Exiles, Migrants, Refugees: World Literary Texts, World Historical Contexts

How do historical moments of forced migration and refuge impact our understanding of national and world literatures? How does an engagement with exilic and refugee figures broaden and deepen our comprehension of world literature? How does reading history and literature together enrich our understanding of aesthetic and political representations? These questions will serve as catalysts for our Masterclass. The aim of the seminar is threefold.

First, by engaging with conceptual histories of the terms «exiles,» «migrants,» and «refugees,» we will develop a differentiated understanding of «willful» and «forced» migrations. Second, by locating narratives of exiles, migrants, and refugees at the intersection of «world literature» and «global history»-two terms that have gained traction in the twenty-first century scholarship-we will locate fault lines of race, ethnicity, sexuality, language, and religion in histories of colonialism and globalization. Finally, we will begin to explore how global framework of literary and historical comparison can be cultivated with a focus on refuge and migration.