Migrant Knowledge Notes 4
The latest installment of links to research, events, and other news at the intersection of migration and knowledge.
The Trade-Off Called Love? Knowledge about Love, Migration, and Borders
Miriam Gutekunst reflects on the migrant knowledge revealed in Alex Pitstra's film about his complicated transnational family relationships, Bezness as Usual. (1,736 words)
Of Dodos, Cane, and Migrants: Networking Migrant Knowledge between Mauritius and Hawai’i in the 1860s
Nicholas B. Miller argues, "Reconstituting the networks of the complex and mobile individuals through which indenture globally spread as a legal form of labor can sharpen our understanding of how migration practices and policies became universalized over the course of the nineteenth century, extending well beyond the framework of individual empires." (1,745 words)
Migration, Creativity, and the Construction of Knowledge
Benjamin Hein reflects on the nature of knowledge and knowledge formation in connection with a German migrant to North America in the mid-nineteenth century. What did it mean that this man, Christian Bönsel, could brag that he had been able to "learn and see how it goes in the world"? (1,455 words)
Migrant Knowledge Notes 3
Call: Migration and Racism in the United States and Germany in the Twentieth Century
- Workshop, April 23–24, 2020, German Historical Institute Washington (GHI), Washington, DC
- CFP Deadline: June 15, 2019
Program: In Global Transit: Forced Migration of Jews and other Refugees (1940s–1960s)
- May 20–22, 2019, Pacific Regional Office of GHI Washington and the MAGNES Collection of Jewish Art and Life, both at the University of California, Berkeley
Crowdsourced Project: German Heritage in Letters
- Digital project to find and share historic German-American correspondence
- Managed by GHI Washington
Following the Archives: Migrating Documents and their Changing Meanings
Nick Underwood reflects on how files he had expected to find in Paris for his study of Franco-Yiddishness during the interwar period had, in fact, migrated elsewhere. He uses his surprise to discuss the part played by rescued or stolen documents in "the migratory history of knowledge and knowledge-making." (2,015 words)
Migrant Knowledge Notes 2
Call for Summer School Applications: Challenging the Sites of Knowledge: Medial and Pluri-Medial Configurations and Transformations
- September 3–7, 2019, Graduate School of the Humanities, Universität Bern
- Deadline: April 30, 2019
Grant in Aid Awards for Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) at the University of Minnesota
- Deadline: June 1, 2019
Call for Papers: Extraction, Expropriation, Erasure? Knowledge Production in International Relations. Millenium: Journal of International Studies
- October 19–20, 2019, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
- Deadline: June 30, 2019
A Little Advice: Syrian American Advice Booklets as Knowledge Production
Stacy D. Farenthold discusses the significance of a 1909 Syrian American advice book for Ottoman subjects planning to emigrate to the United States. The Arabic-language text included knowledge about the would-be immigrants' specific rights in America and the important self-fashioning necessary for dealing with U.S. authorities. (1,578 words)
Marginal Knowledge: The Transnational Practices of Latin American Mennonites
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen examines the personal geographies of some Mennonites in Latin America who "have exercised a paradoxical degree of mobility" despite their well-known horse-and-buggy appearance. (2,117 words)
Migrant Knowledge Notes 1
Call Deadline: March 31, 2019, for Material Cultures in Migration (conference), University of Birmingham, June 21, 2019.
Call Deadline: April 20, 2019, for Imagining Migration, Knowing Migration: Intermedial Perspectives (conference), Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, March 19–21, 2020.
Telling History from a Migration Perspective is Not an Add-On
Francesca Falk argues that history must be reconceptualized to include migrants not as extras in a society's history but as constitutive of that society. (2,567 words)
Migrant Knowledge: An Entangled Object of Research
Andrea Westermann points to manifold manifestations of migrant knowledge and reflects on how studying it can open fruitful avenues of historical research. (1,531 words)