Schedule now availaible for Burning the Sea

Friday and Saturday, April 19-20, 2013
Nolte Center
Free and open to the public. Reservations available online until Wednesday, April 17 by clicking here.

Program schedule available for download by clicking the link below:
BTSfinal.pdf



"Burning the Sea: Clandestine Migrations in the Age of Globalization" is a symposium designed as an interdisciplinary conference that will bring together fifteen scholars from various national and international institutions, with a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Panelists will discuss contemporary clandestine human migratory flows across the Mediterranean Sea between southwestern Europe and North- and Sub-Saharan Africa, as they are represented in French, Francophone, and Spanish literature and cinema. Panels will also examine these migratory patterns, concentrating on how they are accounted throughout history, in mass media, and political discourse.

Convened by Hakim Abderrezak, Department of French and Italian, University of Minnesota

Participating Scholars:

Silvia Bermúdez, University of California-Santa Barbara
Sabrina Brancato, University of Bayreuth
Carla Calargé, Florida Atlantic University
Sylvie Durmelat, Georgetown University
Claudia Esposito, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Anouar Majid,University of New England
Brinda Mehta, Mills College
Valerie Orlando,University of Maryland-College Park
Gema Pérez-Sánchez, University of Miami
Liliana Suárez-Navaz, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, Yale University

Plenary Address:
Dominic Thomas, UCLA

Panel Chairs:
Shaden Tageldin, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
Ofelia Ferran, Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota
Nabil Matar, Department of English, University of Minnesota
William Viestenz , Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota

Sponsored by: University of Minnesota Imagine Fund Special Events Programs,
European Studies Consortium, Institute for Global Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Immigration History Research Center, Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, Department of French and Italian, Institute for Advanced Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Department of History, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Department of English, Department of Anthropology.

Special Screening: Mama Illegal

Tuesday, April 23
7:00 PM
St. Anthony Main Theatre
Cost: $10.00-$12.00
For tickets click here.



Mama Illegal is a documentary by award-winning ÖRF journalist Ed Moschitz chronicles seven years in the lives of three women.

Aurica, Raia and Natasa leave their Moldovan village--and the broken roads, the dilapidated schools and the countless abandoned houses--to work in Austria or Italy as cleaners or child care workers. Here they live a life in the underground without valid documents, without health care, and separated from their children and families for years. They send the little that remains of their hard-earned Western money home to their families.

But their desire for a brighter future and a better life comes at a high price: After all these years, their return is not what they planned. Their children are grown and their husbands estranged. The social gulf that they sought to overcome threatens to tear apart the families once and for all. Having never really arrived and been accepted in the West, they find that they have become alienated from their homeland.

The Center for Austrian Studies' BMWF Research Fellow Matthias Falter will lead a discussion after the film.

Sponsored by: Center for Austrian Studies, European Studies Consortium, Institute for Global Studies, Immigration History Research Center, MSP International Film Festival

Burning the Sea: Clandestine Migration in the Age of Globalization Symposium

Burning the Sea: Clandestine Migration in the Age of Globalization
Symposium
Friday and Saturday, April 19-20, 2013
Nolte Center
Rooms 140 &125
Friday, April 19, 9:00-5:00
Saturday, April 20, 10:00-2:30
Free and open to the public. Reservations required, to reserve please click here.


Accounts of North- and Sub-Saharan African clandestine migrations to Europe are broadcast widely in print and electronic media. Concurrently, fictional accounts on the matter published in French, Spanish, and Italian have grown considerably. Though they have received extensive media coverage, the desperate crossings have garnered little academic attention.

"Burning the Sea: Clandestine Migrations in the Age of Globalization" is a symposium designed as an interdisciplinary conference that will bring together fifteen scholars from various national and international institutions, with a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Panelists will discuss contemporary clandestine human migratory flows across the Mediterranean Sea between southwestern Europe and North- and Sub-Saharan Africa, as they are represented in French, Francophone, and Spanish literature and cinema. Panels will also examine these migratory patterns, concentrating on how they are accounted throughout history, in mass media, and political discourse.

Sponsored by: University of Minnesota Imagine Fund Special Events Programs,
European Studies Consortium, Institute for Global Studies, Immigration History Research Center, Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, Department of French and Italian, Institute for Advanced Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Department of History, Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Painting: Burning the Sea (2013) Jordan Kammer