Migration and Narration LLP Erasmus Intensive Programme 2012

Lecture abstracts


 Recent Arrivals from the Middle Kingdom:
The Rise and Fall of Chinatown in Contemporary America
Russell Duncan, University of Copenhagen

Lecture description. The people of Chinese America are a part of the greater diaspora of bodies involved in a many-centuries-long migration from China to everywhere. In this sense, globalization with its border crossings, communications systems and transportation conveyances is nothing new. And yet, in the 21st Century, the migratory volume of Chinese students, ”parachute kids,” transnational business people, brides and husbands, adopted children, and undocumented workers is unprecedented. In 2012, the United States ranks fourth in the world in the total number of citizens with Chinese ancestry living inside its borders. This lecture focuses on the current contours of the newest “first generation” of American-born Chinese (ABCs) and Chinese-born Americans (CBAs). The old inner-city Chinatowns full of bachelor populations are being replaced by the growing ethnoburbs of family life and political power of “model minority” citizens, and others not so well praised.    
Seminar focus questions:
1. How do family members and stories shape the identity and destiny of the migrant after his arrival to a new country?
2. Yiyun Li says, “But the story I am telling you, it is not over yet.” What do stories tell us about the right time and factors necessary for narration? 
3.  In what ways does Zhao’s essay confront both the “perpetual foreigner” and the “model minority” sobriquets that are often used to describe Chinese Americans?
Essential reading:
Ha Jin, “The Bane of the Internet,” A Good Fall (NY: Pantheon, 2009). 2 pages
Yiyun Li, “What Has This To Do With Me?” A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (London: Perennial, 2005), 8 pages.
Xiaojian Zhao, “Contemporary Chinese American Population,” The New Chinese America: Class, Economy, and Social Hierarchy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010),   27 pages.
Essential viewing: (film show)
Golden Venture: A Journey into America’s Immigration Nightmare  (Peter Cohn, director; Tim Robbins, narrator. Documentary: “” (Hillcrest Films, 70 minutes).
Synopsis: In June 1993, the ship Golden Venture ran aground in sight of the Statue of Liberty and New York skyline. There were 300 undocumented Chinese immigrants aboard. Their varied narratives of death, imprisonment, deportations, refugee status, and acceptance as American citizens tells an important story about migration and narration.
Russell Duncan is professor of history in the Institute for English, Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has university degrees in Political Science (BS), Sociology (MS), and History (MA and PhD). He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Where Death and Glory Meet; Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune; Freedom’s Shore; Entrepreneur for Equality; Contemporary America (with Joe Goddard); Transnational America (ed. with Clara Juncker); Trading Cultures (ed. with Clara Juncker); and First Person Past: American Biographies, 2 vols (ed. with Marian Morten). From 2006 to 2011, he held teaching and research positions and lectured at two dozen universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. He is currently writing a monthly column, “The Eagle and the Dragon,” for the Chinese literary and historical periodical 美文(“Beautiful Essay”).  

