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Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation, 2023
Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of... more Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of fiction, drama and poetry; on wall paintings and vases, they cluster at protective altars and cling to statues of gods who seemingly look on. Yet the ancient evidence does not lend itself easily to exploring attitudes to refugees or asylum seekers. Hence, the question that begins this investiga-tion is, representation of whom? Through a focus on the Greco-Roman material of the Mediterra-nean region, drawing on select representations, such as the tragedies Medea and Suppliant Women, the historical failed plea of the Plataeans and pictorial imagery of supplication, the goal of the ex-ploration below is not to shape into existence an ancient refugee or asylum seeker experience. Ra-ther, it is to highlight the multiplicity of experiences within narratives of victimhood and the con-fines of such labels as refugee and asylum seeker. The absence of ancient representations of a ge-neric figure or group of the ‘displaced’, broadly defined, precludes any exceptionalising or ho-mogenising of people in such contexts. Remaining depictions are of named, recognisable protago-nists, whose stories are known. There is no ‘mass’ of refuge seekers, to whom a single set of rules could apply across time and space. Given these diverse stories of negotiation for refuge, another aim is to illustrate the ways such experience does not come to define the entirety of who a person is or encompass the complete life and its many layers. This paper addresses the challenges of rep-resentation that are exposed by, among others, thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Liisa Malkki and Gerawork Gizaw.
Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy, 2022
The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share k... more The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share knowledge, create together, and allow for chance encounters that lead to new ideas and innovation-relies on the ability to move....
Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present, 2023
This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers... more This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers from multiple disciplines. Seeking to provoke a discourse around displacement within and beyond the field of Humanities, it positions historical cases and debates, some reaching into the ancient past, within diverse geo-chronological contexts and current world urgencies. In adopting an innovative dialogic structure, between practitioners on the ground—from architects and urban planners to artists—and academics working across subject areas, the volume is a proposition to: remap priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines, critically analysing their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; and provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns about displacement. Ultimately, this volume aims to provoke future work and collaborations—hence, manifestos—not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research concerned with human mobility and the challenges confronting people who are out of place of rights, protection and belonging.
Epilogue: Writing of Connectivity at a Time of Isolation. In Jeremy Armstrong and Sheira Cohen (eds), Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy. Routledge, London (2022), 244-51., 2022
The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share k... more The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share knowledge, create together, and allow for chance encounters that lead to new ideas and innovation-relies on the ability to move. Yet, in our current moment in the 21 st century, chances for this kind of connectivity-as distinct from virtual connections through screens and other technological interfaces-have, all of a sudden, become a precious commodity. 1 It
Social Research 89, No. 1, 2022
Recent science studies literature has emphasised that knowledge is generated in transit and throu... more Recent science studies literature has emphasised that knowledge is generated in transit and through encounters. If this is true, knowledge production will depend on forms and dynamics of hosting and hospitality. Conversely, inhospitable environments prevent encounters and decrease possibilities for the building of knowledge. Using results from a research project on Carl Linnaeus’s Laplandic Journey (Iter lapponicum, 1732), we address the relationship between frameworks of hospitability and knowledge construction. Lapland, or Sápmi, was in the process of being colonized by the emerging Swedish nation state when Linnaeus travelled. While in later reports Linnaeus created an image of Sápmi as uninhabited and uncultivated, waiting to be explored and exploited, his journal of the journey documents numerous encounters with state and church officials as well as reindeer herders, fishermen, settler farmers, and women with medicinal knowledge, many of whom were Sámi, on whose expertise, guidance and hospitality he depended.
