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Programme and reading list

COURSE SCHEDULE

Sunday 17.07 Day 0:

Arrival

Monday 18.07. Day 1:
Welcome and Orientation session 9:30-11:00
Walking tour of Krosno 11:00-12:00
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Plenary Lecture: 13:30-15:00
Theories of Diaspora, Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Universidad de Huelva
Seminar group 15:00-16:30
Group A: Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Theories of Diaspora
Group B: Anna Lubecka, Theories of Diaspora
Dinner 18:30-20:00
International evening 20:15

Tuesday 19.07. Day 2:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30:
There's no place like home: on Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration, Carly McLaughlin, Universität Bamberg

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Carly McLaughlin, On Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration
Group B: Malin Lidström Brock, On Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration
Group C: Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Theories of Diaspora
Group D: Anna Lubecka, Theories of Diaspora
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Film and discussion La Haine (1995) 15:00-16:30
Dinner 18:30-20:00
Film and discussion In this World (2002) 20:00

Wednesday 20.07. Day 3:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Polish Migration, Anna Lubecka, Jagiellonian University

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Anna Lubecka, Polish Migration
Group B: Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Polish Migration
Group C: Carly McLaughlin, On Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration
Group D: Malin Lidström Brock, On Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Film and discussion Underground 15:00-16:30
Dinner 18:30-20:00
Quiz night 20:15

Thursday 21.07. Day 4:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Migrating Modernities, Iain Chambers, Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Iain Chambers, Migrating Modernities
Group B: Lidia Curti, Migrating Modernities
Group C: Anna Lubecka, Polish Migration
Group D: Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Polish Migration
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Trip to Carpathian Troy 14:00-19:00
Dinner 19:00-20:00

Friday 22.07. Day 5:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Nostalgia in representations of exile, Malin Lidström Brock, Högskolan Dalarna, Falun

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Carly McLaughlin, Nostalgia in representations of exile
Group B: Malin Lidström Brock, Nostalgia in representations of exile
Group C: Iain Chambers, Migrating Modernities
Group D: Lidia Curti, Migrating Modernities
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Film and discussion Terra di Mezzo (1997) 15:00-16:30
Dinner 18:30-20:00

Saturday 23.07 Day 6:
Field trip in the area of Krosno: remains of Jewish and Lemko settlements; Greek settlers in Poland

Sunday 24.07 Day 7:
International song, dance and poetry "festival" 14:00
Evening: student interviews with migrants settled in Krosno

Monday 25.07 Day 8:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
The Poetics of Exile and Belonging in Irish Writing, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Högskolan Dalarna, Falun

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Irene Gilsenan Nordin, The Poetics of Exile and Belonging in Irish Writing
Group B: Andrea P. Balogh, The Poetics of Exile and Belonging in Irish Writing
Group C: Carly McLaughlin, Nostalgia in representations of exile
Group D: Malin Lidström Brock, Nostalgia in representations of exile
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Film and discussion The Edge of Heaven (2006) 15:00-16:30
Dinner 18:30-20:00

Tuesday 26.07 Day 9:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Gender and the space/place distinction: Home and home making in life span narratives by Polish migrant women in Hungary, Erzsebet Barat, University of Szeged

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Erzebet Barat, Gender and the space/place distinction
Group B: Malin Lidström Brock, Gender and the space/place distinction
Group C: Irene Gilsenan Nordin, The Poetics of Exile and Belonging in Irish Writing
Group D: Andrea P. Balogh, The Poetics of Exile and Belonging in Irish Writing
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Lecture: Aliens at home, citizens abroad: narratives of colonialism and migration from Southwestern Spain , Eloy Mauricio Navarro Dominguez, Universidad de Huelva: 15:00-16:30
Castle Bonfire: tales of identity competition 19:00

Wednesday 27.07 Day 10:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Fictions of Eastern European Migrants and Their Homes, Andrea Balogh, University of Szeged

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Andrea P. Balogh, Fictions of Eastern Migrants and Their Homes
Group B: Gerard McCann, Fictions of Eastern Migrants and Their Homes
Group C: Erzebet Barat, Gender and the space/place distinction
Group D: Malin Lidström Brock, Gender and the space/place distinction
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Round table discussion Migration, Narration and Identity 15:00-16:30
Dinner 18:30-20:00

