SaMLA '27 Seminar : (In)hospitable Spaces: Trauma and Belonging in Anglophone Literatures (SaMLA)
Atlanta, Georgia
Organization: SaMLA
Event: SaMLA
This panel invites exploration and interrogation of in(hospitable) spaces (political, affective, spatial) and its relationship to identity and trauma. Since writing is a way of exploring, representing, and healing from trauma, papers exploring how writing functions as a form of hospitality are welcome also. I envision exclusion of certain bodies because of racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc as treating said bodies as intruders. Hence, writing one’s silenced, displaced self becomes an act of claiming space and rendering inhospitable spaces hospitable.
Zimbabwean writer and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga in Black and Female: Essays (2023) defines empire as trauma that has created ruptures for the people who have experienced colonialism’s violence and aftermath. She also attributes writing as a way of healing and belonging for the collective whose identities have been negated by the traumas of racism.
This panel invites exploration and interrogation of in(hospitable) spaces (political, affective, spatial) and its relationship to identity and trauma. Since writing is a way of exploring, representing, and healing from trauma, papers exploring how writing functions as a form of hospitality are welcome also. I envision exclusion of certain bodies because of racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc as treating said bodies as intruders. Hence, writing one’s silenced, displaced self becomes an act of claiming space and rendering inhospitable spaces hospitable.
Possible topics include:
· Black women’s writing and healing from trauma
· Postcolonial ruptures including war and political repression
· Refugees, migrants, camps
· Racism, alienation, and trauma
https://samla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19631
Arpita Mandal