Hybrid and Gendered Identities in the Contemporary African Diaspora
Mar Gallego, University of Huelva
Lecture description: within the framework of contemporary African diaspora studies, the formulation of hybrid and gendered identities occupies center stage. In this lecture I will attempt to compare the contemporary production of three seemingly quite different women writers, namely the poetry collections Unícroma (2007) and Tatuaje (2011) by Peruvian Mónica Carrillo and Costarrican Eulalia Bernard, respectively, and the latest novel by African American Toni Morrison A Mercy (2008). My initial contention is that the three of them explore the fluid reconfiguration of multilayered and dynamic identities, by focusing on the rewriting of their official historiographies, thus bringing to the forefront the significant impact of the legacy of slavery, as well as the crucial contributions of African descendants to the making of the Americas. 
Seminar focus questions:
1. In which ways does gender intersect with the notion of diaspora?
2. How does transculturation affect hybrid identities?
3. What are the specificities of gendered diaspora in the Black Atlantic?
Essential reading:
1. Toni Morrison. A Mercy. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008.
2. Friedman, Susan Stanford. “The ‘New Migration’: Clashes, Connections, and Diasporic Women’s Writing.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 3.1 (2009): 6-27.
3. De Loughrey, Elizabeth. “Gendering the Oceanic Voyage. Trespassing the (Black) Atlantic and Caribbean.” Thamyris 5.2 (1998): 205-211.
Additional reading:
  1. Gómez, Michael. Reversing Sail. A History of the African Diaspora. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  2. Gallego, Mar & Isabel Soto, eds. The Dialectics of Diasporas: Memory, Location and Gender. Universidad de Valencia: Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans, 2009.
Mar Gallego has taught American and African American Literatures at the University of Huelva (Spain) since 1996. Currently, she is the Director of the Migration Research Center at this University. Her major research interests are African American Studies and the African diaspora, with a special focus on women writers and gender issues. She has published a monograph entitled Passing Novels in the Harlem Renaissance (Hamburg: LitVerlag, 2003) and has co-edited several essay collections: Myth and Ritual in African American and Native American Literatures (2001), Contemporary Views on American Culture and Literature in the Great 60’s (2002), Razón de mujer: Género y discurso en el ensayo femenino  (2003), El legado plural de las mujeres (2005), Espacios de género (2005), Relatos de viajes, miradas de mujeres (2007), Género, Ciudadanía y Globalización (2009 and 2011) and The Dialectics of Diasporic Identification (2009).
Migration from the Perspective of Multilingualism and Gender
Erzsebet Barat
Lecture description: In the contemporary context of the enhanced flows of migration, speakers of various languages come to realize that not all forms of multilingualism are equally valuable. The ideological investments of “linguistic diversity” in the Global North, or more particularly in the European Union is of particular prominence when migration is motivated by economic needs and by professional advancement as a particular from of cultural tourism. Regarding the former, I shall address the global politics of reproductive labor as a form of feminization of international migration. I shall discuss examples, such as English speaking white nannies from the UK serving in wealthy upper-middle-class US families versus Latino women with (little English, if any) doing cleaning duties to demonstrate the difference across women comes to be articulated by/via languages spoken (Piller & Pavlenko, 2007). Regarding the second tendency, I shall discuss the intersection of intimate relations and multilingualism. This phenomenon is usually referred to as discourse of language desire (Piller &Takahashi 2006), where language is not only a “manes to talk about” desire but is a constitutive element of desire itself. I shall discuss in this regard how language comes to be seen as glamorous means of reinventing ones womanhood or manhood.

Seminar focus questions:
1. How does the meaning of ‘woman’/womanhood’ and ‘man’/’manhood’ come to be articulated? What are the (il)legitimate meanings of ‘woman’ /’man’ – if any at all?
2. What are the particular groups of (which) people able to do with /through what languages in a given moment?
3. What ideologies of gender/language shape/inform the meaning of migration? For instance: How do normativity of heterosexuality/femininity and monolingualism, or equity of language varieties, shared linguistic norms come to be intersected? 
4. How do you see the ERASMUS programs you have experienced in relation to “language desire”?
Essential reading:
(1) Piller, I. & Pavlenko, A. 2007. Globalization, Gender and Multilingualism. In Laurenz Volkmann & Helene Decke-Cornill (Eds.), Gender Studies and Foreign Language Teaching. Tübingen: Narr, pp. 15-30. Also available as a pdf file at:
(2) Piller, I. & Takahashi, K. 2006. A passion for English: Desire and the language market. In: Aneta Pavlenko (ed.). Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience,Expression, and Representation . Clevedon : Multilingual Matters . 59 – 83. Also available as pdf file at:

Additional reading:
Piller, I. 2012. “Intercultural Communication: An Overview.” In: The Handbook of Intercultural Discourse and Communication. Ed by Christina Bratt Paulston, Scott F. Kiesling, Elizabeth S. Rangel. Wiley-Blackwell; pp. 3-18. Availbale as pdf file at:
Erzsébet Barát is an associate professor at Department of English, University of Szeged and a visiting professor at CEU since 2000. She holds a PhD in Linguistics, from Lancaster University, UK. She is director of the ‘Gender through literatures and cultures in English’ Track in the English Studies MA. Her research interests include feminist critical theory, relational models of identity, the relationship between language, power and ideology, the intersection of feminist and queer scholarship. She is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Hungarian e-journal, TNTeF: Interdisciplinary Electronic Journal of Gender Studies ( launched and has organized the annual gender studies conference in Szeged since 2005. For her publications visit