Thursday 28.07 Day 11:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Irish Emigration: Historic Patterns and Economic Effects, Gerard McCann, St Mary's University College, Belfast

Seminars groups 10:30-12:00
Group A: Gerard McCann, Irish Emigration
Group B: Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Irish Emigration
Group C: Andrea P. Balogh, Fictions of Eastern Migrants and Their Homes
Group D: Erzebet Barat, Fictions of Eastern Migrants and Their Homes
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Self-study Session 13:30-15:00
Lecture: Negotiating identity dilemmas in Chinese American women's literature, Dorota Mihułka, Krosno State College 15:00-16:30
Dinner 18:30-20:00

Friday 29.07 Day 12:
Plenary Lecture: 9:00-10:30
Global migration and the archive of memory, Peter Leese, Københavns Universitet, Denmark

Seminar groups 10:30-12:00
Group C: Gerard McCann, Irish Emigration
Group D: Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Irish Emigration
Lunch 12:00-13:30
Closing ceremony 13:30
Film and discussion Nowhere in Africa (2001) 15:00-16:30
Farewell dinner 18:30-20:00

Saturday 30.07 Day 13:
Departure
 

Lectures, seminar questions and compulsory reading materials:

Most of the sources should be freely available, for example, via JSTOR. Others will be made available online.

1.    Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Universidad de Huelva (17-23 July)

Theories of Diaspora

This lecture introduces some of the major players and concepts in the field of Diaspora Studies. It discusses the origin and meaning of the term “diaspora,” providing some working definitions before moving on to consider the evolution of the field and the impact of diaspora studies on literary criticism.

Seminar: “Identity”

ESSENTIAL READING:

Gilroy, Paul. “British Cultural Studies and the Pitfalls of Identity.” Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Ed. Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg. Chicago: U of Chicago P., 1996. 223-39. [pdf]

In this seminar students are asked to give some thought to the multifaceted concept of identity, which plays such a foundational role in the field of diaspora studies.

1. In this text, Gilroy identifies three complementary notions of identity: identity as subjectivity; identity as sameness, and identity as solidarity. Can you spot them and describe how they work. Give examples if possible.

2. Gilroy mentions the Birmingham school of Cultural Studies. After reading the text, what do you know about this school? Which thinkers are mentioned in this context? What can you say about the contribution of the school to the study of British Culture in particular and Cultural Studies in general?

3. Gilroy also mentions other critical movements, such as feminism or anti-racism, as having made an important contribution to the study of identity. Can you say how?

Finally, if there is enough time I think students should be encouraged to relate the multilayered notion of identity to some of the key terms in diaspora studies because they are bound to come up later in the course and this will help lay some groundwork for later lectures and seminars. I am thinking of the following, although it is by no means a full list:

Ethnicity & Race.

Trauma, catastrophe. (HISTORY)

Dispersal, scattering, dislocation.

Homeland vs. Host country.

Return and/or (de/re)Territorialization.

The borders of the nation-state vs.  The imagined commnity.

Resistance to assimilation vs. Collaboration.

Citizenship.

Globalization.

FURTHER READING:

Clifford, James.  “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9.3 (1994): 302-38. [pdf]

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 392-403. [pdf]

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 196-220. [pdf]

REFERENCE:

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. UCL Press, 1997.

McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester UP, 2000.

2.    Carly McLaughlin, Universität Bamberg  (17-30 July)

"There's no place like home": on Third Culture Kids and Existential Migration

Lecture description: this lecture looks at two relatively new concepts in the field of migration which to date have remained restricted to the disciplines in which they were coined (sociology and psychology). The lecture will demonstrate how these terms contribute to interdisciplinary discourses of migration which have traditionally centred on terms such as exile, diaspora and on notions of home, departure, loss and nostalgia. Both of these newer concepts have in common that they necessitate a reconceptualisation of what is meant by home and forge new ways of thinking about cultural and national identity.

Seminar focus questions: the seminar will focus on the concept of existential migration, using an extract from Greg Madison’s The End of Belonging and the short story ‘The Empty Family’ by Colm Tóibín.

1. In what ways does Greg Madison define himself against existing representations and discourses of migration?

2. How does the term ‘existential migration’ differ from current concepts such as nomadism or cosmopolitanism?

3. How does a reading of Colm Tóibín’s ‘The Empty Family’ in terms of existential migration shed a different light on the story from a reading which focuses on more traditional migration concepts such as exile?

