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Keynote Presentations

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Madelaine Hron

Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada

Screening Suffering: Translating ‘Reel’ Refugees in Image & Narrative

This talk explores the suffering of refugees, as represented in image and film genre. In so doing, it outlines some of the key paradigms in the translation of refugee pain and surveys some of the prevailing cinematic and narrative conventions related to representation of refugees, both inside and outside the refugee camp.  In particular, this talk takes pause on the dynamics of encampment, the condition of limbo and the role of the refugee child.

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Evelyn Alsultany

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of American Culture, and Director of the Arab and Muslim American Studies Program and Undergraduate Advisor  at the University of Michigan.

Understanding the ‘Muslim Ban’ through Media Portrayals

This talk will explore various factors that are important to understanding Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” In addition to addressing the role of government policies and the history of nativism in the U.S., the focus of this talk will be on the ways in which media representations of Arabs and Muslims have contributed to the misguided notion that the nation can be protected from terrorism by banning travel from 8 nations. In particular, it will focus on how media representations have racialized Arabs and Muslims and produced logics that justify their exclusion from rights and humanity.

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Ana Celia Zentella

Professor Emerita in the Ethnic Studies Department at University of California San Diego and Professor in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY

Language and Migration in the USA: The impact of national language ideologies, inter-group contact, and government policies

U.S. history reveals that attitudes towards languages other than English have waxed and waned in response to economic crises, war, and/or immigration waves. The first “English-only” laws were passed in the post WW1 period, affecting European immigrants, and the latest flood of legislation began in the 1980s, when the majority of immigrants came from Latin America and Asia. In response, racial ideologies of superiority/inferiority and purity/contamination have been remapped from biology onto language, with damaging repercussions for the education, employment, and safety of people of color who speak varied languages. In today’s USA, trumped up notions of unity that demand English-only foment linguistic intolerance and hate crimes.