Looking Back: Nostalgia in representations of exile
Malin Lidström Brock, Högskolan Dalarna, Falun 
Lecture description: This lecture will look at different kinds of nostalgia in literature and film with an exile theme. Although nostalgia may be experienced as personal, it is also a collective experience, which merges personal memory with the memory of groups and nations. Through an exploration of the so-called “Yugo-nostalgia” in the works by author Dubravka Ugrasic and film maker Emir Kusturica, the focus will lie on two kinds of nostalgia: the restorative kind, which deals with the collective rebuilding of an imaginary past, and reflective nostalgia, which acknowledges and embraces the imperfections of memory.
Seminar focus questions:
1. Boym differentiates between two types of nostalgia: restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. Discuss the differences and the similarities between these two types of nostalgia and try to come up with examples from your own life and/or from the world around you. Why does Boym consider one type of nostalgia potentially dangerous and the other potentially incurable?
2. After reading the extract from Dubravka Ugresic’s novel The Ministry of Pain, what type of nostalgia do you think the novel communicates/portrays? What seems to be the purpose of this nostalgia and what does it say about the situation of the people who indulge in/suffer from it in the novel?
3. Underground has been both praised as a masterwork and dismissed as “Yugo-nostalgic” and idealistic. Sean Homer highlights the film’s attitude(s) towards memory, history and film-making. What in the film could be considered nostalgic? After having read Sean Homer’s article on the film, what are your own thoughts on the nostalgia in the film? Do you agree or disagree with Homer’s analysis?
Essential reading:
Svetlana Boym’s “Reflective Nostalgia: Conspiracies and Return to Origins” and “Restorative Nostalgia: Virtual Reality and Collective Memory” (from Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 2002) (available as pdf)
Sean Homer’s “Retrieving Emir Kusturica’s Underground” (from Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, Number 51, spring 2009, (available as pdf)


Essential viewing: (afternoon film show)
Emir Kusturica’s film Underground (1995)
Malin Lidström Brockis newly appointed Senior Lecturer of English at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. She was previously Lecturer of English as Dalarna University, Sweden (2011-2012). She obtained her D.Phil. from Oxford University, United Kingdom, for an analysis of biographies of contemporary feminists. Her scholarly work is mainly concerned with contemporary American Literature, Transatlantic Studies, Popular Culture and Feminism. She has recently published an essay on transculturalism in the works of Philip Roth and Percival Everett, in Transculturality and Literature: Redefinitions of Identity in Contemporary Literature, to be published by Rodopi in 2012, and an essay on food in American women’s memoirs of Paris for Writers in Europe: 1850 to the Present, ed. Ferda Asya, to be published in 2013. She has also co-edited an essay collection on Finnish author and artist Tove Jansson.

Why the EU needs migration
Gerard McCann, St Mary's College, Queen's University, Belfast.

Lecture description: this lecture will look at the manner in which the European Union’s member states have managed migration since the establishment of the Union. It will survey the impact that the free flow of people has had on the process of European integration and comment on the influence that this has had on the countries involved. It will assess the problems of defining migration and examine the way in which labour flows in particular have benefited the economic development of the European Union itself. It will conclude by addressing some of the current complications in the transnational movement of people both within the Union itself and from ‘third country’ migration.

Seminar focus questions:
1. Using student’s national examples, discuss how transnational migration assists in the process of European integration.
2. Assess the ways in which migration helps in the development of a regional economy.
3. Debate the problems of irregular migration from outside the European Union.

Essential reading:
Sumption, Madeleine (May 2009) Social Networks and Polish Immigration to the UK, IPPR, London.

Kaunert, Christian (2009) ‘Liberty versus Security? EU Asylum Policy and the European Commission’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, 5 (2), pp.148-170. University of Salford, UACES published.