Essential reading:

Colm Toibin, The Empty Family: Stories (Penguin, 2011).

Faith Eidse, Nina Sichel (eds.), Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global: Narratives of Growing Up Global (Nicholas Brealey, 2004).

David C. Pollock , Ruth E. Van Reken, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (Nicholas Brealey, 2009).

Greg A. Madison, The End of Belonging. Untold stories of leaving home and the psychology of global relocation (Createspace, 2009).

3.    Anna Lubecka, Jagiellonian University  (17-30 July)
“My roots are Polish but…”. Polish migration: historical, political, economic and socio-cultural aspects.

This lecture considers the Polish diaspora, which is one of the most numerous and active of immigrant groups (c. 20m). Historically speaking, Poles were either political immigrants escaping political regimes (the Great Emigration in the 19th century following the November and January uprisings, the immigration following World War II and under the communist regime up till 1989) or economic ones. Today the pattern and composition of economic immigration have been changed due to the opening of labour markets by EU countries such as Great Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium but also Germany and Austria. The latest immigrants are not only manual workers but also young educated people full of entrepreneurial spirit and determination to become a success.

Seminar focus questions:

1. Migration is both a departure from one’s motherland and an arrival to a new country. Each term is not merely a statement but it implies losses and gains for a migrant. What can be the losses and gains for economic and political immigrants?

2. Re-entry shock can be as difficult as the entry shock or even harder to deal with. Explain why?

3. The second generation is usually seen as a caesura in the status building process for immigrants in the receiving country. Why?

Essential readings: 

Robert Birnman, ‘Interview with Eva Hoffman’, identitytheory.com a literary website, 14 February 2005.

Amelia Gentleman, ‘Poland – going where the work is – and coming home’ The Guardian, 6 April 2011.

Bernadine Pietraszek, ‘The Other Child: Poles in Latin America’, Polish American Studies, Vol. XXIX. No. 1-2, Spring-Autumn 1972.
 

4.    Iain Chambers, Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples (20-4 July)

Migrating Modernities

Lecture description: taking migration as a central theme in understanding the historical and cultural formation of modernity, this talk will seek to underline the manner in which the interrogative presence of the migrant announces planetary processes that are not merely ours to manage and define. While the modern state is presently conducting a war, through the codified terror of its territorial jurisdiction, against those considered alien and not belonging to the nation, the migrant’s condition exposes the structural, epistemological and pyschological violence distilled in the everyday textures of the contemporary city. As such, the migrant is not merely the historicial symptom of a mobile modernity; rather, she has become the persistent and condensed interrogation of the true identity of today’s political subject. It is here that the migrant’s time – as the temporality of repressed cultures and negated histories – announces the critical provocation of a migrating modernity.

 Seminar focus questions:

1. Consider the global frame of migration and its planetary extension over the last 500 years – from African slaves exported to the Americas, to the south of the world seeking a better life in the overdeveloped north.

2. From a seemingly periphereal phenomenon to the profound remaking of European cities and cultures, migration constantly draws our attention to an understanding of culture not as an object to be possessed or defended but rather as the site of dynamic historical processes.

3. Proximities, mobilities, intertwined histories and overlapping territories, are figures of thought that suggest a radical revaluation of a modernity that presumes itself merely Occidental in origin and European in form.

Essential Viewing:

Michael Winterbottom, In this World (2003)

Essential Reading:

Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, “Migrating Modernities in the Mediterranean”, Postcolonial Studies, vol.11, n.4 (available as pdf)

Ulf Hannerz, “Flows, Boundaries and Hybrids: Keywords in Transnational Anthropology”, (available as pdf)

Thomas Faist, “Transnationalization in International Migration: Implications for the Study of Citizenship and Culture”, (available as pdf)

5. Malin Lidström Brock, Högskolan Dalarna, Falun (17-30 July)

Looking Back: Nostalgia in representations of exile

Lecture description: This lecture will look at different kinds of nostalgia in literature and film with an exile theme. Although nostalgia may be experienced as personal, it is also a collective experience, which merges personal memory with the memory of groups and nations. Through an exploration of the so-called “Yugo-nostalgia” in the works by author Dubravka Ugrasic and film maker Emir Kusturica, the focus will lie on two kinds of nostalgia: the restorative kind, which deals with the collective rebuilding of an imaginary past, and reflective nostalgia, which acknowledges and embraces the imperfections of memory.

