Environments of Exile: Refugees, Nature, and Representations

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Environments of Exile: Refugees, Nature, and Representations

Veranstalter
Swen Steinberg (Carleton University, Ottawa, and Queen's University, Kingston – German Historical Institute Washington, DC with its Pacific Regional Office at the University of California, Berkeley) and Helga Schreckenberger (University of Vermont, Burlington – President of the North American Society for Exile Studies)
Veranstaltungsort
Online / Queen's University
Gefördert durch
Jewish Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston
PLZ
K7L 3N6
Ort
Kingston
Land
Canada
Vom - Bis
23.09.2021 - 25.09.2021
Website
https://envirexile.hypotheses.org/
Von
Swen Steinberg, Migration & Diaspora Studies Program, Carleton University

Biennial Conference of the North American Society for Exile Studies, supported by Jewish Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston/Ontario

Environments of Exile: Refugees, Nature, and Representations

Forced migration always takes place within cultural, social, and political environments, but also within specific natural environments: natural disasters and conservation efforts trigger migration. At the same time, escape also takes place in nature – for example, when people hide in forests, flee across unguarded ‘green’ borders, or cannot reach safety behind oceans or mountains. But migration brings people also into different climates they are not familiar with. These considerations affect survival in different ways because specific knowledge about nature and the environment influences flight and exile too: both about the conditions of survival in nature during flight (shelter, food, health) and also the possibilities of arrival and integration during exile, for example through specific knowledge about nature in agriculture, mining, or forestry. Consequently, exiles and refugees had an impact on the environment if their knowledge about nature was not ignored or subdued. Furthermore, natural spaces, especially at borders, were places of resistance to persecution and oppression; here, nature became a political space where knowledge circulation took place, and relief was organized. Finally, exile and environment are also related to the transformation or conservation of identity. These processes can be reconstructed, for example, in memories as well as in artistic representations about environments of exile.

The Biennial Conference of the North American Society for Exile Studies “Environments of Exile: Refugees, Nature, and Representations” follows recent debates about the human right to landscape (Egoz/Mahkzoumi/Pungetti 2011) and approaches in the Environmental History of Modern Migrations (Amiero/Tucker 2017) by extending them to historical perspectives on forced migration: to spatialities and temporalities of environment in contexts of escape and exile in the first half of the 20th century and, in particular, the flight from Nazi-occupied Europe. Nevertheless, papers dealing with other refugee movements or comparative perspectives are part of the conference program too.

The conference is organized by Swen Steinberg (Carleton University, Ottawa, and Queen's University, Kingston – German Historical Institute Washington, DC with its Pacific Regional Office at the University of California, Berkeley) and Helga Schreckenberger (University of Vermont, Burlington – President of the North American Society for Exile Studies). This event is supported by Jewish Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston.

Programm

>>> All times: Eastern Standard Time <<<

Thursday, September 23, 2021

9.30-10 am Welcome – Helga Schreckenberger (President of the North American Society for Exile Studies, University of Burlington / Vermont)

Opening remarks – Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston, and Carleton University, Ottawa / Ontario)

10-11 am Environmental Representations in Exile Writing 1

Thomas F. Schneider (Remarque Center for Peace, Osnabrück): Hades, Lethe or Locus amoenus: The role of nature in Erich Maria Remarque‘s writings on European Exile

Helga Schreckenberger (University of Burlington / Vermont): Channeling the American Pioneer: Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer’s Die Farm in den Grünen Bergen / The Farm in the Green Mountains

11-11.15 am Break

11.15-12.15 pm Environmental Representations in Exile Writing 2

Werner Nell (University of Halle): Relations to and the Impact of Nature in Critical Views on Modernity from Exile: Siegfried Kracauer and Albert Salomon

Jörg Thunecke (New York): Deadly volcanic activities on Sicily: Hermynia Zur Mühlen’s anti-Fascist novel Er heiratet nicht für Geld / He does not Marry for Money (1932/33)

12.15-12.30 pm Break

12.30-13:30 pm Exile Reflections of Environments between Identity and Attribution

Kirsten Krick-Aigner (Wofford College / South Carolina): Exile and the Longing for Heimat in the Representation of the Natural World in Bettina Bauer-Ehrlich’s Children’s Books

Margit Franz (Karl Franzens University Graz): “There, Where the Pepper Grows.” From exoticizing descriptions to practical implementations in Asian and African exile countries

13.30 pm End of day 1

13.45-15 pm Business Meeting of the North American Society for Exile Studies (optional / for members)

Friday, September 24, 2021

9.30-11 am Refugees, Knowledge and Nature in Canada

Martin Bemmann (University of Freiburg): The Unlikely Career of Leon J. Koerner: Transcontinental Transfers of Economic and Environmental Knowledge as Key to Entrepreneurial Success and Societal Integration, 1938/39-1955

Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston, and Carleton University, Ottawa / Ontario): Knowledge in Flight? Hungarian Foresters, the Uprising in 1956 and the Sopron Forest School at UBC Vancouver

Amanda Leslie / Asher Goldstein (University of Edinburgh / Linköping universitet): Naturalizing citizenship: Canada’s national parks and the promotion of imaginaries of citizenship on Indigenous land

11-11.15 am Break

11.15-12.45 pm Exile as Environmental Experience

Natalie Eppelsheimer (Middlebury College / Vermont): Of Droughts, Diseases, and Safaris: German Exiles as Farmers in Kenya

Reinhard Andress (Loyola University Chicago): The Halo of the Jungle: Narrating the Exile Experience of the Aron Family in Ecuador

Marlen Eckl (Hofheim/Ts.): “Europe in the jungle.” The agricultural settlement of Rolândia, a place of refuge in the interior of Brazil

12.45 pm End of day 2

Saturday, September 25, 2021

9.30-11 am Individual Perspectives on Environments of Exile

Jacqueline Vansant (University of Michigan-Dearborn): “Freilich ist das Leben hier absolut kein leichtes, aber … ”: A Youth‘s Reflections on Exile, Emigration, and the Environment in the Middle East, 1939-1943

Hadwig Kraeutler (Vienna): Engaging (with) environments: Some essentials. The museologist, writer, art historian Alma S. Wittlin (b. Lviv/Ukraine, 1899; d. Palo Alto/CA, 1991)

Zlata F. Phillips (New York State University at Albany): Monkey Business: Paddling the Amazon, Pedaling in France to Spanish border, and Publishing for children around the world

11-11.15 am Break

11.15-12.15 pm Expellees and Deportees in New Environments

Avi Sharma (Technical University of Berlin): Our homes were “cold as an ice-block” and “hot as an oven”. On the seasonal experience of displacement in refugee camps in Germany and India ca. 1945/50

Hilla Peled-Shapira (Bar-Ilan University, Israel): Between Moscow and Baghdad: Climate and the Image of the City in the Works of Iraqi Writers in Exile

12.15-12.30 pm Conclusion

12.30 pm End of conference / get together

Kontakt

Dr. Swen Steinberg (swen.steinberg@queensu.ca)

https://envirexile.hypotheses.org/