Join us for a series of monthly works-in-progress workshops and talks this winter and spring quarter organized by Preeti Singh (ASCL) 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 26, 2024 

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

April 8, 2024

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

April 15, 2024 

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

May 10, 2024:

Eman Morsi (CompLit), “Another Hispanosphere: Western Saharans and linguistic belonging” (Work-in-Progress)

June 7: Translating Indigeneity: Aesthetics, Activism, Solidarities 

A One-Day Online Workshop. Speakers TBD

September Workshop

October Workshop

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:

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 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 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 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.