Documenting the undocumented: Valeria Luiselli’s refugee children archives

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-230
Author(s):  
Oana Sabo
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Archival Theory ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Compositional Method

This article reads comparatively Valeria Luiselli’s essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and her novel Lost Children Archive in the context of critical debates about the uses of archival documents in contemporary literature and in relation to archival theory (Foucault, Derrida, Farge). Both texts draw on a wealth of archival materials to explore the causes of mass migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States since 2014, and especially the plight of refugee children who disappear in the desert, in detention centres, and through deportation. I argue that these texts use the archive as a compositional method to confront restricted representations of Mexican and Central American migration with a plethora of documents that propose a historical and transnational perspective. The proliferation of archives stands in for missing evidence and foregrounds multiple points of view on the refugee children, compelling readers to imagine their migrant journeys more vividly.

scholarly journals RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN HORROR FICTION AS A GENRE, CREATIVE WRITING AND EDUCATIONAL PHENOMENON: A PROBLEM STATEMENT

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-69
Author(s):  
Vyacheslav Sergeevich Malykh
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Horror Fiction ◽  
The U.S

Although the genre of horror has gained an extraordinary popularity in contemporary literature, it still raises controversy among specialists. The situation in Russia is especially complicated. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Russian horror fiction used to develop concurrently with the evolution of horror genre in the U.S., but after the revolution of 1917 and until the late 1980s this tradition was interrupted in Russia. Therefore, nowadays the question “What is horror fiction?” is unclear for Russian philologists, the question “How to write horror fiction?” is unclear for Russian writers, and including the horror genre in literature syllabus is regarded by Russian professors and teachers as a forbidden topic. The situation is different in the United States where a long-standing tradition of interpreting the category of the horrible has been created. Modern American scientists, philosophers, writers and educators agree that horror fiction in its best manifestations touches upon essential problems of a human soul. It allows to exert a powerful positive influence on the formation and development of a personality. Throughout the 20th century, the genre of horror was systematically evolving in the U.S., and as of today, it is American horror fiction that sets the standards of the genre all over the world. The aim of this research is to describe horror fiction as a dynamically developing genre from three points of view: 1) through comparative and genre analyzis of horror fiction in the U.S. and Russia; 2) by studying narrative strategies which are used by horror writers in the U.S.; 3) by surveying principles of teaching the horror genre in an American multicultural educational environment. After experiencing decades of oblivion, the genre of horror can revive in Russia thanks to the critical mastering of the U.S. experience, where the genre tradition has never been interrupted. A list of bibliography is attached to help beginner researchers with their study of the subject.

Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States since 1995

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA HEIN ◽  
AKIKO TAKENAKA
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Museum Professionals ◽  
Ideal Solutions ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Points Of View

Museum professionals, like most people, dislike being the focus of criticism, yet many have recently found themselves in this predicament over exhibits focusing on the histories of major social confl icts. An especially tense issue for both Japanese and American museums has been treatment of World War II, particularly how to portray the motives, policies, and conduct of their own governments during the war. Curators have not always been prepared for the intense criticism and for the charge that differences of opinion are caused by a clash of irreconcilable ideologies, only one of which is valid. Japanese and American museums have deployed similar strategies-some effective, some self-defeating-for meeting those challenges. Neither has found ideal solutions, although some approaches, such as presenting multiple points of view and providing opportunities for interaction, seem to hold greater promise than others.

Faithful Doxology: The Church’s Allyship with Immigrants Seeking Asylum

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Boursier
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Detention Facility ◽  
Mission Strategy ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Pastoral Care Ministry ◽  
The Church

Given the mass human movement from Central America to the United States, the church needs to rethink its mission strategy for its humanitarian involvement with these immigrants seeking asylum. Looking through the hermeneutical lens of practical theology and its attention to contextualized praxis, the article situates the argument in conversation with qualitative research that emerged from a pastoral care ministry inside an immigrant family detention facility. The voices of these Central American women and children seeking asylum serve to contextualize, localize, humanize, and testify to the unjust reality of mass migration. The proposal endorses a missional hermeneutic that prioritizes allyship with asylum seekers as the church’s witness to the justness of God.

