Transcendental Homelessness, Planetar Homes?

While home is often theorized as a category of space, the question of home for migrants is a complicated one. It brings to the forefront complex relations beyond the reductive dichotomies of ‘home’ and ‘away’, place of origin and place of residence, which postcolonial and diaspora studies often focus on. With the upsurge in migration rates in the past years, it becomes crucial to reflect on how to define home or the process of homemaking in an attempt to explore the experience of ‘home’ for mobile individuals.

This two-day symposium will explore experiences and narratives of home and/or homelessness in literature, art, and film. By focusing on expression as a process of homing; on home as an open, ongoing process; on its temporal and spatial dimensions; on its existence as a set of relations with objects, people and the world at large; and on its imagined and imaginary dimensions in defining such relations, the symposium tackles questions about home, home making, belonging, migration, memory, nostalgia, and affect.