CFP: 2013 International Conference: Migrants and Their Memories (Deadline extended to March 09)

full name / name of organization: 
Research Center for Humanities / National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan

Scientists recently found that migration was a main factor that shaped human behavior (Don Jones, Nature News). According to John Hines, the most extensive human migration took place in the early Middle Ages, while other large-scale migrations include the Puritan migration, the great Serb migrations, the migrations of the Middle Passage, and the nineteenth and twentieth century migrations of impoverished Europeans to the Americas. Apart from with poverty and religion, migration is also often associated with war; climate change becomes a factor that forces people to become migrants. Migration is a matter of geographic movement (diaspora), but also of human psychology (e.g. un-homing, longing, nostalgia, depression); of human rights (e.g. refugee status, nationhood and statelessness, border control, access to translators and lawyers, [racial] discrimination, [sexual] abuse, access to safe drinking water, food, and medical attention); of economic need (e.g. poverty, international aid, unemployment, dependency). The International Conference on Migration and Memory will be held on October 4-5, 2013 at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and we welcome abstracts from all fields in the humanities. Please send a 200-word abstract as well as a brief curriculum vitae before March 09, 2013, to Professor I-Chun Wang, director of the Center for the Humanities, at chsc705@mail.nsysu.edu.tw. National Sun Yat-sen University plans to publish extended, revised, and peer-reviewed versions of selected conference papers.