On first glance, “home” and “exile” appear to be polar opposites, the one suggesting sanctuary and belonging, the other displacement and alienation. Without denying the power and importance of these connotations, this symposium will also explore the entanglements of home and exile and the ambiguities that lurk within. Hakem Al-Rustom takes up this challenge in his work on Armenians who survived the genocide and remained in their ancestral lands but whose presence has been silenced in or erased from the historical record; Jennifer Dominique Jones’s research explores the fraught relations between Black and queer political identities in the United States; and Sanne Ravensbergen’s scholarship examines the complicated interplay between Dutch and Indigenous law in Indonesia within the context of Dutch colonialism. For each, home is not so much a refuge as a site of contestation and ambivalence where the threat—and reality—of displacement or escape both lurks and beckons.

Panelists:
Hakem Al-Rustom (Assistant Professor, Alex Manoogian Professor of Modern Armenian History, University of Michigan)
Jennifer Dominique Jones (Associate Professor; History, Women's and Gender Studies; University of Michigan)
Sanne Ravensbergen (Assistant Professor, History, University of Michigan)
John Carson (Associate Professor, History, University of Michigan, moderator)

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.