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DIASPORA VISIONS: EXILES/ALIENS/NOMADS
SECOND WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Length of paper: Double-spaced, (1000 words) 12 point font.
Documentation and references: Bibliographic research, with endnotes and bibliography. Carefully cite all references must be, and all borrowed ideas and concepts honestly acknowledged, avoiding charges and possibilities of plagiarism.
Task: Investigate the works of three artists with the elements and principles of crossroads dialogues.
Purpose: The purpose of the second assignment is to investigate concepts of “diaspora” regarding exiles, aliens, and nomads, from the perspectives of crossroads. Please present a thesis statement to reflect your interpretation of diaspora as crossroad experiences, consisting of multiple perspectives, contradictory positions, ambivalences, ambiguities, fractures, fragmentations, disorientation, dissolutions, disagreements, confrontations, consent, tension, articulation, dissent, and collapse. Demonstrate how the artists’ works elaborate on ideas of “neither here nor there,” and “both here and there.” Using concepts of pidginization, creolization, and hybridity, explore the multiplicity of possibilities within the axes of the crossroads. Integrate ideas of memory and amnesia as re-membering and dismembering.
Basic Readings:
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Diaspora and Visual Culture.
Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas, An Introduction.
Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, ed., Theorizing Diaspora.