Diasporic literature is often deeply engaged with the tensions between displacement and belonging, rupture and continuity, loss and recovery. In narratives of migration, exile, and forced displacement, family becomes both a site of longing and a contested space where histories of trauma and survival play out. Diasporic texts frequently challenge normative understandings of kinship, moving beyond biological ties to reimagine family through memory, affect, and political solidarities.

This panel invites papers that examine how diasporic and postcolonial literature interrogate the limits of kinship, exploring how family is reconstructed, mourned, or reshaped through displacement. How do these texts negotiate intergenerational trauma and memory? What happens to familial bonds when migration disrupts traditional structures of care and belonging? In what ways do diasporic narratives expand or subvert our understanding of home and family through transnational and cross-cultural lenses?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Intergenerational Trauma and Memory
• Fictive and Chosen Kinship
• Gender and Family Structures in Diasporic Narratives
• Ghosts, Hauntings, and Ancestral Memory
• The Limits of Return
• Children of Diaspora and the Inherited Burden of Displacement
• Borders and Bureaucracies
• Mourning and Ritual in Exile

This panel seeks contributions that engage with a range of literary traditions, genres, and theoretical approaches, including postcolonial studies, critical refugee studies, transnational feminism, and memory studies. We welcome papers that examine works from different diasporic communities and geographic regions, fostering cross-disciplinary and comparative dialogues.

Please send 250-300 words abstract along with a short bio to namratadeyroy@gmail.com

Submission deadline: 20th March 2025