Displacement and the Humanities, 2021
To move towards an understanding of displacement from within, and the forms of its overcoming, th... more To move towards an understanding of displacement from within, and the forms of its overcoming, the following chapter brings into dialogue the ancient experience of wandering and the 21st century condition of permanent temporariness. It explores whether these are the same or different phenomena, and whether the latter is a uniquely modern experience. In particular, it is interested in the turning points that lead to the defiance of the condition and its regime. It traces modes of existence that subvert the liminal state and allow for possibilities of living beyond the present moment through returns and futures that are part of everyday practices, even if they are splintered. Such actions, it is argued, allow for the repositioning of the self in relation to the world, and thus the exposition of cracks within the status quo. The investigation confronts experiences that appear to be uniquely those of the present day—such as non-arrival and forced immobility. In its exploration it engages current responses to de-placement by those who have experience of the condition first hand. It is a dialogue between the work of such creators as the architects Petti and Hillal, the poets Qasmiyeh and Husseini, and the community builders of Dandara, with ancient discourses of the outcast that are found in Euripides’ Medea, the experience of Xenophon and such philosophers as Diogenes the Cynic. In so doing, it seeks to expose the way seemingly exceptional forms of politics and existence, instead, reveal themselves as society’s ‘systemic edge’.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
International Review of the Red Cross
This article aims at positioning the agency of the displaced within the longue durée, as it is ex... more This article aims at positioning the agency of the displaced within the longue durée, as it is exposed in contexts of hospitality and asylum, by articulating its key modes: contingent, willed and compelled. Using the ancient world as its starting point, the article exposes the duplicity in conceiving of the current condition of displacement as transient or exceptional. As such, it argues for the urgent need of a shift in the perception of displaced persons from that of impotent victims to potent agents, and to engage with the new forms of exceptional politics which their circumstances engender.
Migration and Society, 2018
This article provides a historical perspective to understand better whether hospitality persists ... more This article provides a historical perspective to understand better whether hospitality persists as a measure of society across contexts. Focusing on Homer and later Tragedians, it charts ancient literature’s deep interest in the tensions of balancing obligations to provide hospitality and asylum, and the responsibilities of well-being owed to host-citizens by their leaders. Such discourse appears central at key transformative moments, such as the Greek polis democracy of the fifth century BCE, hospitality becoming the marker between civic society and the international community, confronting the space between civil and human rights. At its center was the question of: Who is the host? The article goes on to question whether the seventeenth-century advent of the nation state was such a moment, and whether in the twenty-first century we observe a shift towards states’ treatment of their own subjects as primary in measuring society, with hospitality becoming the exception to be explained.
Historia Zeitschrift Fur Alte Geschichte Revue D Histoire Ancienne, 2007
Page 1. 1 De-Placement: Constructing and Mapping Place in Collaboration with Artists ElenaIsayev,... more Page 1. 1 De-Placement: Constructing and Mapping Place in Collaboration with Artists ElenaIsayev, University of Exeter, e.isayev@exeter.ac.uk Created: 30 April 2010. Word Count: 5500 (7400 including footnotes) (images included in separate document) ...
Historia, 2007
RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...
Cooley/A Companion to Roman Italy, 2016
Papers of the British School at Rome, 1999
The Journal of Roman Studies, 2004
World History, Connectivity and Material Culture, 2014
Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation, 2023
Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of... more Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of fiction, drama and poetry; on wall paintings and vases, they cluster at protective altars and cling to statues of gods who seemingly look on. Yet the ancient evidence does not lend itself easily to exploring attitudes to refugees or asylum seekers. Hence, the question that begins this investiga-tion is, representation of whom? Through a focus on the Greco-Roman material of the Mediterra-nean region, drawing on select representations, such as the tragedies Medea and Suppliant Women, the historical failed plea of the Plataeans and pictorial imagery of supplication, the goal of the ex-ploration below is not to shape into existence an ancient refugee or asylum seeker experience. Ra-ther, it is to highlight the multiplicity of experiences within narratives of victimhood and the con-fines of such labels as refugee and asylum seeker. The absence of ancient representations of a ge-neric figure or group of the ‘displaced’, broadly defined, precludes any exceptionalising or ho-mogenising of people in such contexts. Remaining depictions are of named, recognisable protago-nists, whose stories are known. There is no ‘mass’ of refuge seekers, to whom a single set of rules could apply across time and space. Given these diverse stories of negotiation for refuge, another aim is to illustrate the ways such experience does not come to define the entirety of who a person is or encompass the complete life and its many layers. This paper addresses the challenges of rep-resentation that are exposed by, among others, thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Liisa Malkki and Gerawork Gizaw.
Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy, 2022
The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share k... more The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share knowledge, create together, and allow for chance encounters that lead to new ideas and innovation-relies on the ability to move....
Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present, 2023
This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers... more This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers from multiple disciplines. Seeking to provoke a discourse around displacement within and beyond the field of Humanities, it positions historical cases and debates, some reaching into the ancient past, within diverse geo-chronological contexts and current world urgencies. In adopting an innovative dialogic structure, between practitioners on the ground—from architects and urban planners to artists—and academics working across subject areas, the volume is a proposition to: remap priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines, critically analysing their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; and provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns about displacement. Ultimately, this volume aims to provoke future work and collaborations—hence, manifestos—not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research concerned with human mobility and the challenges confronting people who are out of place of rights, protection and belonging.
Epilogue: Writing of Connectivity at a Time of Isolation. In Jeremy Armstrong and Sheira Cohen (eds), Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy. Routledge, London (2022), 244-51., 2022
The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share k... more The possibility of intersecting with people in the same physical space-to exchange goods, share knowledge, create together, and allow for chance encounters that lead to new ideas and innovation-relies on the ability to move. Yet, in our current moment in the 21 st century, chances for this kind of connectivity-as distinct from virtual connections through screens and other technological interfaces-have, all of a sudden, become a precious commodity. 1 It
Social Research 89, No. 1, 2022
Recent science studies literature has emphasised that knowledge is generated in transit and throu... more Recent science studies literature has emphasised that knowledge is generated in transit and through encounters. If this is true, knowledge production will depend on forms and dynamics of hosting and hospitality. Conversely, inhospitable environments prevent encounters and decrease possibilities for the building of knowledge. Using results from a research project on Carl Linnaeus’s Laplandic Journey (Iter lapponicum, 1732), we address the relationship between frameworks of hospitability and knowledge construction. Lapland, or Sápmi, was in the process of being colonized by the emerging Swedish nation state when Linnaeus travelled. While in later reports Linnaeus created an image of Sápmi as uninhabited and uncultivated, waiting to be explored and exploited, his journal of the journey documents numerous encounters with state and church officials as well as reindeer herders, fishermen, settler farmers, and women with medicinal knowledge, many of whom were Sámi, on whose expertise, guidance and hospitality he depended.
Displacement and the Humanities, 2021
To move towards an understanding of displacement from within, and the forms of its overcoming, th... more To move towards an understanding of displacement from within, and the forms of its overcoming, the following chapter brings into dialogue the ancient experience of wandering and the 21st century condition of permanent temporariness. It explores whether these are the same or different phenomena, and whether the latter is a uniquely modern experience. In particular, it is interested in the turning points that lead to the defiance of the condition and its regime. It traces modes of existence that subvert the liminal state and allow for possibilities of living beyond the present moment through returns and futures that are part of everyday practices, even if they are splintered. Such actions, it is argued, allow for the repositioning of the self in relation to the world, and thus the exposition of cracks within the status quo. The investigation confronts experiences that appear to be uniquely those of the present day—such as non-arrival and forced immobility. In its exploration it engages current responses to de-placement by those who have experience of the condition first hand. It is a dialogue between the work of such creators as the architects Petti and Hillal, the poets Qasmiyeh and Husseini, and the community builders of Dandara, with ancient discourses of the outcast that are found in Euripides’ Medea, the experience of Xenophon and such philosophers as Diogenes the Cynic. In so doing, it seeks to expose the way seemingly exceptional forms of politics and existence, instead, reveal themselves as society’s ‘systemic edge’.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
International Review of the Red Cross
This article aims at positioning the agency of the displaced within the longue durée, as it is ex... more This article aims at positioning the agency of the displaced within the longue durée, as it is exposed in contexts of hospitality and asylum, by articulating its key modes: contingent, willed and compelled. Using the ancient world as its starting point, the article exposes the duplicity in conceiving of the current condition of displacement as transient or exceptional. As such, it argues for the urgent need of a shift in the perception of displaced persons from that of impotent victims to potent agents, and to engage with the new forms of exceptional politics which their circumstances engender.
