ANN: Conference, "Diaspora: Identity & Belonging" (June 5-6, University of Oxford & online)

Diaspora: Identity & Belonging

Oxford Transnational & Global History Seminar's Annual Graduate Conference
University of Oxford & Online
June 5-6, 2023

Register for June 5 (virtual)
Register for June 6 (in-person)
Register for June 6 (virtual)

Diasporas disrupt the fiction of geopolitical borders, unsettles the nation as a unit of analysis, and destabilises colonial logic that coerces (dis)placement. For our annual graduate conference, the Oxford Transnational & Global History Seminar invites our fellow historians and scholars in adjacent disciplines whose work engages with diaspora, especially as a way to navigate the history of transnational geographies, epistemic taxonomies and racial cartographies and map memory, belonging and power in new ways. The conference committee considered over two hundred abstracts and is pleased to present a transnational program with independent and early career scholars from twenty-five universities and eight countries.

Conference Schedule
Monday, June 5 (Register)
All times are listed in BST, the UK timezone, which is UTC+1:00
 

09:30 - 10:45    Diasporic Intimacies

- Remembering Interracial Intimacies: South Asian & East African Perspectives on Black/South Asian Romance, 1880 - 1980
Carissa Chew (University of Hawai'i)
- 'Internal Frontiers': Whiteness & Intimacy in Britain’s African Colonies
Nathalie Cooper (University of Warwick)
- Itineraries of Self-Respect: Labor Migration & Caste Reform Between Diasporas, 1929 - 1940
Kelvin Ng (Yale University)
 

11:00 - 12:45   Debating Diaspora

- A Voice to Be Heard: Animal Diaspora in the Late Ottoman Literature
Zeynep Nur Şimşek (University of Bologna)
- No Diaspora
Karno Dasgupta (NYU Abu Dhabi)
- Diaspora Studies as a Diaspora of Coloniality
Christopher Frattina Della Frattina (University of Oxford)
- Unpacking Colonialism and White Supremacy in Popular Culture: Ecofeminist Perspectives on History and Diasporic Communities
Kassandra Drodge (University of Ottawa)

12:45 - 13:15   Lunch

13:15 - 14:30    Tastes like home

- The Construction of the Homeland in Turkish Restaurant Practices in Budapest: Forming Identity, Memory, and Belonging in the World of Diasporas
Kardelen Gökçedağ (Budapest Metropolitan University)
- 'All the lonely people, where do they belong?': Breaking bread, sharing, and belonging in the Parisian kebab shops and immigrant-owned fast food restaurants
Shromona Jana (Independent Researcher)

14:30 - 15:45   Diaspora & B/orders

- Negotiating Black Seminole Transnational Memory on the US-Mexican Borderlands
Emilia Sánchez González (Independent Researcher)
- Afro-Oriental(ist) Anxieties: Disarticulating the Imperial Boundaries Between Africa & the Middle East
Shae Omonijo (Harvard University)
- Navigating New Geographies of Diaspora in South & Southeast Asian Highlands
Suanmuanlian Tonsing (University of Michigan) & Thanglianmung (North Eastern Hill University)

16:00 - 18:00 Women, Gender & Diaspora

- Female Travelers in the Black Seminole Diaspora: Historical Memory, Recognition Politics, & the Production of a Black and Native Identity
Mark Mallory (Texas A&M )
- "Threads of a Past Life”: Kimono in the Lives of Japanese-Canadian Women
Bailey Irene Midori Hoy (University of British Columbia)
- The Nation on the Catwalk: “Miss Kiev” and Practices of Belonging in the Ukrainian Diaspora in Winnipeg, 1979-1984
Elisa Lucente (University of Pavia)
- Sister or Outsider? : Recasting Solidarity as Survival among Women of the South Asian Diaspora in Canada at the Turn of the 20th Century
Surbhi Vatsa (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

18:00 - 19:30   Staging Diaspora

- Theatre in Diaspora: Identity Claims of the Transnational Alevi Community
Rüya Kalıntaş (Kadir Has University)
- Transnational Family Dance Lineages of the U.S./Mexico Bracero Program (1942-2022): Decolonizing Self (Portraiture) through Radical (Re)Mappings of Diasporic Selfhood
Kiri Avelar (University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Caribbean Musical Counterpublics: The Unorthodox Ontology and Authoritative Sounds of Fay Ann Lyons-Alvarez
Akhim Alexis (University of Southern California)

Tuesday, June 5
(Zoom registration or attend in person)
All times are listed in BST, the UK timezone, which is UTC+1:00
 

09:00 - 10:30    Separatism, Sovereignty & Self-determination

- (Re)Imagining Separatism: Long-Distance Nationalism, Diaspora Mobilisation & the Quest for Biafran Self-Determination in Nigeria
Stanley J. Onyemechalu & Promise Frank Ejiofor (University of Cambridge)
- The ‘Mystery’ Archive of Angami Zapu Phizo: Archival Diasporas & Transnational Claims to Naga Identity, Sovereignty & Self-determination
Alex Manby (University of Oxford)
- Chief Alfred Sam’s African Movement, 1912-1917
Kwaku Mintah Danquah (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

10:30 - 12:00   Diaspora, Race & Identity

- Britain’s Black Bookshops, Diasporic Identity & the Creation of the Transnational Black Intellectual
Alisha Odoi-Smith (University of Oxford)
- Transnational Adoption: Re-building the Narrative of Dual Identity Navigation Among Korean American Adoptees
Zineb Khemiss (University of Portsmouth)
- Chinese Student Responses to Yellow Peril in Early Twentieth-Century Britain
Willem Pauw (University of Edinburgh)

12:00 - 13:00   Lunch

13:00 - 14:30   Diaspora & Nation

- Cold War Radio & the Making of Hong Kong Identity, 1945-1967
Callie Belback (University of Cambridge)
- In Search of Black-Brazilian Political Thought
Carla Silva (Federal University of Minas Gerais)
- “Gung Ho Means Work Together”: Chinese American Soldiers’ Bilingual Literary Reflections During World War II
Alan Dai (Yale University)

14:30 - 15:00    Tea

15:00 - 16:30    Forging Liberation & Security in the Diaspora

- Post Emancipation Marronage: What Did the "Freedom Colony" Founding Families See That the Other Freedmen Did Not? And why, and why not?
Darold Cuba (University of Cambridge)
- ‘Las Antillas para los Antillanos’: Mixed-Race Party Formation in the Colony & Metropole, 1850-1898
Andrea Morales Loucil (University of Cambridge)
- Survivalists: Communities and Kinship in Maroon Societies
Lance Parker (University of Hull)

16:30 - 17:30    Identity, Positionality & Solidarity

- ‘Legal’ vs. ‘Preferred’: An Autoethnography on the Affective Consequences of Whiteness in Naming
Georgia Lin (University of Oxford)
- Navigating Identity and Belonging as a Dalit Woman: Transnational Experiences of Accessing University Spaces in India and Abroad
Madhuri Kamtam (University of East Anglia)