Introducing the Undocumented Migrant Project and Hostile Terrain 94

Join Hostile Terrain 94’s central team for the launch of a new Undocumented Migration Project monthly webinar series! Virtually “sit down” with UMP Director Jason De León and the team to chat about our organization, Hostile Terrain 94, and ways in which the public can get involved and take action right now. Moderated by Kgomotso Magagula, a student working with the HT94 team at St. Olaf College.

Live Q&A to follow. This event will take place via Facebook Live on Hostile Terrain 94’s page.

More on the webinar series

This monthly live series will feature guest speakers to discuss critical themes related to our mission including immigration policy reform, activism and nonprofit work, and migration and detention. The October episode will focus on human rights, incarceration, and immigration reform with world renowned topic experts.

Please visit the UMP website for additional information on upcoming episodes and to access previous installments. 

Hope in a Time of Uncertainty

Hear from leading academics and senior experts from across the world and across disciplines as they share which societal problem has them most concerned and what gives them hope for the future. Opening remarks will be provided by Chancellor Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis.

International Writers Series: Ali Araghi

Exploring the brutality of history while conjuring the astonishment of magical realism, The Immortals of Tehran is a novel about the incantatory power of words and the revolutionary sparks of love, family, and poetry–set against the indifferent, relentless march of time.

This is the inaugural season for the International Writers Series, a new collaboration between the International Writers track of the Program in Comparative Literature and the University Libraries at Washington University to celebrate new publications of creative works by writers and translators in the Washington University in St. Louis community. The discussions are moderated by Matthias Goeritz, professor of the practice, Comparative Literature Program.

Free and open to all.

International Writers Series: Ignacio Infante & Michael Leong

Inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde, Vicente Huidobro’s "Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven" is a stunning prose poem driven by a relentless seismic energy that takes metaphor-making and image-building to unimaginable heights. Originally published in Madrid in 1931 under the title “Temblor de cielo” and in Paris in 1932 as “Tremblement de ciel,” this groundbreaking text stands as one of the most significant bilingual poems of twentieth-century letters. Infante and Leong will be joined by Derick Mattern, who is a PhD student in the International Writers Track. Pre-registration is required.

Global Displacement and Local In-Placement: Transnational Stories of Rustbelt Revitalization

Drawing on insights from her research among meatpackers in central Illinois with transnational families in Mexico and Togo, Faranak Miraftab takes a close look at the contradictory dynamics that fuel the globally displaced labor force we call “immigrant workers” and the role they play in revitalizing the US rustbelt. She asks, “How does place matter for diverse displaced workers and how they negotiate their relationship with the rustbelt’s predominantly white population?” Focusing on the micro-politics of the everyday in life-making spaces outside the workplace, Miraftab challenges the metro-centrism of globalization and immigration studies that theorize based on immigrant experiences of metropolitan areas or so called “global cities.” Moving across local and global analytic scales, Miraftab reveals the invisible in-flow of resources that revitalize the rustbelt, a perspective critically relevant in the current era of demonizing and criminalizing immigrants.

Myths of the Orient: Deconstructing the European Vision of the Middle East

Join Eve Rosekind, PhD student in the Department of Art history & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, for a talk about Orientalism, the artistic representation of the Middle East by European artists. The most common subjects of orientalist artwork that emerged in the nineteenth century were the desert landscape, hunters and warriors, market scenes, and odalisques in harems. These orientalist themes continued throughout the twentieth century, demonstrating the longevity of Orientalism within the history of art.

Initially these orientalist artworks appear as beautiful and straightforward representations of their subject matter, but the ideas that underlie these artistic depictions stem from European histories of colonialism and empire. This talk will scrutinize the common artistic themes of Orientalism and how they constructed a specific European vision and fantasy of the Orient. The Museum’s collection of paintings, photographs, and works on paper will take participants on a journey through the complex themes of European Orientalism.

This program is free, but registration is required.

‘Jewish American Writing and World Literature: Maybe to Millions, Maybe to Nobody’

International Writers Series: Katja Perat

Katja Perat’s novel, The Masochist, is a serio-comical fictional romp through the Habsburg Empire of the fin de siècle, beginning in 1874 Lemberg (present day Lviv/Lvov in Ukraine), continuing to Vienna, and ending in the Habsburg Adriatic seaport of Trieste in 1912. Along the way, the protagonist, Nadezhda Moser, the daughter of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (notorious author of Venus in Furs), encounters luminaries of the Empire's cultural elite. Pre-registration is required.