Migration, Displacement, and the Arts

Co-organizers:

Kim DaCosta Holton, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University, Newark

Tim Raphael, Professor, Arts, Culture, and Media, Rutgers University, Newark

Mayte Green-Mercado, Associate Professor, History, Rutgers University, Newark

Co-sponsored by Mediterranean Displacements Project, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and Center for Migration and the Global City 

Scholarship on migration and displacement focuses mostly on the conditions that force people to leave their places of origin or the challenges that people face during their departure or arrival. In this sense, academic research on migration tends to reproduce particular frameworks shared across the disciplines of demography, sociology, political science, economics, and history. Relatively absent from these discussions are artistic expressions. By bringing together scholars and performers, this seminar examines the intersections between migration and the arts to consider questions about the role of music, dance, and performance in articulating displaced identities in urban migrations, how literary and visual arts can evoke memories of war, or how the culture of cities has been formed and transformed by global migration. It will also consider how aesthetic vocabularies are maintained and repurposed in adopted homelands, and how expressive culture impacts processes and perceptions of belonging and alienation in both origin and host contexts.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

3:00-5:00 pm

Alexandra Vázquez, Associate Professor, Performance Studies, New York University

Yona Stamatis, Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, University of Illinois Springfield

Daniel Da Silva, Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Amir ElSaffar, Musician/Composer

6:00-11:00 pm

Performances and party after the seminar at ODR Studios (89 Madison St, Newark, NJ 07105)

Marcy DePina, DJ and MC

Performances by

Amir ElSaffar and Two Rivers Ensemble

Janétza Miranda, singer-songwriter and classical Spanish guitarist of Taína descent from Newark, NJ

Debbie Ovalles, Afro-Caribbean and Brazilian dance