Migration and Society, 2018
This article provides a historical perspective to understand better whether hospitality persists ... more This article provides a historical perspective to understand better whether hospitality persists as a measure of society across contexts. Focusing on Homer and later Tragedians, it charts ancient literature’s deep interest in the tensions of balancing obligations to provide hospitality and asylum, and the responsibilities of well-being owed to host-citizens by their leaders. Such discourse appears central at key transformative moments, such as the Greek polis democracy of the fifth century BCE, hospitality becoming the marker between civic society and the international community, confronting the space between civil and human rights. At its center was the question of: Who is the host? The article goes on to question whether the seventeenth-century advent of the nation state was such a moment, and whether in the twenty-first century we observe a shift towards states’ treatment of their own subjects as primary in measuring society, with hospitality becoming the exception to be explained.
Historia Zeitschrift Fur Alte Geschichte Revue D Histoire Ancienne, 2007
Page 1. 1 De-Placement: Constructing and Mapping Place in Collaboration with Artists ElenaIsayev,... more Page 1. 1 De-Placement: Constructing and Mapping Place in Collaboration with Artists ElenaIsayev, University of Exeter, e.isayev@exeter.ac.uk Created: 30 April 2010. Word Count: 5500 (7400 including footnotes) (images included in separate document) ...
Historia, 2007
RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...
Cooley/A Companion to Roman Italy, 2016
Papers of the British School at Rome, 1999
The Journal of Roman Studies, 2004
World History, Connectivity and Material Culture, 2014
Displacement and the Humanities (Humanities Special Issue), 2023
This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers... more This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers from multiple disciplines. Seeking to provoke a discourse around displacement within and beyond the field of Humanities, it positions historical cases and debates, some reaching into the ancient past, within diverse geo-chronological contexts and current world urgencies. In adopting an innovative dialogic structure, between practitioners on the ground—from architects and urban planners to artists—and academics working across subject areas, the volume is a proposition to: remap priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines, critically analysing their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; and provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns about displacement. Ultimately, this volume aims to provoke future work and collaborations—hence, manifestos—not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research concerned with human mobility and the challenges confronting people who are out of place of rights, protection and belonging.
2017–23. Special Issue of Humanities. Open Access. Published on a rolling basis. Abstract: Im... more 2017–23. Special Issue of Humanities. Open Access. Published on a rolling basis.
Abstract: Important and urgent studies on the subject of migration have increased substantially over the last decade in response to what has been termed the ‘migration crisis’. The issue is seemingly timeless, yet, the long term historical perspective shows just how ambivalent the category of migration is. What does it mean for human mobility to become a problem—a crisis? Usually the subject is addressed from either the perspective of the host or the home community, focusing on the impact of arrival or departure. Between these two points are those who are displaced, often for periods that last more than a generation—the current UN average duration of displacement is 25 years. For this reason we have chosen to focus on the critical issue of displacement. It is here broadly construed as both the involuntary movement of peoples from a place of belonging, whether due to forms of conflict, famine, persecution, or environmental disasters, and also the suspension of movement that leaves people existing without place. The more focused heuristic lens of displacement allows for cross-historical perspectives which do not risk conflating ‘migration’ with ‘refuge’ or ‘asylum’. It also allows for a discourse of place, space and territory—the shifting entities in relation to human belonging, statehood, mobility and control. It confronts the visibility and potency of displaced agency.
