Refugee Literature and/in Digital Spaces (MLA 2024, Philadelphia)
Digital technology and internet access have expanded the ways of making meaning and of building and accessing audiences across the globe. Though unevenly available to refugees (UNHCR, Space and imagination: rethinking refugees’ digital access, 2020), digital technology has nonetheless offered previously unknown platforms for refugees to speak directly to global audiences. Some questions that might be addressed in proposals: - How do individual technologies (such as Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) determine literary forms?- How do audiences access these literatures?- How do such technologies enable and combat state surveillance and persecution?- How are individual refugee creators engaging digital technology?- What do refugee creators's use of digital technology tell us about its limits and possibilities? Please submit 150-word abstracts and 50-word bio to William Arighi (warighi@springfieldcollege.edu) by March 15, 2023. This panel will be proposed as a Special Session for the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conference, January 4-7, 2024, in Philadelphia, PA, USA.