edited by Maha Marouan and Merinda Simmons
contributions by Melanie Fritsch, Jonathan Glover, Queen Quet Marquetta L. Goodwine, Delia Hagen, Deborah Katz, Kathrin Kottemann, Abigail G. H. Manzella, Yumi Pak, Cassie Smith, Lauren Vedal, Walter Bosse, Regina N. Bradley, Ashon T. Crawley and Matthew Dischinger
foreword by Houston A. Baker Jr.
introduction by Philip D. Beidler
afterword by Trudier Harris
University of Alabama Press, 2013
eISBN: 978-0-8173-8679-5 | Cloth: 978-0-8173-1801-7
Library of Congress Classification PN56.R16R33 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification 809.933552

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Race and Displacement captures a timely set of discussions about the roles of race in displacement, forced migrations, nation and nationhood, and the way continuous movements of people challenge fixed racial definitions.
 
The multifaceted approach of the essays in Race and Displacement allows for nuanced discussions of race and displacement in expansive ways, exploring those issues in transnational and global terms. The contributors not only raise questions about race and displacement as signifying tropes and lived experiences; they also offer compelling approaches to conversations about race, displacement, and migration both inside and outside the academy. Taken together, these essays become a case study in dialogues across disciplines, providing insight from scholars in diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, literary theory, race theory, gender studies, and migration studies.
 
The contributors to this volume use a variety of analytical and disciplinary methodologies to track multiple articulations of how race is encountered and defined. The book is divided by editors Maha Marouan and Merinda Simmons into four sections: “Race and Nation” considers the relationships between race and corporality in transnational histories of migration using literary and oral narratives. Essays in “Race and Place” explore the ways spatial mobility in the twentieth century influences and transforms notions of racial and cultural identity.  Essays in “Race and Nationality” address race and its configuration in national policy, such as racial labeling, federal regulations, and immigration law. In the last section, “Race and the Imagination” contributors explore the role imaginative projections play in shaping understandings of race.
 
Together, these essays tackle the question of how we might productively engage race and place in new sociopolitical contexts.  Tracing the roles of "race" from the corporeal and material to the imaginative, the essays chart new ways that concepts of origin, region, migration, displacement, and diasporic memory create understandings of race in literature, social performance, and national policy.
 
Contributors: Regina N. Barnett, Walter Bosse, Ashon T. Crawley, Matthew Dischinger, Melanie Fritsh, Jonathan Glover, Delia Hagen, Deborah Katz, Kathrin Kottemann, Abigail G.H. Manzella, Yumi Pak, Cassander L. Smith,  Lauren Vedal