Carey, Sean and Andrew Geddes (2010) ‘Less Is More: Immigration and European Integration at the 2010 General Election’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 63 No. 4, pp.849–865.

Gerard McCann is a Senior Lecturer in European Studies at St Mary’s College, Queen’s University, Belfast. He is the UK and Ireland coordinator of the EU’s ‘Intercultural Dialogue and Linguistic Diversity (Moblang)’ project and Academic Manager of the Northern Ireland-Africa Universities’ Knowledge Transfer Initiative. Recent books have included Ireland’s Economic History (2011), Issues in Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011) and From the Local to the Global (2009). He is an adviser to the European Parliament on international cooperation policy.

 Narratives of Hungarian cultural identity: Glenn Patterson's Number 5
Andrea Balogh, Szegedi Tudományegyetem 

Lecture description: This lecture considers Glenn Patterson’s Number 5 (2003) as a community biography. In particular it discusses the ways in which Patterson’s novel reconfigures the received socio-cultural identity of Northern Ireland by ‘integrating’ a 1956 Hungarian political exile into its imagined suburban community of Belfast. In doing so Number 5 creates the tragic figure of the Irish community history as a victim of terrorism. Focussing on the cultural conflict between the Hungarian character and his Irish neighbour, I contend that Patterson opens up a space within which to re-negotiating the postcolonial self-definition of Ireland.I also consider how this account represents the refusal and the recognition of cultural differences in terms of Cold-War European history, and in terms of political distinctions between the West and Eastern Europe.

 Seminar focus questions:

1, In her article, ‘post-colonial vs. European,’ Edna Longley suggests that we may draw an analogy between Irish and Hungarian historical experiences. Does Patterson’s story reinforce this assumption? In your view, does the Cold War West-Eastern Europe comparative European context challenge the post-colonial Irish self-image?If yes/no why and how?

2, Patterson’s narrative outlines an Irish-Hungarian relational identity formation.  What stereotypical cultural images of the West vs. Eastern Europe does Patterson deploy in depicting the cultural conflict between McGovern and Hideg? How does Patterson reassert and/or subvert the East-West slope stereotypes?

3, Please find at least one more example of a narrative (short story, novel, film, photograph, etc.) which is engaged in the examination of the cultural differences or similarities between the West and Eastern Europe (or specific WE and EE countries) . Please prepare a short (c. 3- minute) presentation of your example.

Essential reading:
Longley, Edna (2000) ‘Postcolonial versus European (and Post-ukanian) Frameworks for Irish Literature.’The Irish Review, winter/spring 1999-2000, 25:75-94.

Melegh, Attila (2006) ‘I am suspicious of myself. East-West narratives at the turn of the millennium.’On the East-West Slope: Globalization, nationalism, racism and discourses on Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 127-88.

Patterson, Glenn (2003)‘McGovern.’ Number 5. London: Hamish Hamilton, 73-117.

Andrea P. Balogh is an assistant professor at Department of English, University of Szeged, Hungary and a PhD candidate in literature at KatholiekeUniversiteit Leuven, Belgium.  Her research interests include theories and politics of authorship in relation to contemporary British and Irish cultures, constructions of Eastern European identities and gender studies. She is the review editor of the Hungarian e-journal, TNTeF: Interdisciplinary Electronic Journal of Gender Studies ( course-related publicationsinclude an essay on the sub-versions of Europe in Brian Friel’sFathers and Sons in Sub-versions: Trans-national Readings of Modern Irish Literature (Rodopi, 2010) and an essay on the trope of exile, nationalism, class and gender in Eavan Boland’s autobiography in She’s Leaving Home: Women’s Writing in English in a European Context (Peter Lang, 2011).  She is the co-editor of Queer Visibility in Post-socialist Cultures(Intellect, forthcoming 2012 Winter).


“British” fictions of the 1990s: Narrating and Counter-Narrating Migration
Stefan Alexander Eick, University of Bamberg

Lecture description: This lecture traces the literary, cultural, and political narratives pertaining to migration in the British 1990s, considering both the perspective of “migrants”, and the discourses arising in reaction to a perceived "Britain under threat". It will be argued that both narratives stem from similar insecurities, but that "the British" managed to at least temporally transform these anxieties into the "success story" of "Cool Britannia". Part of the lecture is to look at how/for how long this was accomplished.

