Migrant Archives: Experiments in Diaspora Writing

Migrant archives—family photos, ancestral tapes, the stories told and untold—often emerge out of adverse political conditions and can be recovered to embody new creative strategies and possibilities.  Archives can fill in gaps, recreate connections severed by war, displacement, and movement between worlds. They can also be seen as letters to future generations, a gesture of survival and resilience, a tribute to a future where the documents of past lives matter.

In this program, we’ll study literature, poetry, and histories of Arab, Latin American, and Black diasporas to understand collective memory, community connections, and transnational currents that shape our identities and transnational solidarities. Students will gain skills in archival research, oral history, poetry and personal narrative as we develop our own creative projects. We’ll explore central questions, such as: What does it mean to write based on personal and public archives? What are the stories that have been told? What are those that haven’t been told? What role do photographs play in holding stories that are gapped and incomplete? How can archival research, poetry writing, and creative non-fiction fill in the gaps as we recover our hidden histories in the diaspora? And what can we learn from the patterns, poetics, and politics of human and non-human migrations?

Drawing on literature from Colombia, Lebanon, Palestine, the US/Mexico Border, and other communities of color, we will explore displacements of war and violence that put histories, peoples, and the natural world at risk; and themes of disappearance, memory, forgetfulness, and recuperation that hold tensions between ancestral roots and the diasporic routes across seas and lands that mark communal transitions. We will also explore how writers, mixed-media artists, and community activists integrate archival material into their work to challenge dominant narratives and to traverse boundaries of time, place, and identities.

In fall quarter, students will refine skills in interpreting cultural texts, including archives, photography, and literature, to understand the relationships of people and communities, the impacts of migration, and how archives can be used to activate memory and surface untold histories. Through lectures, seminar, workshops, and guest speakers, students will develop skills in expository writing, literary and visual analysis, the terminologies and methodologies of cultural studies, and creative writing, with a focus on poetry and personal narrative. Students will also learn a range of community documentation skills, including archival research, interviewing, and oral history, and how these can be integrated into creative writing.

Winter quarter is intended to provide space for advanced students who are prepared to develop extended writing projects: with faculty guidance, students will write proposals, conduct research, and engage in critique groups to produce a major individual or collaborative multimodal writing project, with an emphasis on poetry and personal narrative. Winter quarter will be structured as an 8-credits program core consisting of reading, seminar, and workshop, and 4-8 credits of individual or collaborative writing projects.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

Fall:

4 - Creative Writing: Intermediate Poetry and Personal Narrative;

4 - Cultural Studies: Contemporary Arab, Black, and Latin American Literature;

4 - Literature, Art, and Archives;

4 - History and Theory

Winter:

4 - Creative Writing: Advanced Poetry and Personal Narrative;

4 - Cultural Studies: Literature, Art, and Archives;

4-8 - Advanced Projects in Literary Arts