploring the relation between body and home
  • Eman Morsi, Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College, USA
    • Exile in the Sprachraum: Home and Language in the Works of Cristina Peri Rossi and Ghada al-Samman.
  • Shareah Taleghani, Assistant Professor, Queens College, the City University of New York, USA
    • Home, Exile, and Emotional Border Zones in Two Syrian Documentaries

5:00pm-7:00pm: Screening of Syrian filmHaunted. Followed by Q&A. Open to Public. (trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl4KRwCqVlY

 *******

Wednesday August 14 

7:30am-9:00 am Breakfast

 Day 2. In-Between Spaces and Border Ecologies

Roundtable III: 9:30 am – 12:00pm

  • Silvia Soto, Visiting Assistant Professor, American Indian Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
    • Localizing Mayanness: vivencias and the challenges of belongingness
  • Rituparna Mitra, Assistant Professor of Literature and Writing, Marlboro College, USA
    • Partitioned Border Ecologies in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Akhtaruzzaman Elias’ Khoabnama
  • Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Professor and Chair of Migration and Refugee Studies, Department of Geography, University College London (UCL), UK
    • A rhizoanalysis of ‘more-than-camps’ in the Middle East: exploring the constitutive nature of overlapping processes of displacement and destruction

12:00-1:30pm Lunch

Roundtable IV: 2:00 pm-4:30pm

  • Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, DPhil Candidate in English Literature, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK.
    • Writing the Camp: Death, Dying and Dialects
  • Svati Shah, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (additional appointment, Department of Anthropology), University of Massachusetts, Amherst. USA
    • Sexuality as Homeland: Queering Genealogies of Anti-Sodomy Law Activism in India
  • Sireesha Telugu, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India
    • Between Citizenships: Questions of “Home” among the Burmese-Indian Repatriates”

5:00pm -7:00 pm: Opening for artist Nobukho Nqaba,(http://artmeets.agency/nobukho-nqaba/). Installation at the Hood Museum with reception. Open to public.

7:30 Dinner for Workshop Participants

*******

ThursdayAugust15 

7:30am-9:00 am Breakfast

Day 3. Globalization and Transnational Identities

Roundtable V: 9:30 am-12:30pm

  • Lin Chen, PhD Student, Department of Political Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
    • Identity Reshaping and Maintaining of The African Student Migrants Through Social Networks Across the Digital Space Border Of The Great Fire Wall In China
  • Elmo Gonzaga, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
    • Emergent Imaginaries of South-South Circulation and Community in the Inter-Asian Migrant Labor Melodrama
  • Vivian Lu, Postdoctoral Associate, Council on African Studies, Affiliation with Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program. Yale University, USA.
    • Decolonial Capital: Economic Sovereignty and Diasporic Citizenship in Nigerian South-South Commerce
  • Khangelani Moyo, Associate Researcher, Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
    • “Beyond the allure of gold”: Zimbabwean migrants belonging, attachment and identity in Johannesburg

12:30-2:30 Lunch

Roundtable VI: 2:30pm – 4:00 pm  

  • Concluding session

6:00- 8:00: Nobukho Nqaba artist talk followed by Community Dinner

Postcolonial-Decolonial Dialogues

Join us for a series of monthly works-in-progress workshops and talks this winter and spring quarter organized by Dartmouth College post-docs that center around some of the main questions in postcolonial and de colonial studies. To receive the work-in-progress and participate, please email Preeti Singh (preeti.singh@dartmouth.edu)

February 12, 2024 

Tania Libertad Balderas, “Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Emergencies in 1960s-70s US and Mexico (Public Talk)

March 18, 2024

Preeti Singh,  “Emergency/Emergence: Narratives of Postcolonial Authoritarianism (Work-In-Progress)

April 15, 2024 

Esen Kara, “Writing the Catastrophe: Affective Archives and Non-representational Memory in Contemporary Turkish and US Latinx Literatures” (Public Talk)

May 3, 2024:

Eman Morsi, “No Republics for Irreverent Poets: Nation-Building and the Creative Impulse” (Work in Progress)

June 7: Translating Indigeneity: Aesthetics, Activism, Solidarities 

A One-Day Online Workshop. Speakers TBD

Comparative Approaches to Latin America and the Middle East –A Workshop

The South-South Forum (SSF) at Dartmouth College is organizing a fully funded, three-day works-in-progress workshop (Friday, October 4 through Sunday, October 6, 2024) for cross-regional comparative projects that focus on Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa. During these three days, pre-circulated book and dissertation chapters will be discussed in depth. 

Please consider applying if you are currently working on a book or dissertation project on these two regions. SSF workshops emphasize non-hierarchical structures of knowledge exchange and ethical critique. They focus on providing constructive feedback and building an intellectual community. The workshop is open to scholars of all disciplines, however priority will be given to those working on literary and/or cultural studies projects.

Participants will be expected to submit chapter drafts for circulation by September 4th –a month before the workshop begins. Submissions should be about 8000-12000 words including footnotes/endnotes.

To apply, please email an abstract of about 300-400 words along with a CV by February 15th to eman.s.morsi@dartmouth.edu. Those selected to participate will be informed by March 15th. Participants’ travel expenses, hotel stay, and meals will be covered by the South-South Forum.