Seminar focus questions:
1) According to David P. Christopher, “Afternoon Raag (1993), set in Oxford, [is] about the sense of dislocation experienced by a young Indian who has come to study in the ancient seat of learning” (British Culture: An Introduction, p. 82). What traces of dislocation, outsiderdom and tradition can you find in the assigned reading? Do you think his account is representative for the experience of migrants and people with a migratory background in the British 1980s and 1990s?
2) This issue of Select Magazine is usually regarded as one of the key founding moments in the story of “Britpop”, the musical “movement” that would later enter the hype of “Cool Britannia”. Consider the following three questions when discussing the article: what are the elements that make this a “counter-narrative” to migration? What version of Englishness/Britishness is being constructed? How are insecurities and bad points being turned into something positive? Are you convinced by the parallels/differences between the narratives and counter-narratives of migration that have been set up in the lecture?
3) Julian Barnes’s novel is a narrative about the construction of individual and collective narratives and identities. How would you interpret the title of the book? Can you find any traces of identity construction and artificial “essentialising” in the extracted passages, and are there any problems attached to this?
Essential readings:
Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag (1993). pp. 188-191; pp. 222-236
Select Magazine (April 1993). pp. 60-71
Julian Barnes, England, England (1998). pp. 30-40, 44-48, 56-63, 83-86, 98-103, 178-184, 232-238; 239-266 (optional)
Essential viewing:
Ae Fond Kiss (Ken Loach, 2004) (film show)

Stefan Alexander Eick obtained his first two degrees at the Universities of Glasgow and St Andrews. He currently is as teaching assistant and doctoral student in the Department of British Culture at the University of Bamberg, where he is also in the process of completing a teaching degree in English and History. His academic interests are recent British culture, representations in Anglo-German discourse, and various topics in the History and Philosophy of Art and Literature (e.g. Pre-Raphaelites, Aestheticism, Modernity/Postmodernity, Beauty).

Current Representations of Latinos in US Entertainment and News Media
Linda Godbold Kean, East Carolina University
Lecture description: In lecture will explore the stories of Latino immigrants in the US as told in the US media over the last 20 years. First, we will review how Latinos and Latino related issues have been covered in the news media. Secondly, we will investigate television entertainment portrayals of Latinos. We will focus on Cultivation Theory as the basis for our understanding of this content. In the smaller discussion section, we will also analyze specific shows, Ugly Betty and Modern Family, for their portrayals of Latinos, culture and family. Finally, we will delve into the world of children’s television programming and discuss how this area seems to be the most progressive in terms of its quality and quantity of Latino representations.
Seminar focus questions:
How are Latinos portrayed in the US media?
How accurate are these images?
How might theses images affect perceptions attitudes, and behaviors of the viewer?
How might one mitigate these effects?
Can our conclusions here be applied to other racial, ethnic or gender groups? Why or Why not?
Essential readings:
Gerbner, George, 1998 “Cultivation Analysis: An Overview—Scholarly Milestones Essay”, Mass Communication & Society 1(3/4): 175-194.
Oulette, Laurie 1997 Media Education Foundation Study Guide. “Gerbner Series.” Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation.
Essential viewing:
Modern Family, Dora the Explorer, Ugly Betty (please watch some episodes in advance)
Linda Kean is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Communication at East Carolina University. Her area of expertise is mass media effects. Dr. Kean has published a number of articles looking at the content of media, television in particular, and how it might affect individual’s perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. A focus of her research involves examining issues related to health such as sexuality, alcohol consumption, and obesity.
Borderless people
Anna Lubecka, Jagiellonian University  
Lecture description: This lecture understands the key term "borderless people" as both the refugees and the people who know no borders to help them. It thus addresses two questions: firstly, the legal action undertaken by an international community and UN high commissioners like Fridjtjof Nansen to reduce the phenomenon of borderlessness and statelessness as well as individuals and local communities which have to recognize their obligations towards those who, forced to cross all kinds of borders, geographical, physical as well as mental and socio-cultural, desperately seek for a new life in security and dignity. Secondly, the change in the perception of borderless people who should not be treated as a problem but rather as an opportunity to break the limitations – cultural, economic (old Europe is faced with economic and demographic problems), intellectual - of host societies. 
Seminar focus questions:
1. Strangeness and borderlessness – how are these two terms related? Are they stigmas or opportunities? For whom and under what conditions.
2. Are human rights universal? Does the context of borderlessness challenge the universality of human rights? If yes why and how.
3. According to the Sufi (the mystics of Islam) philosophy “You must focus on the strangers you meet and try to understand them. The more you understand a stranger and the greater is your knowledge of yourself, the more power you will have. […] “You must cultivate isti’dad, the state of readiness.” and “The most baggage carried by strangers is their difference. And if you focus on the divergent and the dissimilar, you get ‘flashes’.” Does the philosophy apply to borderless people?
Essential reading:
1. Ryszard Kapuściński, Encountering the other: the challenge for the 21st century,
2. Moulid Iftin Hujale, ‘A refugee's story’ (Kenya-Somalia)
Essential viewing:
1. Film El Norte. (dir. Gregory Nava, 1983.)
 Available in sections on You Tube beginning with:
El Norte features Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando, in their first film roles, as two indigenous youths who flee Guatemalain the early 1980s due to ethnic and political persecution. They head north and travel through Mexico to the United States, arriving in Los Angeles, California, after an arduous journey.
Anna Lubecka is Professor at the Institute of Public Affairs at Jagiellonian University, Krakow Poland. Cross-cultural communication, post-modern identity, minority – traditional and “new” and their participation in public discourse delineate the field of her academic research and interests. Her publications include Requests, invitations, apologies and compliments in American English and Polish: a cross-cultural perspective, (2001)and Cultural identity of Bergitka Roma (2005).