Seminar focus questions:

1. Boym differentiates between two types of nostalgia: restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. Discuss the differences and the similarities between these two types of nostalgia and try to come up with examples from your own life and/or from the world around you. Why does Boym consider one type of nostalgia potentially dangerous and the other potentially incurable?

2. After reading the extract from Dubravka Ugresic’s novel The Ministry of Pain, what type of nostalgia do you think the novel communicates/portrays? What seems to be the purpose of this nostalgia and what does it say about the situation of the people who indulge in/suffer from it in the novel?

3. Underground has been both praised as a masterwork and dismissed as “Yugo-nostalgic” and idealistic. Sean Homer highlights the film’s attitude(s) towards memory, history and film-making. What in the film could be considered nostalgic? After having read Sean Homer’s article on the film, what are your own thoughts on the nostalgia in the film? Do you agree or disagree with Homer’s analysis? 

Essential Viewing:

Emir Kusturica’s film Underground (1995)

Essential Reading:

Svetlana Boyam’s “Reflective Nostalgia: Conspiracies and Return to Origins” and “Restorative Nostalgia: Virtual Reality and Collective Memory” (from Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 2002) (available as pdf)

Sean Homer’s “Retrieving Emir Kusturica’s Underground” (from Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, Number 51, spring 2009, http://www.ejumpcut.org) (available as pdf)

6. Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Dalarna University, Sweden (17-30 July)

The Poetics of Exile and Belonging in Irish Writing

Lecture description: This lecture will focus on the central tropes of exile and belonging in Irish writing, expressed as an existential and epistemological condition, as a spatial and temporal state of being, becoming and belonging. Special attention will be given to the lyric form, and the motif of the journey, where poetry is seen as an exploration of space and identity, a means of defining and redefining personal and national space, and the role of language in the construction of identity. Thus writing itself is understood as an act of exile and belonging, of remembering and healing, of departure and return.

Seminar Focus Questions:

1. Ian Davidson in “Space, Place and Identity” discusses how Barthes, Foucault and Joris use spatial metaphors to describe the relationship between a text and its author (94). Outline this discussion and relate it to the chapter’s overall theme of the relationship between language and identity. What do these three writers have in common in this respect, and what are the implications of this for a poetry of personal expression?

2. Lyric expressions of identity are often clearly shown in the work of writers whose identity is oppressed or denied, examples of which can be found in the work of women writers, writers from minority cultures and immigrants. Many Irish writers have used the lyric as a means of defining and redefining national and linguistic allegiances, focusing on the tropes of exile and belonging, which for centuries have been central to the Irish experience. Using as your starting point the ideas expressed by Higgins and Kiberd, in “Culture and Exile: The Global Irish,” discuss the difference types of exile as a theme in Irish writing.

3. Read the three assigned poems, John Hewitt’s “An Irishman in Coventry,” Moya Cannon’s “Carrying the Songs,” and Eavan Boland’s “Mise Éire” and discuss the different kinds of exile and belonging (remembering/healing; departure/return), that can be traced in the poems.

Essential Reading:

1. Davidson, Ian. 2007. “Space, Place and Identity,” The Idea of Space in Contemporary Poetry. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 89-107 (available as pdf).

2. Higgins Michael D. and Declan Kiberd. 1997. “Culture and Exile. The Global Irish,” New Hibernia Review 1(3): 9-22 (available as pdf).

3. Three poems: John Hewitt’s “An Irishman in Coventry,” Moya Cannon’s “Carrying the Songs,” and Eavan Boland’s “Mise Éire” (available as pdf).

7. Erzsebet Barat, University of Szeged, Hungary   (17-23 July)

Gender and the space/place distinction: Home and home making in life span narratives by Polish migrant women in Hungary

Lecture description: Multicultural cities are increasingly viewed as dynamically constructed contexts, rather than statically defined places with the co-existence of self-contained, and largely un-mixed different minority or immigrant groups representing static cultures.  The lecture therefore challenges the pervasive ideology that conflates linguistic and cultural dimensions of identity, drawing on Polish migrant life narratives collected in Szeged, Hungary in 2010. It will argue that an allegedly easier intercultural contact that is expected to be achieved by means of a common language (Hungarian) often brings about new kinds of communication problems. On the other hand, the gendered priority of citizenship for men versus home making for women may destabilize the myth of a national/migrant identity anchored in some original, foundational perception of national culture – especially in the face of the recent EU membership of the two countries .

