Writing Migration Through the Body

Workshop
11:30am - 1:00pm
RLL Commons (4th floor), Modern Languages Building

Lecture
4:30pm - 6:00pm
RLL Commons (4th floor), Modern Languages Building

Migration is embodied movement, and the effects of migration are felt bodily. Bodies also populate creative art and fiction responses to contemporary migration and provide an interpretative key for how we might think about the transnational experience of mobility. In this talk Dr. Bond will present her 2018 monograph "Writing Migration through the Body," which draws on a range of texts and visual art that link Italy to other sites of migration and diaspora. It argues that the individual bodies that move in contemporary migration flows are the primary agents through which the transcultural passages of images, emotions, ideas, memories – and also histories and possible futures – are enacted.

Emma Bond is Reader (Associate Professor) in Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of St Andrews, UK. She has published widely on border and migration literature ("Writing Migration through the Body," 2018; "Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative," 2015), and on Trieste and psychoanalysis ("Disrupted Narratives: Illness, Silence and Identity in Svevo, Pressburger and Morandini," 2012; "Freud and Italian Culture," 2009). Emma is founding co-Editor of the ‘Transnational Italian Cultures’ book series (Liverpool University Press) and founding section Editor for Comparative Literature for "Modern Languages Open." Her current book project is on "Re-Collecting Empire: Transnational Modes of Collecting, Curating and Display." Emma has held fellowships at the School of Advanced Study, London; Bogliasco Foundation, and the Wolfsonian-FIU. She was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for her outstanding contribution to the field of Languages and Literatures in 2019.

For interested graduate students: Please RSVP to Giulia Ricco (gricco@umich.edu) for a lunch workshop (January 13th, 11:30-1:00) with Dr. Emma Bond dedicated to rewriting colonial history from a female perspective, looking at works by Igiaba Scego, Nadifa Mohamed and Maaza Mengiste.

This is event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Department of Comparative Literature, Women's Studies Department, Center for European Studies, Program in International & Comparative Studies, and the LSA Dean's Office.