Children on the move: Transcultural Identities in Childhood Migrations
Carly McLaughlin, Dalarna
Lecture description: This lecture deals with the negotiations of cultural identity entered into by children in a migration context. Using insights from recent developments in child anthropology, sociology and migration studies, the lecture acknowledges child migrants as agents of their own transcultural identity. In the latter part of the lecture, it will be considered how these developments might impact upon literary approaches to migration. It is argued that child-specific paradigms of cultural identity serve to raise the visibility of children in narratives of migration, allowing them to be seen as migrants in their own right.
Seminar focus questions:
1. Think about how children are generally perceived in society and represented in the media and the assumptions that are made about what constitutes a normal and happy childhood. How might these have affected the perception and representation of child migrants?
2. Why might it be important to consider the specificity of children’s experiences of migration? Why do you think this might have been neglected, until recently?
3. Consider the different kinds of cultural identity models which have circulated across different disciplines in the past fifty years to describe new identities in the context of migration, for example, hyphenated identities (Turkish-German; Chinese-American), hybridity etc. Are these terms still useful, and if so, why? Or does today’s increasingly transcultural world demand new paradigms of cultural identity?
Essential reading:
Cleave, Chris, The Other Hand (London: Sceptre, 2008), pp.1-13.
Knörr, Jacqueline (ed.), Childhood and Migration: From Experience to Agency (Bielefeld: transcript, 2005), pp.14-16.
Pollock, David C. and Ruth E. Van Reken, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (Nicholas Brealey, 2009), pp.27-35, essential: 32-35.
Dr Carly McLaughlin. Originally from England/Ireland, Carly McLaughlin teaches in the English Literature department at the University of Darlarna, Sweden, and is based in Berlin where she also works as a freelance translator and editor. Her current research focuses on those migrations which do not make national headlines and have been largely neglected in migration studies (existential migration, expatriates and their children etc.). As a literature scholar she is interested in those writers, for example Colm Tóbín, who explore what notions such as home and belonging mean in today’s highly mobile and culturally complex world.