Seminar Focus Questions:

1. What do you think of the critical assessment emerging in post–state socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) of power relations regarding the unequal terms of membership that Eastern European countries face as newcomers in the European Union? What are the specific power relations operating in the discipline of women’s and gender studies themselves that are looked upon as potentially useful scholarly approach for exposing the complex relations of power in the Region?

2. Why does the attempt at creating space for the articulation of CEE gender difference in the “Western” scholarship fail to recognize the traveling character of ideas and the way in which ideas are transformed in specific locations? What is the problem of an additive approach in academic as well as liberal political practices?

3. What meaning may ‘home’ take on for sexual dissidents and how does that compare with the meaning of home for migrants? How can such comparison contribute to the wider debate of geographies of difference? How can we re-imagine difference itself? 

Essential reading:

Lynda Johnston and Gill Valentine, 'Wherever I lay my girlfriend, that's my home'. In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. Eds. David Bell &
Gill Valentine, Routledge, 1995. pp. 88-103.
 

8. Eloy Mauricio Navarro Dominguez, Universidad de Huelva, Spain (25-29 July)

Aliens at home, citizens abroad: narratives of colonialism and migration from Southwestern Spain

Lecture description:

The link between colonization and immigration (usually implying an European metropolis and a non-European colony) has been thoroughly studied by scholars in the last decades. But between 1873 and 1954, the province of Huelva, in Southwestern Spain, lived a close to colonial regime under the rule of the British Rio Tinto Mining Company, at a time when, paradoxically, Spain still held its own colonies. One of the consequences of this situation, as recorded in the literature of the time, was a specific trend in migration of white collar locals to English-Speaking countries and specifically to the USA, where some found a new feeling of citizenship against the many forms of alienation they lived at home.

9. Andrea P. Balogh, University of Szeged, Hungary (23-30 July)

Fictions of Eastern Europe Migrants and Their Homes

Lecture description:

This lecture explores the relation between migration and narration in relation to Marina Lewycka’s novels about Eastern European migrant workers’ lives in Britain (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005); Two Caravans (2007). These novels can be seen as a literary response to the recent flow of labour migrants from the former Eastern Europe into the UK and as a critique of the exploitation of non-Western labour force at once. The lecture examines the ways in which Lewycka politicizes Eastern European migrants’ cultural identities and their place and space in multicultural Britain. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s theoretical reconfiguration of ‘strangerness’ (2000), I argue that Lewycka provides a romanticized image of Eastern European migrants as the ‘ultimate strangers’ in the context of Britain. My contention is that the representational ambiguities of Lewycka’s narratives invite critical reconsiderations concerning cross-cultural encounters between the West and the former Eastern Europe in the context of ‘new’ Europe.

Seminar focus questions (Two Caravans)

1. In her chapter, „Recognising Strangers,” Sara Ahmed offers a reconsideration of the concept of the stranger from the perspective of recognition. How does Marina Lewicka’s narration constitute the ’strangerness’ of the Eastern European migrants working in England? What depictions, stories, actions and perceptions orient the reader to identify them as strangers who do not belong to the English social space? (Support your argument by referring to and interpreting specific passages from Lewicka’s Two Caravans.)

2. In the chapter, “Home and Away,” Ahmed wishes to “complicate our notion of home, both for the narrative of ‘being-at-home’ and for the narrative of ‘leaving home’(79).” How do Lewicka’s Eastern European characters narrate the experience of ‘being-away-from-home’? What notion(s) of home do their narratives of remembering unfold? How do these narratives contribute to their articulations of ‘who they are’ as embodied subjects and as a (migrant) community? Do they have any sense of belonging to a transnational community?