US Central Americans in Art and Visual Culture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kency Cornejo
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Us Intervention

After a long void in scholarship, literature on US/Central American art began to emerge in the decade of the 2010s. As this new body of literature emerges it is important to consider the politics of visuality and visibility as it informs production and reception of contemporary art by US Central Americans. During the years of US intervention that fueled Central American conflicts (1970s–1990s), the United States produced a visual discourse on Central Americans for US audiences, especially evident in photography, political posters, and Hollywood films. This visual discourse relied on a what I call a “solidarity aesthetics” for Central America, in which images and representations of Central Americans were made, selected, disseminated, and framed to produce empathy and encourage action with the region across the globe. Yet, this solidarity aesthetics entailed optical codes—imagery on poverty, violence, and tropical landscapes—that subsequently established a reductive visual trope about Central America still used today. This visual discourse not only objectifies a Central American subject, but further enables the erasure of US/Central American creative practices as it implies the region produces violence and not art. In the context of such visual discourse, art by Alma Leiva, Muriel Hasbun, Beatriz Cortez, Jessica Lagunas, and Óscar Moisés Díaz exemplifies a disruption of dominant visual discourse by US Central Americans artists. They create art and images that counter historical erasure and the visual tropes that propagate violence while offering alternative visual narratives that reflect on the legacies of war, US intervention, and the consequential displacement and mass migration of thousands of Central Americans.

scholarly journals A Migrant-Centric Reading of Exodus 2: Tactics of Survival for Immigrant Women and Their Unaccompanied Children

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 499-514
Author(s):  
Gregory Lee Cuéllar
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Internal Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Central American ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Unaccompanied Children ◽  
American Children ◽  
Birth Story

AbstractFrom a different vantage point, stories of migration, deportation, exile and diaspora in the Hebrew Bible have more than a didactic function; rather, they speak to and out of a set core of human experiences that in turn render them relevant across the historical spectrum of human migrations. Thus, rather than survey what the Hebrew Bible says about migration, how might its migrant-likeness compare to contemporary migrant-refugee tactics of survival? This article focuses on the story of baby Moses’s internal migration to the Pharaoh’s palace in Exodus 2 with a view toward the recent mass migration of unaccompanied Central America children to the United States. Through this parallel reading, the aim is to forge a migrant-centric reading of this narrative that casts it not as a birth story but as a relevant migrant-survival story that many unaccompanied Central American children are currently living. In the end, this article argues that by framing Exodus 2 solely as a birth story, readers inevitably foreclose on the possibility of elaborating an interpretation of this narrative that addresses the conflict, loss and trauma of many migrant-refugees in our world today.

scholarly journals The Beginnings of the Working Class. The problem of the working hands in Polish industry in the epoch of Stanisław August (fragments)

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-103
Author(s):  
Nina Assorodobraj
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Group ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
The Press ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Eighteen Century

Fragments of the book Początki klasy robotniczej published originally in 1946 give insight to history of Polish vagabonds in eighteen century. Text based on archival documents, ordinances and fragments from the press depicts the problem from multiple points of view, showing the complex history of this social group and how it was systematically delegalized and assimilated by consequent legal and administrative decisions. Motley population of vagabonds, entertaining miscellaneous ways of living and working was on one hand viewed as a bunch villains or idlers, but on the other constituted a reservoir of workforce, much in need for the nascent industry.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

scholarly journals Italianness in the United States between migrants’ informal gardening practices and agricultural diplomacy (1880–1912)

Modern Italy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Gilberto Mazzoli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Food Production ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Political Radicalism

During the Age of Mass Migration more than four million Italians reached the United States. The experience of Italians in US cities has been widely explored: however, the study of how migrants adjusted in relation to nature and food production is a relatively recent concern. Due to a mixture of racism and fear of political radicalism, Italians were deemed to be undesirable immigrants in East Coast cities and American authorities had long perceived Italian immigrants as unclean, unhealthy and carriers of diseases. As a flipside to this narrative, Italians were also believed to possess a ‘natural’ talent for agriculture, which encouraged Italian diplomats and politicians to propose the establishment of agricultural colonies in the southern United States. In rural areas Italians could profit from their agricultural skills and finally turn into ‘desirable immigrants’. The aim of this paper is to explore this ‘emigrant colonialism’ through the lens of environmental history, comparing the Italian and US diplomatic and public discourses on the potential and limits of Italians’ agricultural skills.

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