From a State of Nations to a Nation State:
Migrations, borders and peoples
Chris Brighton, Krosno State College
Lecture description: Poland is a prime example of the migration of borders as the Commonwealth of 1569 was dissolved by three partitions, independence in 1918, and WWII. The multi-ethnic State of Nations was replaced by individual homogeneous nation states. Over the course of two centuries the rise of nationalism led to a redrawing of borders and the splitting of communities who were now divided by an invisible line. In the post-1945 era, the desire for homogeneous nations led to the displacement and forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people. The migration of these groups, such as the Lemk is south-eastern Poland, was not voluntary, but forced. Moreover, the migration of borders and the resettlement of communities had an impact on the national image creating a homogenous ethnic nation state. The issues which are discussed in the lecture cover the impact of the migration of borders for communities and the meaning of borders in the modern political concept of global migration.

Chris Brighton is a lecturer in English at Krosno State College. He is a specialist in Intercultural Communication. His recent doctoral thesis examined socio-cultural values and the impact on the development of Intercultural Communication Competence of Polish learners of English. He has lived and worked in Poland since 1997.

Sounds of Migration in inter-war America
Jack Lala III, Krosno State College

Lecture description: Part academic analysis and part personal journey, this presentation sets out to understand the ‘sounds of migration’, to appreciate the music that accompanied two distinct yet connected groups of American migrants during the interwar years. First, I will discuss the African-American ‘Great Migration’. The 1920s saw a huge mobilization of Black southerners as they set out to northern cities, as they left the degradation and segregation of the Jim Crow south. This movement was accompanied by the tunes of the Delta blues, and by the subsequent integration of that sound into the Jazz Age. Second, I will consider the ‘Oakies’ during the dust-bowl depression of the 1930s. The Oakie migration to the seeming bountiful utopia of the American West was accompanied by American folk music. One musician, Woody Guthrie, captured the politics, sounds and emotions of that movement. His legacy was the folk revival and protest music of the 1960s.

Jack Lala is a senior lecturer at PWSZ w Krosnie where he teaches classes in American History and Culture. He has lived in Krosno, Poland for ten years, and during that time has taught also taught at PWSZ w Tarnowie,  Sefarik University in Kosice, Slovakia and Presov University in Presov, Slovakia.  He has an M.A in American History from Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, and a B.A in American History from the University of Texas at Austin. His specialty area is American Social and Cultural History of the 20th Century with particular interests in Humor, Radio, Television and Film studies.