For this Special Issue, we therefore seek to provoke a discourse within and beyond the field of Humanities, including the disciplines of Classics and Ancient History. Our intention is to create a dynamic collection using a dialogical platform with experts in the field, while ensuring a robust scholarly discourse. Hence, we have commissioned pieces of work from practitioners as Catalysts (now published), for each contributor to reflect on and engage with in preparing the paper. A scholar who uses a different approach will then be asked to respond to a paper. Through the stimulus by catalysts and respondents, the intention is to create dialogue across practices, disciplines and temporalities: from catalyst—to paper—to response. In so doing, we hope that it provokes future work—hence manifestos—not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research and practice concerned with migration and refugeehood.
The volume features academic paper contributions which, at a theoretical and/or methodological level, aim to: remap the priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines and critically analyse their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns; and lastly, stimulate future interdisciplinary work and collaborations beyond the academy.
The volume treats the following thematic areas:
Volatile Concepts
How exceptional is the nature of mobility/displacement in the contemporary age?
When does mobility, or immobility, become part of the repertoire of virtue—a positive attribute?
Permanent transience and de-placement—still a ‘state of exception’?
Tangible Creations
Spaces of suspension: the city, the camp, detention centres and sanctuaries.
Materialities of displacement: objects, bodies, settlements, and traces.
The power, agency, innovation of those who are displaced.
Between hospitality and asylum—suppliant and guest.
Critical Approaches
Opportunities and dangers of comparative history in the context of displacement.
From representation to challenge: narratives of displacement in images and words.
Re-humanising the demography of displacement: people beyond numbers.
Responsibilities as scholars, and educators of the decision makers of the future.
Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy challenges prevailing conceptions of a natural tie... more Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy challenges prevailing conceptions of a natural tie to the land and a demographically settled world. It argues that much human mobility in the last millennium BC was ongoing and cyclical. In particular, outside the military context ‘the foreigner in our midst’ was not regarded as a problem. Boundaries of status rather than of geopolitics were difficult to cross. The book discusses the stories of individuals and migrant groups, traders, refugees, expulsions, the founding and demolition of sites, and the political processes that could both encourage and discourage the transfer of people from one place to another. In so doing it highlights moments of change in the concepts of mobility and the definitions of those on the move. By providing the long view from history, it exposes how fleeting are the conventions that take shape here and now.
Important and urgent studies on the subject of migration have increased substantially over the la... more Important and urgent studies on the subject of migration have increased substantially over the last decade in response to what has been termed the 'migration crisis'. The issue is seemingly timeless, yet, the long term historical perspective shows just how ambivalent the category of migration is. What does it mean for human mobility to become a problem—a crisis? Usually the subject is addressed from either the perspective of the host or the home community, focusing on the impact of arrival or departure. Between these two points are those who are displaced, often for periods that last more than a generation—the current UN average duration of displacement is 25 years. For this reason we have chosen to focus on the critical issue of displacement. It is here broadly construed as both the involuntary movement of peoples from a place of belonging, whether due to forms of conflict, famine, persecution, or environmental disasters, and also the suspension of movement that leaves people existing without place. The more focused heuristic lens of displacement allows for cross-historical perspectives which do not risk conflating 'migration' with 'refuge' or 'asylum'. It also allows for a discourse of place, space and territory—the shifting entities in relation to human belonging, statehood, mobility and control. It confronts the visibility and potency of displaced agency. For this Special Issue, we therefore welcome contributions which seek to provoke a discourse within and beyond the field of Humanities, including the disciplines of Classics and Ancient History. Our intention is to create a dynamic collection using a dialogical platform with experts in the field, while ensuring a robust scholarly discourse. Hence, we have commissioned pieces of work from practitioners as catalysts, for each contributor to reflect on and engage with in preparing the paper. A scholar who uses a different approach will then be asked to respond to a paper. Through the stimulus by catalysts and respondents, the intention is to create dialogue across practices, disciplines and temporalities: from catalyst – to paper – to response. In so doing, we hope that it provokes future work-hence manifestos-not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research and practice concerned with migration and refugeehood. We particularly invite paper contributions which, at a theoretical and/or methodological level, aim to: remap the priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines and critically analyse their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns; and lastly, stimulate future interdisciplinary work and collaborations beyond the academy. We invite submissions that treat the following thematic areas: