Our aim is to promote interdisciplinary work here at our institution that crosses not only disciplinary lines to connect various departments in the humanities and social sciences but also national borders to view migration issues in the largest context possible.
Our intervention in this conversation will focus on the human rights of migrants and refugees (including their right to practice their religions, use their language, and retain their own cultural features); the study of popular cultural representations; the voice of people in exile, migrants, travelers, and tourists; and the understanding of bilingualism, and xenophobia. Humanities research in these areas can inform the law and transform policy to create a conversation on the impact of migration policy on human experience. What does the censorship of bilingualism signal about how we construct our world? Is popular culture depicting or misrepresenting migration communities? How are the refugee crises presented in social media? What is the vocabulary and the representation of policies and their consequences in individual human experiences? All these questions and many more require our attention in the 21st century and, at MSU, we can be at the forefront of the debates, research, and dissemination of new ideas.
For more information about the symposium, please feel free to contact us by clicking here.