“The formation of a diaspora could be articulated as the quintessential journey into becoming; a process marked by incessant regroupings, recreations, and reiteration. Together these stressed actions strive to open up new spaces of discursive and performative postcolonial consciousness.”
― Okwui Enwezor (Nigerian poet, art historian, and curator: 1963-2019)

At COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Tuvalu’s foreign minister Simon Kofe delivered a pre-recorded address to the delegates standing behind a podium knee-deep in water to highlight the rapid effects climate change is having on his country. The island nation of Tuvalu, located in the South Pacific, is just over four metres above sea level. It’s been predicted that as soon as 30 years from now, the country will be completely submerged, leaving its population of about 11,000 without a home. They would be part of a predicted 200 million environmental refugees that could exist within the next 30 years.

When we think of displacement and diaspora, we often think of refugees displaced by war and imperialism, but our conception of these terms is growing, particularly as we face increasingly bleak environmental outlooks, but the very idea of what it means to be displaced and to be part of a diaspora is changing as well.

According to UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, at the beginning of 2022, of the 89 million people displaced worldwide, over 53 million people were internally displaced, meaning despite being separated from their homelands, they have not crossed a border to find refuge. In settler colonial states like Canada, there is also a growing understanding of the effects of Indigenous displacement (historic and ongoing) and an increasing understanding of urban Indigenous communities as forming a diaspora as well.

This conference seeks to explore displacement and the concept of diaspora through an interdisciplinary lens. Whether due to war, colonialism, or environmental deterioration, we are seeking analyses of the causes of displacement, and we want to hear stories from and about the diaspora. Whether it be studies of diasporic literature, analyses of environmentally-influenced migration, or glimpses into what it means to be part of a digital diaspora, we are seeking to have our understanding of the terms diaspora and displacement challenged and reshaped.

Themes/Topics:

Activism

Alienation and displacement

Art and film

Belonging and Belongingness

Citizenship

Climate change displacement

Communities of culture (and cultures of healing)

Concept of home

Crime displacement

Cultural identity and community

Cultural hybridity (Hybridized cultural practice)

Diasporic cinema

Diaspora communities

Diasporic culture

Diaspora curriculum

Diaspora geopolitics

Diaspora as social movements

Diasporic literature(s)/Canadian literature

Diaspora tourism

Digital diaspora

Food in the diaspora

Forced displacement

Gendered transnational selves

Human rights

Homeland politics

Hostlands and homelands

Imagined communities

Immigration and emigration

Imperialism

Indigenous diaspora within settler colonial states

Instability of national categories

Internal displacement

Internment

Invisibility

Language socialization

Memory-making, Nostalgia and In-Betweeness

Music and visual culture

Public policy

Post coloniality and the politics of location

Psychology of displacement

Queer diasporas

Refugees

Religious identity and diaspora

Spaces of visibility and resistance

Statelessness

Transnational literature

Trauma and terror

War crimes

Our conference committee welcomes individual presentation proposals of 300 words, and panel proposals (3 people max) of 900 words, based on any of the above themes. This will be the ninth annual Humber@TIFA interdisciplinary conference held by Humber College’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences in association with the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA), one of the most celebrated literary festivals in the world. TIFA is located at the Harbourfront Centre, one of downtown Toronto’s major cultural and artistic venues.

Submit your proposal and a brief bio online by May 14, 2023: https://humber.ca/tifa/call-proposals