| CODE | MDT5004 | |||||||||
| TITLE | Narratives of Displacement | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Mediterranean Institute | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit explores both the conceptuality of and the direct and practical issues involved in the condition of displacement. It achieves this objective by integrating three salient approaches to the experience of displacement as a central concern of Humanitarian Action studies: ethnographic method and writing, autobiographical, memory and life writing, and the praxis of direct exchange with guest lecturers who have experienced forms of displacement and/or exile and have already narrated it through different media. Study-unit Aims: - To strengthen and enhance the candidates' holistic grasp of the field of Humanitarian Action through the co-ordination of a platform for public encounter that will allow them to reflect and think critically on the experience of displacement in listening to individuals who have lived it; - To acquaint the students with the existence of different narrations of the experience of displacement thanks to direct encounter with individuals who have been through the experience of displacement; - To familiarise the study-unit candidates with the field of life writing and autobiography emanating from humanitarian conditions of displacement, exile, migration and refuge. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Adopt a more in-depth, directly informed and critical understanding of the lived and experiential side of displacement above and beyond reading and text-based scholarship; - Utilise the theoretical and critical tools received during the lectures in order to co-ordinate a productive conversation with the guest lecturers and draft a journal of the study unit experience which will include both objective data and personal reflections about the encounters and the didactic material which will be used (photos, films, literary readings and so on); - Achieve a ground-level field praxis and knowledge that are not strictly bound to a desk-research based context or one of pure scholarship; - Cultivate a strong awareness of the ownership and utilisation of narratives of displacement by and from those who have experienced it. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Articulate a broader understanding of the regional and trans-regional history of displacement-based discourses and experiences, and integrating the latter within the experience and knowledge that emerge from the different discourses and narratives about displacement presented during the study-unit; - Have a better grasp of the relations involved between life writing, ethnographic praxis and the direct experience of displacement itself; - Approach narratives of displacement within an inter-disciplinary context in which life writing, scholarship and lived experience interact in a productive manner. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Saleh Addonia, 'She is another country' (Available Online: http://www.specimen.press/articles/she-is-another-country/) - Michel Agier, Managing the Undesirables. Refugee camps and Humanitarian government, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010. - Michel Agier, The Jungle. Calais's camp and migrants, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2018. - Michel Agier, On the margins of the world. The refugee experience today, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2008. - Mourid Barghouti, 'I Saw Ramallah', New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2008. - Tahar Ben Jelloun, 'Leaving Tangier', London: Penguin, 2009. - Hisham Matar, 'The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between', London: Penguin, 2016. - Raja Shehadeh, 'A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle', London: Profile Books, 2010. - Shahram Khosravi, “Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. - Susan Sontag, Regarding the pain of others, any edition. Supplementary readings : - Ammar Aziz, 'A Walnut Tree' (film), Rahul Roy (prod.), 2015. - Gioni, Brambilla (eds), La terra inquieta. The restless earth, catalogue, Milan 20th April- 20th August 2017), Multilingual ed., Mondadori Electa, 2017. - Peter Gattrell, 'The Making of the Modern Refugee', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. - Abdulrazak Gurnah, 'Pilgrims Way', London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Virginia Monteforte (ed.), to be defined, catalogue (Valletta 5th October- 4th November 2018), Ede books 2018. - Barbara Tedlock, 'From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography', Journal of Anthropological Research 47 (1991), 69-94. - Dagmawi Yimer, 'Va' Pensiero', Storie Ambulanti / Walking Stories (film), Archivio Memorie Migranti, 2013. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | |||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Norbert Bugeja Virginia Monteforte |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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