Looking for America:
Autobiographical Travel Narratives from the 20th and 21st Centuries
Clara Juncker (special lecturer) University of Southern Denmark
Lecture description: Immigrants, expatriates, activists and other political dissenters share a desire to find the America of their dreams or nightmares, the homeland that used to be or could be. This lecture will follow in the tracks of those looking for America, in many different contexts: In Krakow and on boats from the Old World to the New, in Paris cafés, at the University of Tehran, and in the languages of hyphenated Americans. The lecture will draw on texts such as Eva Hoffmann’s Lost in Translation, Azar Nafisi’s Teaching Lolita in Tehran, and Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days.
Visiting the Poor:
Crossing Lines of Race and Class in US Depression Narratives (guest presentation)
Clara Juncker (guest lecturer) University of Southern Denmark
Presentations description: during the Great Depression, the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sent writers and photographers to record the lives and communities of America’s dispossessed. James Agee and Walker Evans visited sharecroppers in rural Alabama and recorded their experiences in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, while Dorothea Lange and John Steinbeck zoomed in on the farmers who lost their land to the Dust Bowl and sought new lives in California. Others, like Richard Wright in Uncle Tom’s Children and Jacob Lawrence in his Migration series, followed the African American exodus from the rural South and the plight among these new arrivals in the urban North. These travels across class and racial boundaries resulted in complex negotiations, which this lecture will explore though texts, photography, and paintings.
Clara Junker is Associate Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Southern Denmark. She has published widely both in the United States and in Europe within the fields of 19th- and 20th-century American Literature, African American Studies, Southern Literature, Cultural Studies, Transnational Studies, and literary theory. Her books include Trading Cultures: Nationalism and Globalization in American Studies (with Russell Duncan 2002), Through Random Doors We Wandered: Women Writing the South (2002), Transnational America: Contours of Modern U.S. Culture (with Russell Duncan, 2004), and Circling Marilyn: Text, Body Performance (2010). 
Golden Venture: A Journey into America’s Immigration Nightmare
(Film screening)
Narratives on Migration and Security:
Latin-American Undocumented Migration to the United States
Raúl Marroquin, ENGEROM, University of Copenhagen
Lecture description: The lecture focuses on narratives of undocumented Latin American migration to the United States, and in particular the ways in which they are sees as a threat to US national security. To this end press releases, magazine and academic articles are used to explore the discursive strategies of public debate as well as the ‘making’ of Latin American undocumented migrants as enemies of the state.
Seminar focus questions.
1) What is ‘the rhetoric of existential threat’?
2) Is the Hispanic Challenge a rhetorical discourse of existential threat? If so, what might be the consequences for undocumented Latin-Americans migrants in the United States?
3) According to Geraldo Rivera, what have the consequences been? Are they emergency measures?
Essential reading / listening:
1. Rivera, Geraldo. HISPANIC. Why Americans Fear Hispanic in the USA. Review by Jordan Haward, 2008.
2. Huntington, Samuel. The Hispanic Challenge. Foreign Policy. March-April, 2004. Read the text carefully paying attention to the structure and main arguments of the text.
3. Buzan, Barry; Weaver, Ole; De Wilde, Jaap. Security New Framework for Analysis.1998
Try to find the three structural elements of the discourse of securitization in the text The Hispanic Challenge
3. C. Williams, Michael. Words, Images and Enemies. Securitization and International Politics.2003 in order to explain the logic of the text Security New Framework for Analysis.
4. An interview to Samuel Huntington:
Raúl Marroquin Rosales is a lawyer with a masters degree in criminal law.  He is a PhD Student at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies (ENGEROM), affiliated to the Programme in Transnational and Migration Studies and member of the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at the University of Copenhagen. He is currently visiting scholar at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in Mexico, he has worked for many years in public and non-governmental human rights institutions in Mexico, Guatemala, Denmark among others. His is interested in social issues as Migration, Criminality, Security and Human Rights.
Migrating Jokes
Władysław Chłopicki, Jagiellonian University
Lecture description:
Ae Fond Kiss... 
(Film screening)
(Dir., Ken Loach, 2004)

Yussell and Zoshia: Emigrating just Under the Wire.
Brian Steinberg, Westfield State University

This lecture deals with  the tightening of US immigration law from the perspective of two immigrants, one from Polish Vilno in 1905 and the other from the Rzeszow region of Poland in 1986.  In both cases, the constant tightening of US immigration laws would have prevented both of them from attaining legal status in the United States if they had just applied a dozen years later.  The lecture would include discussion of the two immigrant's reasons for emigrating, their encounter with legal authorities in the process, and their adjustment to living in the United States.
Brian Steinberg received his Ph.D. from New York University and M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  He was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Trainee Fellowship for 3 years and a National Science Foundation Grant for research at the University of Michigan Social Science Research Center.  He conducted his PhD field research in Italy.  He spent a year of special graduate study at MIT.  His specialties are comparative government and international relations, and he directs the award-winning Westfield State International Relations Club.  His present research is Left Center Coalitions in Italy and South Africa.


Trafficking in popular culture: sexual and gender abuse in popular texts.
Beatriz Domínguez García. (
This lecture will try to look at the way popular narrative forms are dealing with the issue of trafficking in recent years. I will concentrate on the analysis of Kate Atkinson’s novel One Good Turn (2006), Pierre Morel’s movie Taken (2008) and a documentary by Mabel Lozano entitled Voces which revolve around the concept of trafficking and prostitution. The texts by Atkinson and Morel are written within the genre of popular crime, whereas Lozano’s uses the documentary to bring forward personal testimonies of victims of trafficking and prostitution. A cross-analysis of these three texts will be used to illustrate how the issue of trafficking is seen and analyzed in popular cultural forms. Other examples, the odd-episode in television dramas such as Criminal Minds, Bones or even The Closer, will be set as examples of how this issue is being tackled with within western societies. The use of cultural products will be compared to other documentary narratives, which tackle with this issue from a more scientific perspective.


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