3. In his “Introduction,” Larry Wolff contests the notions of ‘backwardness’ and ‘development’ in the Western cultural self-definitions in relation to Eastern Europe. How does Lewycka handle this binary construction of the geo-cultural differences between the West and Eastern Europe in Two Caravans? Arguably, the Eastern European characters’ notions of gender difference, femininity and masculinity play a key role in Lewycka’s depiction of their cultural difference in the context of Britain. Examine the function of the narratives about gender in portraying the ‘Eastern Europeanness’ of the characters. What image of Eastern Europe does Lewycka’s narrative fashion?      

Essential reading:

Ahmed, Sara. (2000) "Home and Away: Narratives of migration and estrangement." Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. New York and London: Routledge, 77-94.

_______ (2000) "Recognising strangers." Strange Encounters, 21-37.

Lewycka, Marina. (2007) Two Caravans. London: Penguin Books (US edition: Strawberry Fields)

Wolff, Larry. (1994) "Introduction." Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1-16.

9. Gerard McCann, St Mary's University College, Belfast (17-30 July)

Irish Emigration: Historic Patterns and Economic Effects

Lecture description: This lecture will survey some of the historic reasons behind emigration from the island of Ireland. Economic and ideological aspects will be highlighted within the context of a colonial and post-colonial interface. It will look at the impact of such an aggressive process of depopulation on a society and outlines the patterns of underdevelopment that have resulted. The lecture will draw on contemporary sources to inform the discussion.

Seminar focus questions:

What comparisons can be drawn between the Irish experience of emigration and your own country's experience?

Are there similar patterns in how a diaspora reacts to the upheaval of movement?

What has the economic impact of emigration been on your country?

Essential reading / viewing:

Gerard McCann, 'The impact of colonisation on the island of Ireland – from famine to emigation (1841-1921)', from Uneven Development in the History of the Irish Economy (Pluto Press: London and New York, 2011). (pdf)

Kenny, Kevin (2003) ‘Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study’, Journal of American History, Volume 90, Number 1, pp.134-162.http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3659794.pdf

‘Exodus’ ( 1989 documentary on post-Famine emigration from Ireland. 26 minutes).

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q='when+ireland+starved'&sk=&adlt=strict&mid=15007055CBBF7F796DE215007055CBBF7F796DE2&FORM=LKVR3#

10. Peter Leese, Københavns Universitet, Denmark (17-30 July)

Global migration, history and the archive of memory

Lecture description:

Of necessity, global history, including global migration history, functions at the level of systems and trends. While individuals are not irrelevant, they are subjects shaped by abstract ‘global’ forces which direct and define personal experience and choice: agency has little place within this scheme of historical interpretation. Here I would like to argue for the necessity of human agency in global history by comparing two apparently unconnected cross-border migrant life histories from Ireland and India. Such autobiographical accounts function at the level of personal decision making and individual identity, but reveal too connections at a given moment in global history.

Seminar focus questions:

In what ways does gender shape the migration experiences of Bibi Inder Kaur and Donall MacAmhlaigh?

One of these accounts describes events very close to the time they happen, while the other records at the distance of fifty or more years. What differences does this make to the stories that is being told and the purposes each story serves?

Both of these accounts describe the early post-Second World War period: what, if anything, connects these life-stories: context? content? form?

Essential reading: (pdf extracts)

Donall MacAmhlaigh, An Irish Navvy. The Diary of an Exile (Cork: Collins Press, 2008)

Bibi Inder Kuar’s short testimony is published in: R. Menon  and K. Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries. Women in India’s Partition (New Dehli: Kali for Women, 2007) pp. 207-15.

Brockmeier, J. “Reaching for Meaning. Human Agency and Narrative Imagination,” Theory & Psychology 19 (2), 2009, pp. 213-233.

ASSESSMENT:

Passing the course (getting ECTS points) depends on meeting the following criteria:

1. Attendance at ALL lectures and seminars.

(Attendance list to be set up on the first day and kept in the staff room; students need to sign this each day; no swapping between groups.)

2. Full participation and engagement in classes including active contribution and advanced preparation for all seminar sessions;

(Teachers to keep a record of any notable failures; attendance records, notes and suggested grades from all teachers to be handed in to PL at the end of your part in the course.)

3. EITHER: a 10-15 MINUTE presentation on a chosen subject during one of the seminar sessions.OR

a paper (2000-3000) to be submitted to one of the course tutors on a subject approved by that tutor.

(Tutors to provide written / oral assignments – one of each - in advance.)