If you have any questions, please contact the workshop convenors: 

Christina Civantos: ccivantos@miami.edu

Eman Morsi: eman.s.morsi@dartmouth.edu

Winter 2025: SSF-Hyderabad University

Displacement

PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO LOGISTICAL ISSUES, THIS WORKSHOP HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO JANUARY 2025

This is a funded, weeklong workshop hosted by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad and Co-Sponsored by the South-South Forum at Dartmouth College.

Description:

Diasporas are formed by either gradual accretion of immigrants, or sudden expulsion of huge masses. While the former is often viewed as a voluntary movement, the latter results from forced dispersal. One of the defining characteristics of migration – voluntary or forced – is that of displacement.

The trauma of displacement is a recurring theme in diasporic studies. Displacement for some is political, rooted in violent processes of state formation, including partition, and militarization, while for others, it is ecological, the outcome of droughts, hurricanes, and environmental degradation. What are the characteristics of political and social displacements? How do we understand displacement and resettlement in the era of climate change? How does displacement inform identity formation in young adults and children? These are some of the questions that this international workshop will consider when thinking across regions and disciplines. Our focus on the theme of “Displacement” could include these and other channels of inquiry:

  • Narrating Displacement
  • Affective geographies
  • The politics and economics of Displacement
  • Alienation
  • Trauma
  • (Re)Gendered identities and relations
  • The inner worlds of displacement (spiritual, psychological etc.)
  • Climate change
  • War
  • Class and mobility
  • Belonging
  • Questions of gender and sexuality

Format and Timeline:

The workshop sessions will be dedicated to discussions of participants’ pre-circulated works-in-progress with the aim of publishing the final drafts as a special issue in an academic journal.

We welcome submissions from academics and independent scholars of all disciplines. Given the cross-regional emphasis of the organizing bodies, applicants who work on more than one area within the same continent or across multiple continents will be given priority.

The workshop will be held at the University of Hyderabad from Nov 26 to Dec 2nd.

To apply, please send a paper abstract (max. 300 words) of an original unpublished work and a recent curriculum vitae by August 15th to dartmouthssf@gmail.com.

Decisions will be made by September 30th. Once notified, participants will be asked to submit a complete draft by October 30th for pre-circulation among other members of the workshop

Funding:

The University of Hyderabad will cover all expenses inside India (transportation to and from the airport, meals during the conference and housing). The SSF at Dartmouth will provide an honorarium to all participants and will cover all or part of international air travel for applicants who do not have sufficient research funds.

Christina Civantos

Headshot of Prof. Christina Civantos smiling in front of mural.

Christina Civantos is a professor of Hispanic and Arabic literary and cultural studies at the University of Miami. Her research focuses on Arabic-speaking immigrants in Hispano-America and Spain, South-South relations between Latin America and the Arab world, empire and coloniality, nationalisms, memory studies, and tolerance. She is the author of Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity (2006), The Afterlife of al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia in Contemporary Arab and Hispanic Narratives (2017), and Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía (2022), as well as numerous essays. Personal Website

Sireesha Telugu

Sireesha Telugu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. Previously, she taught English and Managerial Communication at GITAM University, Hyderabad. She worked as a Junior Language Analyst in the Interface Research Program, a Translator and Editor for the Special Assistance Program, and a Research Associate for a project coordinated by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.

Her areas of interest include Postcolonial Studies, Indian Writing in English, American Literature, South Asian Studies, South Asian Diaspora, Migration and Displacement. Her recent publications include an edited book entitled Indian Literatures in Diaspora (Routledge, 2022) and published an article “Traumatic Realism in Films about the Nepali Diaspora” in IUP Journal of English Studies, 2021.

Alongside her scholarship and university teaching, Dr Telugu has also resourced for various workshops, short-term courses, and faculty development programs on MOOCS, E-content Development, Online Pedagogy and Open Education Resources.

Louis Philippe Römer

Louis Philippe Römer is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vassar College,

where he has taught Anthropology and Africana Studies since 2016. Professor Römer holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from New York University. His research focuses on the roles of language and media in electoral politics, and on the discourse and practice social movements employ to construct alternative visions of the future. Römer is currently working on a book titled Strategic Ambiguities: Race, Class, and Populism on the Caribbean Airwaves, an analysis of how populist media influencers, politicians, and movement leaders use political talk radio to redefine political identities, build heterogeneous coalitions, and shape the public imagination of what is a viable political project. Römer’s research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds of the Netherlands, among other sources. 

In addition to academic scholarship, Römer is committed to public outreach through writing and participation in interdisciplinary public engagement projects, especially those that foreground Global South perspectives. His writing in this vein has appeared in Al Jazeera English, the Daily Maverick (South Africa), Kouti Pandoras (Greece), Lilith Magazine (Netherlands), and the Extra (Curaçao), and in Anthrodendum, Footnotes, and Somatosphere. 

Römer is a member of the editorial team for the Corona Times blog, a public engagement project of the HUMA Institute for the Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. A carefully curated blog, Coronatimes provides a platform for scholarship on the COVID 19 pandemic that engages broader audiences outside academia and focuses mainly on scholars positioned within Africa and the Global South. Römer is a member of the South-South Forum, an interdisciplinary working group at the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College (USA) that seeks to promote conversations between scholars, activists, and artists working in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

He regularly tweets about media, language, and politics @lromeranth.