Exodus and Exile: Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers 1750–1850 (Day 1)

—conference organized by Josephine McDonagh (University of Chicago), Jonathan Sachs (Concordia University), and Sarah Tindal Kareem (UCLA)

Co-sponsored by Interacting with Print

 

 

 

 

 

During the so-called Romantic century, 1750–1850, the flow of people across national borders fed an emergent literature of internal alienation, fostered new demographic preoccupations in contemporary historiography, underwrote new theories of political justice, and spurred the reformulation of religious identity, particularly in Britain.  In this context, the figure of the migrant comes to hold a complex and conflicted place within the regimes of western modernity as both constitutive of societies, and as a threat to national integrity. How might collective examination of migration in this period by an interdisciplinary group of scholars help us to understand precariousness and vulnerability as a lived condition, one yielding both deeper historical understanding and new insight into the mass population movements of our present moment? This conference will bring together specialists in different fields, including philosophers, political theorists, historians, and scholars of literature, art, music, law and religion, to explore the meanings of transnational migration in history and culture from multidisciplinary and global perspectives, and to understand their legacies in the contemporary world.

Speakers
Alan Bewell, University of Toronto
James Q. Davies, University of California, Berkeley
Stephanie DeGooyer, Harvard University
Malick W. Ghachem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David Kazanjian, University of Pennsylvania
Hagar Kotef, SOAS, University of London
Ourida Mostefai, Brown University
Kunal M. Parker, University of Miami School of Law
Charlotte Sussman, Duke University

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Program

9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration

10:00 a.m.
Helen Deutsch, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome

Jonathan Sachs, Concordia University, and Josephine McDonagh, University of Chicago
Opening Remarks 

10:15 a.m.

Session 1
Moderators: Demetra Kasimis, University of Chicago, and Anahid Nersessian, University of California, Los Angeles

Charlotte Sussmann, Duke University
“Dido and the Black Mediterranean”

11:00 a.m.

Malick W. Ghachem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“The Slaves’ Rebellion: Maroons and the Rise of the Plantation in Early Eighteenth-Century Haiti”

11:45 a.m.
Coffee Break

12:00 p.m.
Stephanie DeGooyer, Harvard University
“Fictional Belonging: Naturalization and Migration, 1710-1787”

12.45 p.m.
Discussion of Session 1

1:00 p.m.
Lunch

2:00 p.m.
Session 2
Moderators: Sarah Tindal Kareem, University of California, Los Angeles, and Margaret Russett, University of Southern California

Ourida Mostefai, Brown University
“From Refugee to Emigré: The Reinvention of the Exile in the Literature and the French Revolution”

2:45 p.m.
Alan Bewell, University of Toronto
“Mary Prince and Early Nineteenth-Century Urban Black Communities”

3:30 p.m.
Coffee Break

3:45 p.m.
James Q. Davies, University of California, Berkeley
“White Genius: Migrant Sounds in the Gulf of Guinea, ca. 1819”

4:30 p.m.
Discussion of Sessions 1 and 2

5:00 p.m.
Reception

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After booking Day 1 below please remember to also book your spot for Day 2.

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Image credit: Woodcut of Palatine refugees, from The State of the Palatines for Fifty Years Past to this Present Time (London, 1710). Clark Library Pamphlet Collection.