The forced movement of dispossessed peoples around European regions has been enriching cultures over centuries. How to deepen the cultural history of migration through the literary & visual arts and politics?
A research group of faculty and students is publishing a comparative volume that investigates this question. Migrants Shaping Europe, Past and Present: Multilingual Literatures, Social Cultures, Visual Arts, co-edited with Vincent Joos, takes up three test cases around Calais, Sicily/Lampedusa, and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta/Melilla in Morocco. It contributes one chapter of the early modern cultural history of migration, examining it in relation to the eventful migrations through these hotspots today. It engages with writers and artists responding to those migrating around these parts of Europe now. The collection is forthcoming with Manchester University Press in 2022.
Contributors: James Amelang (UAMadrid), Tenley Bick, Vincent Joos (Florida State) & Eric LeLeu (professional photographer), Akash Kumar ( University of California, Berkeley), Pedro Raposo (Academy of. Sciences), Raquel Salvatella de Prada, Anna Tybinko, Saskia Ziolkowski, and Helen Solterer (Duke).
The volume began with the work of a research group from the Depts. of Romance Studies and Art, Art History and Visual Studies and their experimental set of exhibitions at Duke (2018).
Image: Alán José, Elvira Vilches
