Shifting Selves: The Complexities of Identity in Displacement
Description
Ghassan Kanafani said in his book Return to Haifa, “I have lost my identity in exile, and my memories have become my homeland. I live in an endless longing,” while Youssef Idris said in his book The Walls: “When you leave your homeland, you feel that you have lost something greater than the place; you have lost a part of yourself, and you become a being without features."
These quotes serve as a powerful entry point into a deeper exploration of displacement, language, and identity. While these writers articulate the profound sense of loss experienced in exile, they also invite us to consider how literary texts—both in their original languages and in translation—provide a means for individuals to navigate these feelings. The act of writing about loss becomes a vital tool for those who have left their homelands, allowing them to maintain connections to their past while simultaneously crafting new versions of themselves. This intersection of language and identity is crucial; the choice to write in Arabic, for instance, reflects a longing to preserve cultural heritage, whereas the translation of these works into English facilitates a broader dialogue about these experiences. By examining how writers utilize literature to negotiate their identities, we uncover the intricate ways language can both hold onto and fracture connections with homeland, culture, and memory. The complexities of migration and globalization challenge individuals to reconcile their past selves with their present realities, and literature serves as a crucial medium through which this negotiation unfolds.
This seminar seeks to explore related questions about the emotional and psychological as well as the cultural and linguistic ramifications of displacement. It welcomes proposals for papers that explore a range of language traditions and that investigate the complexities and contradictions of how literary texts provide space to navigate loss and preserve, contest, or reconstruct identities.
Schedule
Papers
Speaker Bio
Rima Abdallah is an English nstructor at MTSU in Tennessee teaching Research, Expository writing and English language learners courses. She holds two master's degrees in German language and in English literature. Her MA thesis was on post colonial literature. Also, Rima speaks Arabic , German, English and Chinese. Also, she is the research communicator in the business college at MTSU.
Speaker Bio
Lane Glisson is a Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. Her book Disappearance and Candor in Contemporary Women's Writing will be published by Bloomsbury on Dec. 11, 2025. Her chapter "Tearing Away and Rebuilding from the Fragments: The Work of Meena Alexander," in the anthology Women Representing Women: A Transnational Perspective, edited by Simona Wright and Lidia Radi, is forthcoming from Vernon Press.
Speaker Bio
Aliyah Alsaber is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud University. Her research explores the aesthetics and politics of nostalgia in the context of mass migration, focusing on contemporary Arabic literature and Arab minority cultural production. Drawing on Decolonial and Postcolonial Studies, she examines displacement, hauntology, and the poetics of un-be-longing, developing a framework for Arab diasporic literary and cinematic texts.
Speaker Bio
Priscilla Archibald is a Professor of Spanish at Roosevelt University. She received a MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from Stanford University. Archibald is the author of "Imagining Modernity in the Andes," and has worked and published in the fields of Andean Studies and American Hemispheric Studies. She has taught and conducted research about the issue of immigration and displacement for over a decade.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Laura White is Professor of English and affiliate faculty with the Africana Studies program and Women's and Gender Studies program at Middle Tennessee State University.
Speaker Bio
She Shiyuan is a senior Ph.D. student majoring in English Literature at Shanghai International Studies University, focusing on Canadian literature. Her research interests include the politics of emotion, literary geography, and identity construction. Her recently published work examines the metaphor of food and identity anxiety in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.
Speaker Bio
I am a second-year PhD student in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at UW Seattle. I am interested in comparative studies of modern Middle Eastern and Asian literature. More specifically, my research includes 20th-century Turkish and Sinophone writings of exile, diaspora, modernization and social transformation, asking how people change understandings of "homeland" and find different ways of homecoming amid insecure periods and how these cases may challenge certain assumptions in world literature.
Speaker Bio
I am a second-year PhD student in Russian History at the University of Toronto. My research interests encompass nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries Russian intellectual and political cultures, especially as conceived in migration and exile. I am particularly interested in the formation of diasporic narratives among Russian migrants and the ways in which these narratives interacted with competing cultural and political claims amongst different groups of migrants.