Global Diasporas
Communities of Exile and Migration

October 29-31, 1999
Pyle Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Global diasporas are proliferating in the increasingly transtional landscapes of the late twentieth century. Violent dislocations of whole populations as well as massive movements of people seeking safety, freedom, work, and better lives for themselves and their families seem ever more common as borders become contested and porous. Refugee populations, exiles, and migrants around the globe have created what Arjun Appadurai has termed the "global ethnoscape" of postmodernity, with its intensification of intercultural contact, transcultural traffic, and hybridic cultural formations. Suffering and opportunity abut in the midst of such demographic shifts. The chasm between those forced into movement and those choosing it, between those destitute and those privileged, seems ever more gaping. But are these conditions so new or is there a history of different diasporas in different times and places that can shed light on contemporary diasporic situations? What in fact do we mean by diaspora and what do the different peoples who invoke the term mean by using it? Does diaspora always involve a forcible expulsion from the homeland, which is then reconstituted in dream, desire, and longing by a wandering people, as in the classic diasporas of the Jews, the Armenians, and the scattered peoples of African descent? If not, what are the other conditions that produce the cultural consciousness of diasporic identity? What is the meaning of diaspora where refugees or exiles fear to go "home"? For those who carry "home" with them, like a turtle with its house on its back, as Gloria Anzaldua writes? For those who move back and forth between "home" and elsewhere? For those with multiple "homes"? For those where migration is provisional and contingent? What is the role of diasporic consciousness in forging bonds in immigrant or refugee communities? How do diasporic communities functionin relation to the "homeland" and the new land? What attitudes, policies, and politics characterize the way in which diasporic communities are treated? How do power and privilege factor into the meanings of diaspora and diasporic identity?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1999

Opening Remarks, Susan Stanford Friedman

Migration and Memory in the Black Atlantic
9:30-12:00

9:30-10:30
Moustafa Bayoumi , English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
"Moving Beliefs: Migrations and Multiplicites in Black Atlantic Islam"

11:00-12:00
Henry Drewa l, Art History and Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Memory, Agency and the Arts: The African Diaspora in Brazil"
Rob Nixon , English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Journey to an Illusion: English National Heritage, Culture and Caribbean Disinheritance"

Forced Migration and the Politics of Identity
2:00-5:00

2:00-3:00
Christopher Taylor , Anthropology, University of Alabama
"He Laughs With You, Yet He Hates You: Mistrusting Rwandan Refugees"

3:30-5:00
Crawford Young , Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Reflections on Identity Impact of Forced Migrations"
Rachel Brenner , Hebrew and Semitic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"My Unfinished Business of Exile"
Himadeep Muppid i, Political Science, University of Minnesota, and Christopher Chekuri , History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Diasporas Before and After the Nation"

5:15-6:15
Reception

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1999

Politics of Diaspora and the Nation/State
9:30-12:30

9:30-10:30
Aihwa Ong , Anthropology, University of California-Berkeley
"Multiple Publics, Multiple Homelands: The Divergent Politics of Diasporan Chinese"

Rhacel Parrenas , Women's Studies and Asian American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Transgressing the Nation/State: The Partial Citizenship and 'Imagined (Global) Community' of Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers"
Dionne Espinoza , Women's Studies and Chicana/o Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Chicanization/Mexicanization: Notes on the Cultural Politics of Transnational Conversion"
Guang Lei , Political Science, San Diego State University
"Producing Diasporas: Politics and Economics"

Global Representations and Personal Contexts
2:30-5:00

2:30-3:30
Christine Ogan , School of Journalism, Indiana University
"Forever Migant: The Power of Television to Retard Identification within the Dominant Culture"

3:45-5:00
Kirin Narayan , Anthropology and Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Placing Lives Through Stories: Second Generation South Asian Americans"
Tomislav Longinovic , Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Translating Cultures in a Global Context"

6:00-8:00
Potluck Dinner, Neil Whitehead's home

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1999

9:00-9:30
Refreshments

9:30-11:30
Summary and Open Discussion Session with conference speakers and participants, Organized by Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle Graduate Students
Everyone is welcome to attend and particpate!

Sponsored by The Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle.
Co-sponsors include the International Institute; the Institute for Research in the Humanities; Global Studies Program; Media, Performance and Identity in World Perspective Reseach Circle; and the MacArthur Consortium for International Perace and Cooperation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota.

Selected papers from the conference available here.